Characteristics of Great Teammates

        On most teams you'll find great teammates.  What constitutes a great teammate varies depending on who you ask.  Like many of the other concepts we have discussed, being a great teammate is something most of us would agree is important.  With the beginning of the baseball season upon us, most teams begin a shift away from the focus on individual development of the offseason to a renewed focus on the team.  Now is when you really find out who is "we over me" as the lineups are made and adversity is faced.  This made me think of creating another list.  The list will follow the pattern of the Mentally Tough Baseball Players List of being mostly shorter posts with examples.  Some of the characteristics will seem obvious, and some won't.  Some will be based on my study of sport psychology, but many will be based on experiences as a player and coach.  Like any other list of this sort, there will be some facts and some opinions.  Feel free to agree or disagree, but my hope is that the list will lead to some discussion within your teams and teammates, as well as reflection within yourself.

        #1: Great teammates don't hold each other responsible for an individual's personal situation.

        Great teammates don't hold each other responsible for an individual's personal situation.  This can work a number of ways, but I have two basic examples to illustrate my point.  The first is the player who finds himself without the role he was hoping for on the team.  Maybe he is not a starter after working hard and giving it everything he's got.  There are different ways to react to this sort of situation.  Some are productive, and some aren't.  An unproductive way would be to pout, feel sorry for himself, and to be mad at the guy who is starting over him.  As irrational as this sort of response is, it happens often.  Think about it for a second.  Did your teammate make the lineup?  No.  If he did, however, he probably still would have written his name instead of yours.  He is your teammate, but he wants to play as much as you do.  Don't blame him for your personal situation.  Accept it, free yourself up to have a productive response instead (more on that in a future post), and be a great teammate!

        A variation of the second example of a teammate holding another teammate responsible for a personal situation happens far too often during games.  Player A is starting, has a bad at-bat, and strikes out.  He comes in the dugout pissed off.  Player B is not starting and is trying to be a great teammate.  He tells Player A that it is okay, that he'll get him next time, and attempts to dap him up.  Player B snubs him or fires some sort of profanity-laced comment back at Player A.  This is holding a teammate responsible for your personal situation and is a selfish response.  Player B didn't make Player A have a bad at-bat.  Why get mad at him?  He's trying to be a great teammate.  Player B probably would have liked to have the at-bat Player A just had, and Player A certainly is not making that any easier to deal with.  Accept the support, and be a great teammate.

        The two examples I gave take a look at players in the two generic situations of starter and non-starter.  That was purposeful.  Among great teams, there are great teammates.  Anyone can be a great teammate regardless of ability level or role within the team.  All should be held accountable for the specific behavior and characteristics of a great teammate.  It's much easier to focus on and notice "guy on bench" and his response to not playing.  Let's not forget the responsibility of the guy playing as well.  His should be equal in expectations.  

        I hope you enjoyed this first in a mini-series.  Do you have other examples of teammates holding each other responsible for a personal situation?  I'd love to hear them.  Tweet them to me @Coach_Ehrlich, or shoot me an email ehrlichb1@gmail.com.  Best of skill with your seasons getting going.  Hopefully you have prepared and can go out and enjoy the year.

My Thoughts on Adversity

        Adversity.  It can be described as misfortunes or difficulties.  Dr. Ken Ravizza describes it as when the _____ hits the fan.  Within the game of baseball adversity may take the form of a booted ground ball, giving up a bomb, or having a call go against you.  Outside of the game, maybe adversity is a position battle, a prolonged slump (either as an individual or as a team), or problems completely outside of the sports environment.  The point is adversity can take many different forms.  Likewise, there are many ways to deal with adversity.  Some are productive, and some aren't.  For me, the productive ways boil down to three principles.  Those principles are trust, being rational rather than emotional, and being a solution seeker.  In my opinion, all three are interrelated.  I will try to tackle each individually though.

