December 22, 2011

Diary Series: Brian Earl, Asst. Coach - Princeton

Prior to becoming an assistant coach at Princeton in 2007, I worked for the student loan company Sallie Mae for four years.  My primary responsibility was to persuade college financial aid reps to offer their students Sallie Mae loans.  As part of the job, I was required to attend continuing education courses to improve my sales skills. We were tutored in the most effective way to convince our customers to go with Sallie Mae.

These sales training sessions focused on identifying my personality type. Four social styles were identified:  drivers (results oriented, controlling, forceful), analytical (practical and detail oriented), amiable (warm, cooperative), and expressive (outgoing, enthusiastic). While drivers and analyticals were generally motivated by results and individual achievements, social interaction and peer acceptance drove the amiables and expressives. As a salesperson, you must alter your social style to mirror that of the person with whom you are negotiating, in order to build a connection and close the deal.

I was identified as a driver - I imagine most coaches are. My strength was communicating with another driver who appreciated a concise meeting that outlined the benefits of my proposal.  My major weakness was an inability and unwillingness to adapt to the amiable and expressive styles. Some customers preferred longer conversations and building rapport. It’s not that I don’t like hanging out with people: my friends like me, at least I think they do.  But at work, I had a bias towards just getting to the point.

These training sessions were invaluable. I reluctantly agreed to work on my weaknesses. In one case, I completely went against my instincts and built a more personal relationship with two amiable financial aid administrators who felt neglected by their previous reps. The result: I landed my biggest account.

What does this all have to do with coaching? This experience helped me understand players better than I would have if I had just jumped into coaching following my playing career.  The coach’s job is to “sell” his players on practicing as hard as they can everyday.  As I mentioned before, most coaches fall into the category of driver. But not all players are drivers, and this can cause major conflict between a driver coach and an amiable or expressive player. 

So I’m more aware of personality differences, and adjust my coaching style to fit the traits of my players.  Motivating a player to improve is the single most important aspect of coaching.  A comment like “you may not be good enough to make a shot like that” will get under the skin of a player who is driver: he’ll do everything possible to prove you wrong.  But I have seen the same comment backfire on a player who isn’t motivated by personal achievement.  A more effective comment for a player like that may be, “you are letting your teammates down by not practicing that shot.”

The beauty of coaching is that you must incorporate lessons from so many different fields: psychology, management, and in my case, salesmanship. You never know when you might learn something that wins you an extra game down the road.

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