Character Drives Performance

Dr. Jim Loehr has spent a working lifetime learning about how character makes us stronger and happier human beings. The data overwhelmingly supports character drives performance on and off the playing surface. The character strengths of high performing people are the same character strengths of high performing athletes. A short clip below from Dr. Loehr who shares what the top coaches have already figured out. The elite coaches running successful programs have made coaching Character their #1 priority because character drives performance.

What is Character?

Character is what you think, what you do and what is important to you. Knowledge is socially constructed so what you think, what you do and what is important to you can be influenced by good coaching. Nick Saban provides his definition of character in the short clip below. Nick tells players the truth in plain language and invests time and energy in setting expectations with players to strengthen their commitment to character building. Nick Saban is educating players about performance character strengths every day, it’s part of his daily coaching routine, he wants the kids on his team to make the right choices. He knows there aren’t a lot of personal choices in becoming a high performing person/athlete, it takes what it takes, but he wants his players to know what it takes and to make the right choices.

Coach Fitzgerald and Coach Shaw talk about the importance of coaching character to help student athletes make the right personal choices to be successful. Coach Shaw is right, not every player can be saved, but once a player is in his program he will make every effort to help him make good decisions to be successful as a student athlete and person.

Conclusion

The data is overwhelming, character drives performance. Coaches, parents, teachers and leaders should want every person they work with to be successful in life. Every one of us is responsible for the personal choices we make in life. But not every one of us is positioned with the right information and knowledge necessary to make good personal choices.

As parents, coaches, teachers and leaders we have an opportunity to help those we interact with on a regular basis become knowledgeable about Performance Character Strengths and to influence their Values System to align with making good personal choices. Teams and organizations are only as good as their people so it makes sense to teach and coach character to create high performers on and off the playing surface.

TLPF Hockey we will share short posts on ways of coaching character because it is important to the development process of the person/athlete.