1. Trust-  Trust is huge in sports.  Coaches spend a great deal of time talking about needing to be able to trust players.  Players want to be able to trust teammates.  They also need to be able to trust coaches.  The ultimate test of trust in performance is whether individuals can trust themselves.  In-game adversity tests this trust.  When you make a poor pitch, do you start to doubt all of the work you have put in?  Maybe you are late on a fastball and pop it up weakly.  Do you then completely change your stance or approach as a hitter for your next at-bat?  If so, you are probably struggling to trust yourself.  In doing so, you are cheapening the countless hours of conditioning, the skill work, and the experiences that have led to this moment.  The best players in baseball have a great ability to trust themselves and what works for them.  If they are struggling to get hits, they know that each poor at-bat just makes them one at-bat closer to turning things around.  Many factors go into the building of that trust, but ultimately it is a decision made by the individual.

2. Being rational rather than emotional- This is something I struggled with as a player at many points of time.  I'd get out, and thoughts like, "I suck!" or "How the f*** could you not hit that pitch?" would creep into (and sometimes out of) my head.  Before I knew it, one at-bat with a poor result would turn into three or four.  Three or four at-bats may turn into a bad weekend or bad couple of weeks.  This was being emotional about my performance.  It worked on the flip side too.  Getting hits would be because, "I'm the man right now!" instead of whatever actually produced the result.  Rene Descartes is known as the father of rationalism in philosophy.  The idea behind rationalism is that opinions and the resulting actions of those opinions should be based on reason instead of emotion.  The idea is easier to describe than to enact, but taking the emotion out of your performance is one of the greatest keys to being a consistent player.  Self-reflection, sometimes in short bursts during games and definitely after games, is important to understanding who you are.  That reflection needs to be based on reason rather than emotion.  So many of the bad at-bats I had were "because I sucked" or "something is wrong with my swing" when I did my emotional reflection.  Rationally, they were because I swung at a bad pitch, tried to do a little too much, or deviated from my plan.  The great games were because I saw the ball well, got into hitters counts, and reacted to the baseball.  Be rational in the face of adversity, and your chances will greatly improve.

3. Be a solution seeker- One of my favorite quotes comes from the timeless Harvey Dorfman.  Dorfman says, "Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle."  I've seen the quote attributed to multiple people including Ben Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  The darkness is the problem you're facing.  It's the adversity.  Sure, you could decide to curse it.  If you do, chances are you will feel a lot worse.  You definitely won't change anything.  Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, lighting a candle is seeking the solution.  How much time do we spend wallowing in self-pity or complaining about a situation?  That is ultimately just time wasted that could have been used finding a solution.  One concept I love (from Jon Gordon I think?) is the idea that you should not complain about something unless you are willing to try to find a solution.  Adversity needs to work the same way.  Rather than feeling bad for yourself because of giving up a hit, having a bad game, or being in a slump, you should be seeking solutions to "light a candle."  In our search for solutions, we many times go on wild goose chases for some crazy idea when the answer we are looking for is most often within us already.  It's probably thinking rationally about what is going on.  This is where consistent self-reflection can help keep us from prolonged periods of inconsistency.

        As you can see, trust, being rational, and seeking solutions really are all intertwined with each other.  Trusting your ability and plan help us stay rational.  Staying rational helps us to find solutions.  "Swinging at better pitches" is a much easier solution than "not sucking."  Being able to find solutions is part of the work and preparation that builds on our trust.  I chose to write this blog with an emphasis on the individual, but all of the principles are easily applicable to a team concept as well.  Steps to handling the adversity would likewise be similar.  Although my principles are not by any means the only ways to deal with adversity, they are three I feel strongly about.  Do you have a time where you battled adversity either in a game or outside of it?  I'd love to hear about it.  Shoot me an email @ehrlichb1.gmail.com, or send me a tweet.  Thanks again for reading, and good skill with your spring seasons starting up!





https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkyrille.deviantart.com%2Fart%2FA-Candle-In-The-Dark-185408774&ei=gCfWVLe7F4iqNvv1gfAD&bvm=bv.85464276,d.cWc&psig=AFQjCNFPRr8lUqo8awB40KPLe3sLI2FrJQ&ust=1423407354941551

