by Pete Carroll
Putting together a staff may be the most important part of any head coach’s job, and I have always enjoyed it. I am often asked what I look for when hiring coaches. The first thing I look at is a person’s competitiveness and work ethic. I also like to hire young and promote from within. There have been exceptions along the way, of course, but for the most part I would rather get someone who is open-minded and full of competitive fire, even if it comes at the expense of a certain amount of experience.
You can teach people how to coach football and the nuances of the game. It is no secret, after all, that I have basically been running the same defense I learned from Monte Kiffin in the 1970s—and who knows how long he had been running it before then. Specific plays aren’t what made all those USC victories, and they aren’t necessarily what are going to power the Seahawks. Perhaps the most powerful weapon in the Win Forever philosophy is the drive to constantly be looking for ways to improve. That mentality makes a huge difference when I’m looking to hire coaches for my staff.
The other critical factor we look for when hiring new coaches is their willingness and ability to grow. Leadership development is critical in any organization. One person at the top simply can’t do everything that needs to be done. You need a head coach who has the ultimate authority and responsibility, but his job is a lot more fun and the team is a lot stronger if he has other smart, capable leaders around him. And it is his job to develop them.
If a leader is clear and consistent about his philosophy’s core values, it frees everyone up to do their best. It frees the top leadership to treat its middle managers in a whole new way. When everyone understands the vision, the goals, and the overall system, they don’t need the top boss always telling them what to do. They can figure it out for themselves. And for the middle managers, this means that instead of being mere instruments for relaying instructions delivered from on high, they can get creative and share their own ideas. Once they have the chance to find their own voices, their identity is now at the forefront. The door then opens to competing not merely for the next promotion but to maximize their own potential. Imagine how much energy this generates. When everyone gets to contribute his maximum effort, it is transformative for the whole organization.
In Los Angeles, there is plenty of glory as well as scrutiny surrounding the USC program; most of that attention is focused on the players and head coach. It is intensified by the fact that there is a huge media market with no NFL franchise for fans to focus on. However, it was the assistant coaches who were the unsung heroes of our team.
Our coaching staff was the heartbeat of our program for nine years. The ultimate responsibility stopped with me, but it was their constant contact with the players that provided the leadership, set the tone, and carried the message to our team. They did all this with a level of enthusiasm, competition, and ownership that generated excitement and drive.
Inevitably in sports—and in business as well—you hear a lot of talk about star players and the leadership they provide, as if their position coaches were somehow merely support staff. Most coaches think that leadership comes from the players, but I don’t see it that way. The leadership that I count on most comes from our coaches.
Developing leadership in players is instrumental on any team, but it is not always something that you can depend on, especially at the high school or college level. You want to compete with people you can trust to lead and those are my coaches. Our efforts to win are based on our ability to control every aspect of our team environment, from energy to focus to camaraderie. When the team’s natural chemistry takes the form we want, that’s an added advantage we’re happy to have, but we cannot afford to hang our success on the hope that this will happen. A player, however talented, may have a bad day. Something may have happened in his family, or he may be under the weather or down on himself for a variety of reasons. Leadership the team can depend on must be consistent and stable to be most effective. The only leadership that I can really rely on is that which comes from our coaching staff. The coaches are constantly nurturing our players’ abilities to serve as part of the team’s leadership. But it is the coaches that I hold accountable. You can try to position and promote players in ways that make them leaders, but I don’t want to rely on them when it comes to winning or losing. I have chosen to rely on our staff first and foremost.
Just as our football players do everything to prepare for practice, our coaches do the same. For instance, there’s a staff meeting I like to have with all of my position coaches before the start of spring practice. At the meeting, they are asked to deliver to the entire staff the speech they are going to give at their first players’ meeting. I’ve always thought it’s really important to have a great first meeting with each position group, so at USC we came up with a way to practice that. I made it clear that I put a lot of value on these meetings, so the guys spent a lot of time preparing their speeches before we all got together.
At the conclusion of each person’s presentation, the rest of the staff critiqued it and offered coaching on content, delivery, props, performance, anything else we noticed that could help him do a better job. We filmed each presentation for him to be able to review, just as a player reviews his practice film. The two major areas we critiqued were how true each coach was to the approach of the program, and how authentic he was to his own personality and style. As long as the coaches satisfied these two criteria, they were encouraged to be as creative and entertaining in their delivery as they could. Invariably, the coaches who exuded the most passion and sincerity had the best results.
