first heard this “bias” expressed by the famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, at a seminar I attended in 1971 when I was a university basketball coach. Over the years, Wooden’s teams at UCLA won 10 national championships—seven in a row at one point. (No one else has come close; the next highest is two in a row.) Yet despite his brilliant successes, Coach Wooden always maintained he would not know how good a coach he had been until at least 20 years after his last player graduated and he was able to see what they had done with their lives. As I write this, Coach Wooden is still observing—in his 97th year!
Let’s further expand on exactly what I mean by a strong developmental bias so you can begin to see how you could tap into the Third Factor of the performers in your world.
Developmental bias is a new term that juxtaposes what is often perceived as a negative term—bias—with a decidedly positive one—development. But one can be biased in a positive sense, as in, “He had a bias toward always being honest, no matter what the circumstance.” I could just as easily have used the phrase developmental prejudice, but the word prejudice has even more baggage attached to it. To be prejudiced toward a person’s growth, success, well-being or development is a very good thing for any manager to have, but I settled on the word bias because it suggests a kind of listing in a certain direction, like a car with steering that pulls slightly one way.
Good leaders are always skewed to the developmental side even while trying to produce “straightforward” results. They get the results, but they develop the person in the process, so that the achievement of those results—or even higher results next week, next month or next year—is possible.
Managers with a strong developmental bias are not mean or dictatorial. They are just very passionate about their people using all of their talents and abilities. They hate to see talent go to waste. They are like my high school English teacher, Mrs. Lockyer. She knew what you were capable of and insisted on holding you to that standard. This is the essence of the developmental bias. And in exceptional coaches, it’s like gravity—always there, exerting a pull, influencing everything a coach does. In good coaches, developmental bias supersedes everything.
I know that it was teachers like Mrs. Lockyer, who had a strong developmental bias, who had the most influence on where I am now and what I am able to do. I can also list the bosses and coaches I’ve had since my high school days who exhibited this bias with ease: they are those who have had the biggest impact on my abilities and beliefs. They are the ones who ignited my Third Factor, my desire to be more or better or different than I was.
In talking to and working with other exceptional coaches, I became more and more aware that this strong developmental bias was a major undercurrent in each and every one of them. It also became clear to me that there were five main principles at work in the service of developing their athletes.
In Search of the Developmental Bias
I can honestly say that until that 3 a.m. conversation with Gary, I really hadn’t given any thought to writing another book. But in the ensuing days, as the Olympics progressed, the outline for what you will read here slowly emerged. It was clear to me that there are some exceptional coaches, and that leaders of all types—managers, parents, other coaches— could learn a great deal from them.
This wasn’t a new idea in the sense that I’ve been teaching coaching skills for years. What Gary triggered in me was the desire to go beyond the obvious, to get beneath the surface and uncover what the coaches did. What was it about them or their style that made them so good for the people they coached, and so successful? Given all the experiences I have been fortunate enough to be part of—including six Olympic Games and numerous world championships—I felt I was in a unique position to identify and convey those lessons.
I also have one other advantage. As an instructor in the executive development programs at Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, and as a trainer with my own company, Performance Coaching, I spend much of my time working with leaders in organizations. It has given me a clear understanding of the demands placed on everyday leaders. I could easily see that the leadership lessons from this “performance laboratory” called the Olympics also applied in the so-called real world.
In the process of writing this book, I first laid out the five characteristics of a strong developmental bias that I had observed in great coaches: that is, the five sets of behaviors they used to translate their developmental bias into results. Then I interviewed Olympic coaches and got them to comment on the principles and give their views. The coaches I selected were recommended to me by a few for whom I have had tremendous respect over the years. You’ll get to meet these men and women in the main body of this work.
Once I had collected the data from the coaches, I put together a presentation on the five principles and took it on the road, to corporate audiences across Canada and the United States, to get feedback on the applicability of the concepts for everyday leaders. This book is the result of that feedback.
Go Deeper We have developed a website in conjunction with this book so that you can assess yourself in each of the five areas as well as get some coaching on key skills. Go to www.ignitingthethirdfactor.com. Your username: perform. Your password: lead.
What follows is a summary of each of the five characteristics of a developmental bias to whet your appetite for what’s to come. Over numerous presentations, I have arrived at the “five rings” diagram, which I find appropriate since so much of the wisdom contained in these pages comes from Olympic coaches and athletes.
Manage Yourself
People cannot move to high performance if they have to spend time and energy adjusting to you. Coaches are human. Even those with a strong developmental bias and the best intentions can sometimes get in their own way when they are coaching and developing others. In Chapter 3: Manage Yourself we talk about the tools you can use to be a more effective leader at critical times. Being skilled at managing yourself is a precondition to being able to access your developmental bias. This is especially true when you’re under pressure, feeling rushed or uncertain— which pretty much describes the work world every day!
Build Trust
Here is what Olympic decathlon coach Andy Higgins had to say about building trust: “Robert Frost said it better than I can. . . . It’s putting our belief into them so that they can have a belief they can use until they acquire their own.” Wow. I had to read that several times to get the full impact of it. There are many other aspects to trust, of course, including competence. No matter how nice someone may be, or how much they say they believe in you, you will not trust them if you don’t feel they are knowledgeable or competent enough about the area you are engaged in to give that kind of reassurance. We cover this in much more detail in Chapter 4.
Encourage and Use Imagery
Chapter 5 outlines one of the most powerful tools great coaches use: the language of imagery to create clear pictures for their performers. Imagery is the language of performance. People can’t do things they can’t imagine. The potential for development here is huge.
Uncover and Work Through Blocks
The fourth characteristic is all about dealing with the blocks that inevitably come up when developing others. When you are trying to get better at something, you are going to run into blocks. In Chapter 6 we discuss how to uncover the blocks in the first place and then build the performer’s commitment to deal with them.
Embrace Adversity
In Chapter 7 we look at how exceptional leaders and Olympic coaches take an active role in situations of adversity to ensure that the adversity is channeled in a developmental way. When you have prepared for adversity, you’re able to deal with it when it arrives—as it surely will. Choosing to be in the competitive arena