The Character Development Inventory: A Tool for Discovery and Growth

        Over the past couple of months or so, I have had the great opportunity to design and implement an off-season mental conditioning program with the high school baseball team I am a part of.  As I mentioned in the last post on "Focus," I have been very hesitant to write specifically about what we are doing.  There are multiple reasons for my hesitation.  Mainly, I am not big on self-promotion.  I do not care at all if other people know what we are doing.  My only interest is that the players in the program invest in what we do.  That being said, one of my goals within the sport psychology profession is to help as many people as possible.  When I say help, I mean it in the true sense of the word.  My hope is to make an impact by helping all those involved in sports to perform to the best of their abilities and to enjoy the sporting experience.  To do so, I think it is of the utmost importance that we move past a surface level understanding of sport psychology (breaths, routines, and false bravado) and into the world of really understanding who we are.  For those reasons, I have decided to write a little bit about one of the tools we used early in the program.

        When our head coach mentioned to me that he would like me to start working with the players in our program on the mental side of the game, I could not have been more jacked up.  This would be a great opportunity to get experience discussing some of the concepts I have had the chance to learn about over the last few years.  That is not to say I haven't done so before, but this would be the most purposeful practice I've had to date.  More importantly, it would be the chance to introduce and revisit concepts with our entire program with hopes of providing value and a chance for them to improve.  What our head coach and I did in our conversation about the off-season program was to identify areas we thought the players could benefit from.  For me, this is huge.  Coaches who are looking to improve the mental side of the athletes they coach need to have the conversation of what exactly they are hoping to improve.  You know your players!  For us, we identified four areas for improvement.  We wanted to: 1. Help players know themselves better as a player and person, 2. Build mental toughness, 3. Increase knowledge of mental skills, 4. Establish a team concept/team-building.  I felt good about all of the objectives, but I admit my weakness of the four is the team-building concept.  I am not a "ra ra" type of guy, and that is the preconception I had about what team-building activities are.  I'll talk more about that later.

        The most important objective, in my opinion, was to help players better know themselves as players and people.  In order to help accomplish that, I turned to a tool called the Character Development Inventory (CDI).  The CDI was developed by Geoff Miller and is written about in his book Intangibles.  As I have written about in previous posts, G has had a big impact on me.  He has been more than generous with his time and advice going all the way back to when I first started researching schools.  G's CDI is a great, free tool that asks players to reflect on who they are.  The CDI is 95 statements and has three sections:  Personal Identity, Mental Toughness, and Baseball IQ.  Within each section are subcategories like Integrity, Confidence, and Ability to Apply Instruction.  The categories and subcategories all are intangibles, and one of the ideas of the CDI is to make those intangibles measurable through identifying statements.  Each subcategory has five statements for players to rate how much each statement applies to them on a scale of 1-10 (1 = not at all, 10 = perfectly).  Each player was given a CDI packet and asked to complete it before our next session.

        Players were placed into groups for the session using the CDI.  We have 7th-12th grade all together for conditioning, and I put them into groups with the idea of mixing grade levels as much as possible.  This would provide older players the chance to be in a leadership role and encourage all players to interact with some guys they may not normally talk much with.  Prior to the interaction, players filled out a scoring planner for the CDI that asks for average scores in each of the subcategories.  The planner also has players denote their three greatest strengths and three areas for improvement based on the scores.  The players then filled out a worksheet asking for more reflection on one of the strengths and one of the weaknesses.  The scoring of the CDI's took a lot longer than I anticipated.  In hindsight, I would have either had the players do this part of the activity outside of our work together or just planned to dedicate an entire group session to scoring the CDI's and the accompanying worksheet.  Regardless, after both sheets were completed it was time for what I found to be a great experience for all of the players and coaches.