These coaches were tough, competitive guys, so it wasn’t always easy for them to be evaluated in front of their peers like that. The fact that we did it showed how committed we were to improving and how seriously we took that effort. It was a very productive exercise for a couple of reasons. For one thing, they usually got a lot of good tips and suggestions from the other coaches. For another, it let them see how their colleagues operated, and also just how impressive, and how different from one another they really were.
Some had elaborate PowerPoint presentations to go with their speeches, and some worked off notes written on crumpled pieces of paper that they pulled out of their back pockets. Some were loud and boisterous, using colorful language, while others were more reserved and businesslike. But no matter the style of their presentations, each coach seemed to capture the room’s attention and delivered his speech in his own unique way.
Whether in football or in business, there is so much more room for personal style and expression than many people realize. Whatever the context, not taking advantage of that may be a huge missed opportunity to involve people on a deeper, more competitive, and ultimately higher-performing level. How can an organization expect to maximize its overall potential if its people up and down the ladder don’t have the chance to contribute in a way that taps into their ability as individuals? What if managers and bosses thought of themselves as coaches instead? What if leaders in other professions saw their jobs not just in terms of getting the most production out of their people, but in terms of teaching their workers to become the best they can be?
The flip side of hiring a coaching staff made up of great competitors with strong voices of their own is that sooner or later they’re going to move on. And often it is sooner. High turnover rates are something I have learned to not only accept but embrace. At USC our staff was composed of mostly young, ambitious coaches who were in the process of building great careers. I was eager for them to do well. It is one of the things that make a Win Forever organization dynamic. So rather than expecting loyalty from my coaches, I found that I got all the loyalty I could ask for by supporting them and advancing their careers.
Of course, sometimes loyalty goes even further than that. I was lucky enough to have my son Brennan on our staff for several years. He started as a graduate assistant and eventually moved on to become a full-time coach and recruiting coordinator. He joined the staff at the start of my second year, a
nd the experience ended up being beneficial to both of us. Brennan grew up with football but had never planned on being a coach. Transitioning into this new opportunity, though, I really felt I needed the voice of someone so close to me whom I could trust, so he agreed to come on board. Brennan has always had a high-spirited, smart personality, so I knew exactly what we’d be getting—a loyal competitor with a strong work ethic. And he was a real asset for us. There’s nothing more exciting than to compete at a high level alongside a member of your family. I don’t know how many people get to do that. At the same time, with Brennan there I felt like there was always someone who was watching out for me. He always shot straight with me, and I really respect him and am grateful for his commitment. Without him it would never have been the same.
Not all new coaches are going to know me that well, however, so I make every effort to ensure that the coaches understand where I am coming from. Even from the first conversations with prospective coaches, I make sure they know that I am invested in their long-term success and that I will do everything I can so that they can get the job of their dreams. So while I am their “boss,” I am cognizant of being their “coach” as well. Getting involved in their careers beyond the team is one way for me to do that. I talk to our staff about their long-term career ambitions on a regular basis, and we even go so far as to stage mock interviews for the types of positions they’re hoping for down the road.
I believe that our coaches should get everything that they want out of their association with our program, and I’ll work with them to accomplish that. I want that understood before they even come on board and that’s the opportunity they’ll have with us.
Not that all of this is self-sacrificing—far from it. There are several competitive benefits to our approach to staff attrition. I want to create an atmosphere that is beneficial to the coaches who come through our doors and when someone leaves, we have other applicants competing to fill the job. Everyone wins in that scenario. For the same reasons great players come to USC in hopes of being drafted into the NFL, coaches come to USC knowing that they could one day be in the running for coordinator and head coaching jobs in the college or professional ranks.
Sometimes we would lose a great player after his third season; sometimes a coach would get a great offer and leave us sooner than we would have liked. These are just facts of life in our world, and since we can’t change them we look for ways to make them work for us. I always try to look at this as an opportunity: When a player leaves, that creates an opportunity for the next guy, and the same goes for our coaching staff. We always want to have people in reserve ready to step in as openings arise.
This element of a Win Forever program is a simple truth about the nature of competition. We’re only going to Win Forever if we can build a staff of people who are constantly competing to reach their full potential—and part of that is the pursuit of their own career ambitions. As we are constantly saying, you’re either competing or you’re not, but how that competitive thought takes shape is unique to each person.
Due to the hours we work, and the commitment and goals we share, a Win Forever organization is a very tight community. Our success depends on every one of us being willing to sacrifice parts of ourselves to the shared effort. That only works when we trust one another completely, and once that level of trust is in place, it’s worth a lot to keep it there. No matter how professional a coach may be, if he feels like he is being stifled or not being treated fairly in the program, it is likely to challenge his ability to perform.
