Sarah Depperschmidt

John Sumrall says culture is very simple, it’s what you encourage + what you tolerate “I’m very simple in how I define culture. It’s a combination of what you promote or encourage, added up with what you tolerate and allow. So what behaviors do you reinforce through encouragement and really spur on, or what things do you allow? It’s a whole lot harder to build the culture the way you want it than it is for it to get torn down.” “It takes more time to build it than it does for it to deteriorate. And so what I mean by that is, man, it’s the standards you have every day within your building.” “If we say Gator time is 10 minutes early to all meetings, is that nine minutes or is that 10 minutes?” “If we say you have to have your breakfast check-in at a certain time on our early morning practice days, like you have to be here by 6:30am and have eaten breakfast, is that 6:30am or is that 6:31am? What’s cool? What’s allowable? Because as soon as 6:31am becomes fine, you know what else becomes fine? 6:32am and 6:33am. Everything matters. And I’ll tell you this too: I think you have to coach your best players the hardest.” “Jaden Ball gets coached harder by me than anybody on our team because he’s a pretty good football player. I’m going to be as hard on him as anybody because he’s the guy that has the most to gain by us making him do everything the right way. Because he’s already a special player. How do we take him to the next level?” “And so I just think as you’re building the culture, you’re really trying to make sure guys are saying, ‘Hey, we just want you to be the best you can be. We love you. We care about you. And we’re going to do everything we can in our power to help you become your best.’”

Nick Saban says his mother taught him the mindset that eventually shaped Alabama’s dynasty, it’s not about beating the other guy, the competition is always you “Accountability was really important. If you had a job to do and you didn’t do it exactly right, you were going to do it over again. So you learned how to be accountable. One thing my parents always emphasized was it wasn’t about winning or beating the other guy. It was about, did you do it as well as you were capable of doing it?” “We won 30 games in a row when I was in high school and won a state championship, and that was never good enough. I asked my mom once, ‘Why is it never good enough?’ She said, ‘It’s not about winning the game. It’s not about beating the other guy. It’s about: did you do it as well as you’re capable of doing it?’” “So that makes you kind of a perfectionist, because the competition is always you. It’s always you.” “The other thing that instilled in me was I never had what I call relief syndrome. It’s kind of human nature that if you do something of significance, you think you’re supposed to be able to rest on your laurels.” “Players would win a big game and say, ‘Can we have Monday off practice? We get rewarded for winning this big game.’ Well, I’m thinking about how we’re going to win the next game. Did we play well enough in that game to win the next game, and what do we need to improve on?” “You can never be perfect, but you’re always trying to close the gap on perfect. I think great competitors, whether it’s Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, those guys could always take the next challenge. It didn’t matter how much they won or what they did.” Pasted text

Sean McVay says he has one question he believes every coach should regularly ask themselves, would you want to be coached by you “My advice to coaches is simply be reminded by asking this question to yourself: Would you want to be coached by you? That’s one of those things that you can ask yourself to kind of keep you on track.” “For coaches, it’s like, ‘Would you want to be coached by you?’ And really, I think for players too: ‘Would you want to be your teammate?’” “If that’s the perspective, you can say, ‘All right, am I doing things that, if you’re really doing it at a high level as a coach, make this a powerful platform to have?’ Or to be a teammate in a leadership role.” “I think the best leaders, they impact and influence positive change while also knowing that they’re human too. Give yourself some grace in the midst of the journey.” “But for coaches, the appropriate perspective is: Would you want to be coached by you?”

Nick Saban says one of the biggest mistakes leaders make when their environment changes is sitting around complaining about the new rules, and says his philosophy was that complaining is actually a distraction to the solution, so you should always spend that energy figuring out how to adapt “You have to be flexible, number one. If you’re flexible, then you have a willingness to adapt. And I think your willingness to adapt is really, really important because things are changing.” “There’s a lot of changes that are ongoing that you have to adapt to. And I think that rather than complain about it, which a lot of people sit around and complain…” “Complaining is actually a distraction to the solution. I think that you’ve got to spend most of your time trying to figure out, ‘What is the solution? How can we adapt?’” “That’s the way we’ve tried to look at all these challenges, to try to improve the quality of the program that we have.”