Power of Stories

Lessons from Dustin's Championship Golf Team

We (Dustin and Rob) are the co-founders of the Impactful Coaching Project (ICP).  We both also work full time in higher education----Dustin is the Director of Golf and Head Men’s Golf Coach at Friends University and Rob is the VP of Athletics.  Part of the impetus of ICP is sharing and processing what we have learned individually and together over the last almost 15 years of working together.  We were once young and dumb coaches together and when we started ICP, we were middle aged and kind of dumb.  However, we thought we had experienced enough to make some sense and share some ideas.

One of the big things we have been learning the last year or two is the power of stories.  The stories we tell our teams are going to be the ones that form our identities eventually.  They need to be true, but we can tell them even when they might not be the core of a team identity (yet).

Dustin’s golf team the past two years is a good example.  They have been really good.  Back to back conference champions and ranked as high as 12^th nationally.  As the team has grown and gotten better, some guys were challenged for playing time that were not a few years ago.

He focused on telling stories about unselfishness and relationships.  During a rougher, tense stretch of the season, he even got them all in the room and retold some of his favorite most impactful stories.

Fast forward to the conference tournament.  They are playing in western Kansas where the wind blows like crazy.  The team had played pretty average on the first day and it was a tight tournament.  On day two, the forecast called for 30-40 mph winds and gusts up to sixty mph.  Extremely difficult conditions to play in and there was even discussion about delaying the tournament for a day.  Ultimately though, it was decided to play in the conditions.

Here is where the story gets pretty cool.  In golf, you can declare five players as your scoring team and two alternates.  The alternates play but are not in the score total.  However, you can change your line up between every round so it is not unusual for alternates to move into the scoring team at some point in a longer tournament.  However, our alternates took a different approach.

Our two alternates went to Dustin and asked not to play that round.  Their rationale was that because of the unusually difficult conditions, they could be more helpful to the team by not playing and helping find balls for the other guys.  With the wind the way it was, it was going to be a very difficult day to keep the ball in play and there were going to be bad shots.  Dustin agreed with them, and those two alternates ran around the course all day finding balls for their teammates.  We outscored the next best team by over twenty-five strokes that day and went on to run away from the tournament.

Now, if Dustin had not spent the last two years telling stories about unselfishness and relationships, is it possible the same thing would have happened?  Sure.  This team is full of some pretty special people. However, we do not think likely.  The same stories had been told and retold and unselfish behaviors had been spotlighted throughout the last few years and it was simply the DNA of the team to be unselfish.

So, our challenge to you is to think about the stories you are telling and make sure you are telling/retelling these stories that highlight the character and competitive values that you want your teams to have in competition but also take with them when they move on from your program.