by Matthew Mitchell, author of “Ready to Win: How Great Leaders Succeed Through Preparation“
To achieve any goal, you need to put in place a sound strategy that will help get you there. And once you’ve arrived at that strategy, it should act as the measure against which you determine where to set your focus.
To describe what I mean by this, let me bring in an example from my days of recruiting players for college basketball. While I was the head coach of the University of Kentucky’s women’s basketball team, the goal for recruiting was pretty clear: we wanted to recruit good players who could help us win. However, within that overall goal, a lot of different factors came into play.
For instance, good players come in all shapes and sizes. Some are built on mostly talent and not too much grit. Others have superior toughness and enough talent to make it work. There are some who are both fantastic athletes and superstars in the classroom, too. There are some who will go anywhere that best showcases their talent and therefore don’t need to feel a particular loyalty or connection to the school they choose. And, there are those who are looking for that snug fit between the culture of the team and themselves. I’m sure I could come up with 100 additional distinctions to describe players.
What’s more, every player is a unique individual, so no one category can completely define anyone. With the number of players available, I had to have some way of getting a handle on my recruitment process. I needed some kind of strategy or defined way of pursuing the kind of player that would best fit Kentucky and flourish there as a player and a human being. I didn’t want to spend time recruiting players that were unlikely to sign with us.
I recognized that players who were both incredibly high-achieving students and excellent players were most likely to end up at schools like Stanford, Cal, Duke, Northwestern, or Vanderbilt. This isn’t to say Kentucky isn’t a good school academically or that we didn’t emphasize academics in our program. Thanks to the support and focus of our Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart, Kentucky athletics drove excellence in this area across the board.
However, the reality was that a student with that profile was much more likely to go to one of those schools. Spending time finding and recruiting these players was generally not a good use of my limited time.
With experience, I came to see that the players who would come to Kentucky were those that were attracted to the genuine enthusiasm and passion I felt for the program and the people in it. Realizing this helped me eliminate the focus on these potential recruits. Instead, I was looking for a certain passion and an alignment of values. I asked myself, “Is this a person of good character who loves our values?” I also liked to look for solid players I felt were being undervalued in the recruiting rankings.
Essentially, the strategy I devised was to focus on players who fit our culture and had the mental makeup to play our relentless style of basketball. Of course, they had to be exceptionally talented and skilled basketball players to play in the SEC, but past that I focused on passion and enthusiasm.
I also created a strategy that kept me focused on the details of how I recruited, not just who I recruited. My belief was that my strength in recruiting was making a personal connection with a player and their parents. This meant that whenever I thought about any detailed preparation in recruiting, I’d think, “Will this particular task help me build a personal connection? Or is it more like busy work?” If it didn’t relate to helping me make a personal connection, it was something to de-prioritize or eliminate altogether.
Arriving at this strategy helped me to decide how deep to dig into the details. For instance, I always felt like the look of our recruiting presentations was worth sweating over. Why? Because when we’re trying to make a connection with someone, the quality and feel of what we present represents us in some way. Having an intentional strategy to create a personal connection allowed me to decide, “Yes, this matters.”
I should quickly add here that this focus on a personal connection as my strategic key only worked because I sincerely liked connecting with people and I sincerely cared about my players. I wanted the parents to know that I wanted to develop the whole person.
A strategy has to come from your strengths and your core competencies. If any part of it goes against your identity or values, you will sabotage yourself from making real headway. Genuine belief in your strategy ensures the best path to achieving your goal.
Matthew Mitchell is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author, speaker, three-time SEC Coach of the Year, and the winningest head coach in the history of the University of Kentucky women’s basketball program. Through Mitchell’s focus on the fundamentals, he led the program to new heights ― seven seasons of winning 25 games or more and UK’s first SEC Championship in 30 years. Mitchell’s new book, “Ready to Win:How Great Leaders Succeed Through Preparation” (Winning Tools, November 19, 2024) shares proven principles that lead to resilience, preparation, and growth. Learn more at www.coachmatthewmitchell.
