Volleyball offers a great opportunity to practice leadership. Good teams are good teams because of leadership. Mediocre teams are mediocre because of leadership. Champion teams are champions again because of leadership.
Leadership is present in any organization and society, and of course, in volleyball
You might be saying that this article is not for you because you don’t consider yourself as a leader. I have bad news. Even if you believe you are not a leader, you must be in one way or another.
Leadership is something I’m very passionate about. In my volleyball career, I was the team captain of several teams at all levels (professionally, Internationally, and youth level).
It’s super cool being called a team captain, and it’s a privilege. But, like any privilege, it has big responsibilities.
When you are the team captain, you must be the first person in almost every team endeavor. You must lead with the example on and off the court. You also need to have the emotional stamina to cope with the demands of your teammates and coaches.
There’s a correct and a wrong way of being a team captain. I hope this article can help you lead your team the right way.
Before I can help you become a better leader, let me briefly explain the wrong way of being a team captain. This “receipt for failure” is the product of my experience and observation of good and bad team leadership in my +20-year volleyball career.
- Acting in a dictator way: Thinking that you are the only one who can talk and that your opinion is the only one that counts.
- Complaining: about practices, the drills, and explicitly questioning coaching methods and decisions.
- Abusing of power: Looking at your teammates above your shoulders (especially the less experienced).
- Negative role model: This is the worst. Promoting bad attitude and behaviors among your teammates).
A team led by a captain with these characteristics is headed to failure.
Now that you have a clearer idea of poor leadership, let’s focus on helping you become a champion leader.
If you are or want to be the team captain of a successful team, I encourage you to meet as many if not all the criteria I’m about to outline below.
- Be an emphatic leader: this is probably one of the most critical threads of a good leader. Here we are talking about the Golden Rule aka treat others the way you would like to be treated.
- Communicate assertively: You must communicate your thoughts without sounding like a dictator. This makes your teammates openly share their thoughts without fear of being judged.
- Be a positive role model: This is one of the most exhausting tasks you have, as this will dictate teams’ behaviors on and off the court. A role model is disciplined in executing the skills and following the team’s strategies. It is the one that arrives first and leaves last, and it follows the team’s rules first.
- Keep high performance: On top of all the responsibilities mentioned above, a team captain must keep a high performance on the court. This doesn’t matter how much he pays, but the team captain must give all she has every time she touches the ball.
- Remind your teammates of your goals: Finally, a good team captain must maintain the teammates engaged on the team’s goals. This includes encouraging and sometimes delivering thought love to the rest of the players. Assertive communication is paramount to reminding your teammates of the team’s goals.
I hope this article can help you be a better team captain. If you need more help on how you can lead your team to reach your goals, don’t hesitae to reach out. I’ll be happy to help:)
Blessings,
Coach Carlos.
