Losing

What can you do to turn things around when your team is losing?

When I became a head coach in 2005 at Rhode Island College in 2005 I took over the best team in the league. We were good enough to win games regardless of the mistakes I made. When I became the head coach at Maine in 2014, I took over the worst team in the league. We weren't good enough to win no matter what I did. I gained a lot of valuable experience as a head coach with both winning and losing.

Understand The Pulse Of Your Team

Any important decisions you make as a leader start with the pulse of your team. You really have to know what makes them tick as individuals and as a group. That is harder to due when your team is really struggling, especially with a new team.

When you are losing your approach tends to drift away from the people on your team and how to connect with them. The overall mindset becomes "we just aren't good enough" and you need an overhaul. I know when I got there as a coach, the individual mentality didn't matter to me as much as it should have. It was a major reconstruction project and this was how we were going to do it long-term, and connecting with the players wasn't as important. We cared about them and we tried to make them better, but changing the mindset became a group thing, with individual personalities not being as important. That made change that much harder.

Some teams are really loose and a little bit wild, and maybe they need things to be tightened up a bit to change the narrative. Other teams are too rigid and put a lot of pressure on themselves to perform, and that has a negative impact. Understand what type of team you have to help find your way out of it.

Any type of meaningful change is still about connecting with individuals mentally and establishing and maintaining buy-in. Motivating players when you are winning and they are playing well isn't that difficult. Connecting with them to get more out of them when they are losing is really hard, and knowing who they are and how to get to them is crucial. Don't lose sight of who they are because you are losing.

Evaluate Their Ability

Talent matters. Some players are good enough and some aren't. When you are going through a losing streak, make sure you are honest with what your players are capable of. Are you putting them in position to be successful? Are they good enough to do what you ask?

When you are trying to shake things up to get your team out of a rut, make sure you are putting them in the best position to win. It's not a bad idea to mix it up. But it is easy to make things worse. If you are struggling to shoot the ball and you are shooting a lot of 3s, maybe you aren't as good a shooting team as you think. If you have a great post player who you keep feeding inside but he can't finish, maybe you need to different approach.

It's so easy when you are losing to get pissed off at your players and blame them. Sometimes they aren't good enough. Make sure you are asking them to do stuff they are capable of doing before you hammer them about the way they are playing.

Look Inward

Take a look at how your actions and tone have changed as your team has started to struggle. Are you being consistent with who you are and your organization's core values? Do they still see someone they can trust every day?

Taking responsibility is a great way to show vulnerability to your team and the value of taking ownership. When my teams were struggling I felt one way to relieve a lot of pressure was to tell them it was ultimately my fault. I prepared this team to play a certain way, and we aren't playing that way. It's on me. But I'm going to keep working as hard as I can to get this right, as long as you guys are willing to do the same.

Ask some veteran guys that you trust how your own approach has changed in their eyes. Do they see the same guy they saw at the beginning of the year? Is the message still consistent and clear? Ask a lot of questions and listen. Having those conversations will teach you a lot about yourself and your team.

You want to end a losing streak by figuring out what your team can do better. Sometimes it's about figuring out what you can do better.

Change Something

Sometimes you just need to do something else. Make sure it sounds different and feels different to your team. Get them out of their rut and give them something to be excited about.

When we were struggling defensively at Maine I was continually pounding our guys on the defensive end. It was the emphasis every day. The drills were harder and longer. I was going to make sure the guys knew we were going to guard people no matter what. And it wasn't working.

I just decided to go the other way. Before we played Hartford after a tough loss at Stony Brook, I went completely opposite. I told our guys I wanted to try and score 100 points. That was it. That was the scouting report before Hartford. I didn't say anything about the defense, because the guys were tired of hearing about it. All we were going to do was try and score 100 points.

It definitely changed our guys mentality a bit. It gave them something to get excited about, something to smile about in practice. We had been losing game after game, so we needed something to change. We went out and beat Hartford in the next game, and we did score 100 points (although the game went to overtime, and it took us overtime to do it).

Stay Focused On Who You Are

Stay true to your core values and behaviors. Make sure that is how you continue to evaluate your team. Negative results can impact the way you see your team, and you have to fight that. The process is what really matters. If your team is competing the way you expect, make sure you celebrate that. Too much goes into the results that you can't control. Evaluate your team based on their approach every day and you'll continue to get their best.