For all these reasons, I want our guys to know that we believe in them, and I want to show them how far we will go to stand by them. When I do that, I get it back many times over in the long run. In my own career, there have been a couple of times when teams I worked for said they would support me when the time came but didn’t. I’ve never forgotten that, and I don’t want my guys ever to feel that way.
One such experience came in the late 1980s when I was coaching the defensive backs at the Minnesota Vikings. I had been there for several years, when a similar position opened up in San Francisco. Although I was technically still under contract, we had always been told that whenever we wanted to go somewhere else, we would get permission to leave. But when I went to the head coach, he told me that he didn’t think it was the right job for me and that my career would be better off where I was. When I pressed, explaining that I wanted to find out more about the job—among other reasons, because it was a chance to go back to my hometown—he flat-out refused to let me go.
The next year, going into my last contract year in Minnesota, the general manager offered a bonus of ten thousand dollars to anyone who signed a two-year deal, as long as the team made it to the play-offs that season. At the time I wasn’t making a big-time salary, so that was really a lot of money. Even so, I was still upset over the previous year and decided that no amount of money was worth giving up my free agency.
Sure enough, we made the play-offs that year by winning our final game against Cincinnati, and as we were sitting in the coaches’ box watching the clock run down, Monte leaned over to me with a piece of paper in his hand with “$10,000” written on it. He crossed the figure out and then handed it to me as a joke. I actually laughed pretty hard at the time as I said, “Thanks, Monte.” While I was not happy being out the money, I did have my freedom. At the end of the season, I received an offer to become the New York Jets defensive coordinator, and I was gone. It’s not as if I made any enemies over the incident, but the whole thing left me with a sense of how I would run things if I ever got the chance. Obviously, I was learning that having the freedom to weigh my options was more important to me than money or a sense of security.
In Seattle, as at USC, I want everyone to know that we want them to realize their dreams. I want people who will fight for us because they know we’ll fight for them. The idea of holding someone back just because they can help us in the short term is not only totally contrary to the spirit of our philosophy, it’s self-defeating. I want everyone in our organization to maximize their potential, and I’ll compete as hard as I can to make that happen.
13
COACHES ARE TEACHERS
We live in a society that celebrates executives, coaches, and other “leaders” yet doesn’t put a very high value on teaching as a profession. But any successful leader will tell you that leading and teaching go hand in hand. In Win Forever terms, you really can’t be a leader if you’re not a great teacher.
It will be no surprise by now when I say that, like everything else in my life, I approach teaching as a competition. As a coach, I am competing to teach each player as effectively as I possibly can, so that he can become the best possible player for our team.
A coach’s job is to build winning teams, and we use everything at our disposal to get that done. That’s why I’ve never understood why so many coaches take a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to their leadership style. The way I see it, if it were that easy everyone would be able to do it, and being a great coach and leader would no longer be a competitive lifestyle.
What many people fail to realize is that flexible and open communication is an incredibly powerful leadership tool. It is through effective communication that we are able to reach the ultimate goal of helping others perform at their very best. To Win Forever as an organization, we must find a way to approach each unique individual in a manner that maximizes his or her potential.
I have seen firsthand so many situations where the coach and his athlete just couldn’t communicate and the relationship faltered. To me, failure to communicate is unacceptable for a parent, a coach, or a leader. It is easy to get frustrated when we see someone we are responsible for fail to make progress, and especially frustrating when we see a lack of effort. As parents, it is our responsibility to find avenues to communicate with our children, and it’s the same for a coach or leader. We are the ones in charge, and we must accept the accountability associated with that. We are the ones with some
thing to communicate, so it is up to us to figure out how to communicate it effectively to the person we want to learn it. As parents and coaches, it is up to us to compete to find ways to connect with our children and players.
One of the most important principles in our approach to being effective teachers is to strive to develop a deep understanding of each individual student or player. Every player in our program is a unique individual from a specific background, and before we can effectively reach and connect with him we must develop a relationship. Then we must formulate an approach that will enable the teaching and learning process. Therefore, one of the coaching mantras around our program at USC and now in Seattle is to “learn your learner.”
The competitive environment we operate in as coaches demands that we be extraordinary teachers. We have no choice but to go to great lengths to uncover the most effective ways to get to know our players. One of the most obvious but productive methods is through consistent and watchful observation. We can glean a wealth of information by paying close attention to the actions, mannerisms, and traits of our players. By taking note of the clothes they wear, the hairstyles they choose, their personal interests, and the people they choose to hang out with, we get mountains of information. For example, when players arrived at USC, our academic support group would begin formal and informal diagnostics for learning styles and aptitudes. We shared and exchanged information to create a profile that would accurately direct our efforts to teach each player successfully.