        The players were asked to discuss their CDI results with their groups.  There were two parts to the discussion.  First, players talked about a strength.  Each player spoke about what a strength, what they specifically do that shows the quality, what it says about them as a player/person, and how they can help the team because of the strength.  For me, talking about our strengths is an incredibly underutilized concept in sports.  We don't do it very often.  If anything, talking about how good one is can be considered as a negative.  On the flip side, we all agree confidence is one of the most important factors in the success of a player.  Well, if that is the case, players should be encouraged to acknowledge how they are good sometimes!  At the high school level this is immeasurably important.  Players are at such a transitional phase, and the wide range of ages of the players we have (12-18) means opportunities for growth throughout the entire time as part of the baseball program.  Guys were then asked to discuss one of their areas for improvement.  Players spoke about what the area for improvement was, how exactly they struggle with the area, who the player they said exemplifies the quality (part of the worksheet), and what the area for improvement says about them as a player/person.  The group then discussed specific ways for the player to improve.  I walked around during the discussions, and it was very cool to hear the older players giving outstanding advice to younger guys.  Hearing guys being comfortable with an overall uncomfortable topic was great to see as well, and all of the credit for that belongs to the players for being active participants.

        Finally, we talked about the CDI's as a group.  I asked for a few guys to step up and talk with us all about what they may realize about themselves after completing the CDI that they did not realize before.  A few did, and it was very impressive to hear them discuss these concepts so freely with a large group of teammates.  One of the coolest stories came from one of our seniors Andrew Crook.  Andrew is a guy I have coached since he was twelve years old so I know him pretty well.  If I were to ever write a book, I could probably fill a chapter on Andrew, his family, and our years together.  He is extremely smart and has a first rate work ethic.  Andrew has developed great perspective on baseball and what it means in his life.  Andrew's also been labeled in the past, by himself included, as a perfectionist.  He is a true student of the game and in particular of hitting.  In addition, Andrew has embraced understanding the mental side of the game.  Every talk we have ever had about a facet of the mental game has been viewed as an opportunity to grow, and Andrew has certainly done that.  He is a guy who understands himself very well.  This was Andrew's third time filling out a CDI because of playing with me during the summer and then also completing it last year.  Andrew spoke about prior the experience he hadn't realized that a couple of characteristics that were originally weaknesses for him had turned into strengths.  Learning from failure was one of the characteristics Andrew mentioned.  In the past, because he had expected so much of himself, Andrew struggled with this concept.  Emotion would cloud his rational thinking about an at-bat.  This is no longer the case.  All the credit goes to Andrew for that improvement, and it was awesome for everyone to hear about.

        All in all, this CDI experience could not have gone better.  There are so many positives to list from the experience that it is very difficult to pick only a few.  One obvious positive is the self-awareness the tool asks for.  Being honest with ourselves is one of the hardest tasks we have as humans, but the CDI helps you do so in a non-threatening way.  A second positive was the opportunity for older guys to take on a leadership role in the discussions and coach each other on ways to improve.  The opportunity for younger guys to hear from older players who were in their shoes so recently was extremely valuable as well.  The discussions also created a great bonding experience for our entire program.  Some of the guys talked about some very personal issues about baseball and life, and it was all done with great respect among all.  I said before that I am not a "ra ra," team-building type of guy.  The CDI, and really the entire off-season mental conditioning experience, helped me to realize I do not have to be a cheerleader for team-building to occur.  It can happen organically.  Finally, the CDI can be a tremendous learning experience for coaches too.  I learn something about players I never knew every time we complete it.  While one on one meetings with each player would undoubtedly lead to even more learning, this experience could not have gone better.  In conclusion, I highly recommend utilizing G's Character Development Inventory with your team or yourself.  Odds are you will find ways it is valuable that you do not expect.  I know I do every time I use it!


Side Note: All of the resources are free too so I am not trying to sell you anything except a tremendous opportunity to learn and grow!

All of the tools for the experience can be found on Geoff Miller's The Winning Mind in Baseball blog and are linked directly here: Character Development Inventory Materials