Are You Right For The Job?

For a head coach, much is made of your contract duration.

Whenever you sign a new deal, there is great interest in how many years you’ve signed for.

Everyone has an opinion: five years might be too long and invites apathy, one year is too little and shows the club lacks confidence in you.

And while I’m an outspoken advocate of the need for longer tenures in coaching, I believe your responsibility as a leader is to be constantly ensuring you’re the right person for the job.

This means you should be less worried about contracts and more concerned with mini-contracts.

One coach who built this into his regular process was three-time World Series champion, Tony La Russa.

Three-Step Offboarding

In his autobiography, La Russa detailed the offboarding process he put himself through after each Major League Baseball season.

While many head coaches hastily get their exit meetings done so they can rush off to a beach somewhere, La Russa took his time to ensure he was the right person to continue in the job:

1. “My first stop would be the front office to find out if they wanted me back.”

2. “Then it was the players, and the question they needed to answer was: Am I still the leader you will follow?”

3. “My third and final step: my own personal gut check to see if the competitive fires were still burning as hot as ever.”

For La Russa, this yearly process achieved numerous things that would prove valuable for navigating the ups and downs of the following season.

Firstly, he was able to gain alignment (or re-alignment) with the executives. Secondly, he gathered commitments (or re-commitments) from influential players on the team, who’d have a huge bearing on his success on the diamond. Thirdly, he questioned his own engagement (or re-engagement) to ensure his competitive fire was still burning.

One Added Benefit

After the 2010 St. Louis Cardinals season, La Russa also uncovered another benefit. During his conversations with leaders like Chris Carpenter, Albert Pujols, and Matt Holliday, he uncovered a rift in the clubhouse that he had not known about. The players suggested the lack of unity had festered for the second half of the season, and had impacted their on-field performance.

Armed with this new knowledge, La Russa was able to address the team chemistry issues, and set about creating an environment where his leaders felt safe to bring future issues to him in-the-moment.

Even if he had four years left on his contract, La Russa also had these mini-contracts in place, and they were ‘co-signed’ by key stakeholders at the club.

This ensured that, at regular intervals, he knew that he was the right person for the job.

Cody’s Notes

• Being ‘team first’ as a coach means that you need to know if you’re no longer the right person to lead them. The best way to understand that is to check.

• These re-commitments should always be done in-person.

• These re-commitments should be done regardless of the level of success achieved in a season.

• This type of process doesn’t need to just be a post-season activity. There may be more regular intervals that you can check your alignment, commitment, and engagement.

• A fourth mini-contract that would be valuable to get is with your family.