How can you inspire your emerging and existing leaders to improve their leadership skills?

Here's an innovative idea we use with the Carolina Leadership to motivate our leaders to be at their best.

There's a popular saying in the business world that says, "That which gets measured, gets done." It's equally applicable to the sports world and certainly to developing better leaders.

Because leadership is such an important intangible factor, we too must measure it if we want to improve it.

TEAM LEADERSHIP EVALUATION

The tool we use with our Leadership Academies is the Team Leadership Evaluation. You can find it linked below and a copy is also available in the Team Captain's Leadership Manual.

http://www.teamcaptainsnetwork.com/public/department62.cfm

The 24-item Team Leadership Evaluation provides leaders and coaches with a reliable way to effectively measure how well a leader leads both herself and others.

It allows leaders and their coaches to effectively gauge the captain's strengths and areas to improve. Some coaches will even use the Evaluation to help select their team captains because it provides a more comprehensive and objective measure and helps avoid the popularity contest problem when the team votes.

With our Leadership Academies, we not only use the tools to help develop our leaders, we also use them to acknowledge our top leaders.

TAR HEEL LEADERS OF DISTINCTION

Much like posting school records in the gym or the weight room, we have created a special wall of fame to honor our top leaders at Carolina. As you can see pictured above, we call it our Tar Heel Leaders of Distinction.

To be honored, a student-athlete must have at least a 105 or above on the averages of their leadership evaluations from their teammates and coaches - and their self score. In essence, the person has earned respect across three dimensions - teammate respect, coach respect, and self respect. We therefore call leaders who achieve this level Three Dimensional Leaders, or 3DLs for short.

The 105 average scores for the 3DL level is a challenging yet attainable level - typically anywhere between 10-20% of our leaders achieve these scores. For those who do, the high marks prove the leader has earned a high level of respect from their teammates and coaches for their leadership.

In addition to being honored on our Tar Heel Leaders of Distinction wall, we also have a teammate talk about what the 3DL's leadership meant to the team at our end of the year recognition dinner. These special tributes can get emotional at times as teammates remind their captains how priceless their leadership has been to the program. Finally, the 3DL honorees receive a trophy and are also recognized at halftime of a men's basketball game. See article below:

http://tarheelblue.cstv.com/genrel/012707aac.html

BENEFITS OF RECOGNIZING YOUR TOP LEADERS

Our 3DL honorees have also told us that the award is often a main topic of discussion when they have job interviews with potential employers. Earning the award sends a clear signal to employers that this person is highly respected by peers and coaches - and makes them a highly attractive candidate.

By recognizing the top student-athlete leaders in the department, we communicate to them how valuable their leadership is to the program and how much we appreciate their efforts. This special recognition has an added bonus as it inspires emerging leaders to improve their leadership skills to the 3DL level.

Seeing the pictures of past great leaders on the Tar Heel Leaders of Distinction wall, we have many younger leaders who tell us one of their biggest goals at UNC is to achieve 3DL status before their college career is over.

Thus, they are highly motivated to improve their leadership skills so that they can earn the respect of their coaches and teammates. As Napoleon once said, "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."

Our number of 3DL award winners would bear this out as they have increased from 9 two years ago, to 16 last year, to 21 and counting this year. The objective standard of 105 has remained the same, but fortunately our numbers are increasing, showing the significance of the honor.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN FOR YOU?

You too can use this idea to effectively reward your current leaders, pay tribute to your past leaders, and inspire your aspiring leaders.

You could either create a special honor for leadership within your team - or talk with your AD and expand it to include all the teams in your athletic department and create your own Leadership Wall of Fame.

Whatever the case, I do encourage you to invest the time to create an award to acknowledge and celebrate your exemplary leaders.

Not only is a great recognition for them for all the hard work they invest in your program, but it also serves as a great source of inspiration for your future leaders.

Harness the power of recognition and positive exemplars and make it work for you and your team!