On Productive Days, the Best Assistants, and Cultivating Buy-In Without Results

Over the past year, The Daily Coach has conducted a range of interviews with coaches, authors and various other leaders about strategies to make our days more productive, the hallmarks of the best assistants, and maintaining morale and buy-in when the results aren’t there.

For this week’s Saturday Blueprint, we put together some of our favorite quotes on these subjects from our guests.

On productive days:

“I’m not just about getting to-do lists checked off. A productive day is making progress on big tasks that are going to help you accomplish your goals. There are days where you’ve got lots going on, but a productive day for me is starting the day with the needle-moving activities, the high-value tasks that are going to help me advance in my career.

If I can align my energy and focus and protect that time — some days it’s two hours, some days it’s 30 minutes — I feel I made that progress and am more in control. I’m doing the right things at the right time. That, to me, is a productive day.”

-Mandy Green, Busy Coach CEO

“The first is a mindset win. What are you doing each day to improve yourself from a mindset point of view? That could be anything from reading, listening to a podcast, subscribing to a newsletter.

The second is movement. If you don’t like the gym, that’s fine. If you don’t like running, that’s fine, but you need something where you move your body and get in a better mood. It could be as simple as going for a 10-minute walk.

The third is mindfulness. That can come in a variety of ways, yoga, meditation. For me, it’s actually a nap. It’s doing something that puts your mind at ease. We’re inundated with information, the phone, emails, all these things. Each day, I give myself 20 minutes to lie down. I don’t necessarily sleep, but no phone or noises. It was a game-changer in how I felt.”

-Allistair McCaw, international best-selling author and keynote speaker

On the best assistants:

“I don’t want people who think like me or are exactly like me. I want (our other coaches) to challenge me because, at the end of the day, I want to have the best idea — not my idea, not their idea — the best idea to help us win at Texas Tech.

We’ll have some conversations where there are arguments or we question each other. But you have to be comfortable in your own skin. At the end of the day, though, I think I’ve hired a bunch of guys who understand the direction we’re going in. I know whenever they say, ‘Hey, what do you think about this, Coach?’, it’s coming from the right spot.

It comes from trying to get the most we can get out of these players and help them become the men and players they’re meant to be.”

-Joey McGuire, Texas Tech football coach

“Figure out how to best serve the head coach in a way that he needs to be served, not in a way that I want to serve or a way that I think he needs to be served. You have to be able to put your ego aside and communicate effectively. Learn the temperament of the head coach. Learn how he wants information…

Figure out their personality, how they learn, what are they extremely convicted on? Because if you’re dealing with a coach who’s dead-set in his ways and doesn’t want to change, learn and grow, you’re going to create friction. You’re better off just buying in and figuring out how to make those players the best possible version within the way that head coach thinks they should play.

If the head coach is open, you have to bring solutions, ideas and be prepared. The rule I always had as a head coach with my staff is the best idea wins, but you better be prepared in terms of having the data.”

-Ryan Pannone, Alabama basketball assistant coach

On maintaining buy-in when the results aren’t there:

“It’s a one-day contract mentality: Win the day. Seeking growth and improvement is maybe more important when you don’t have the talent of other teams. I’ve also been part of clubs where the perception outside maybe isn’t that high, but with the right approach, you can actually achieve great things.

It’s coaching cliched stuff, but the fundamentals of what we have to do are seek improvement and do the job as best we can each day.

Then, try to do it even better the next day.”   

-Rohan Smith, professional rugby coach

“It’s got to be modeled behavior. Break it down into small things. Go have a great practice. Then, what does it look like after a great practice?... You’re going to (reach) three, or four, or 10 players who will say, ‘O.K., this is how we react to this.’ Then, you do it again on day two. It builds momentum.

The everyday atmosphere you create as a leader absolutely filters down. What happens is we all know that... but (sometimes) you don’t get the results you desire, and you get frustrated and maybe change the modeled behavior. Then, you never develop consistency because you’re constantly chasing whatever the end goal was.

When you get into that race, you look back and say, ‘I don’t have consistent players. I have to get my own guys in here.’ Well, I don’t know what that means, to be honest with you. Very few of us get into sports and say, ‘It’s all about me.’ We all play because we love the team aspect. I think it’s modeled behavior and servant leadership. The hard part is being that.”

-Adam Fuller, Florida State defensive coordinator

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