Ron Adams: Joy, Mindfulness, Competition

Welcome to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter.

Every month, we share new podcast episodes featuring interviews with Great Coaches from across the world of sports. Our interviews delve deep into the careers and leadership of our guests, seeking new insights to help us all lead our teams, communities and families better.

We also frequently share additional content and insight from our interviews across our social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Youtube, and TikTok. You can learn more about The Great Coaches, follow our channels and explore our website from our new Linktree page.

Building People With Ron Adams

With over five decades of coaching experience under his belt, there’s not much that this week’s guest hasn’t seen. Ron Adams is a basketball coach who has worked with some of the NBA’s biggest teams, as well as several university teams and a pro team in Belgium. Over the years, he’s picked up some fantastic insights into what it takes to lead a successful team, and he brought all of that knowledge and experience to this week’s interview.

Listeners will hear Ron speak about the importance — and difficulty — of discernment; he believes that discerning properly is one of the hardest things that a Head Coach can do, and as a result he has carved a career out of helping them see truth. Experience has taught him that everyone needs a coach — something that he believes can become an invaluable growth experience.

We also talk about the values of the Golden State Warriors, and their three core tenets: joy, mindfulness, and competition. These values have had an eye-opening impact on Ron, who has seen them not only improve performance, but also allow team culture to bend, rather than break.

Ron’s career has also taught him a lot about understanding the needs of your audience, especially when it comes to addressing their doubts. This is something that many of you will have to do in your own positions, and his words on framing messages in a way that helps others to believe more in theirselves and their own abilities will no doubt resonate.

In fact, people-building is something that Ron’s own philosophy really centres on. He combines his observation skills and his own background growing up in an agricultural setting to help him with this, and he’s a firm believer that a coach’s greatest resource is the team sitting in front of them. By melding the viewpoints of his team members with what he considers to be important, Ron always seeks to end up with a plan that benefits both the individual and the team — a fantastic skill that leaders and coaches across the worlds of both sports and business can utilise.

Finally, I’d like to highlight Ron’s words on filial love, and how he builds a foundation for it through trust and accountability. He speaks about the need to “dress truth up” in order for it to be acknowledged, and stresses the merit of establishing a degree of loyalty and affection as a way of binding teams together. It’s a great idea to consider, and will no doubt be of value to those of you seeking to strengthen the bonds that exist (or perhaps lack) within your own team environments.

Listen Now: Apple | Spotify

Questions For Reflection

• What support do you have to help you discern well?

• What role does joy play in your organisation?

• To what extent does fealty exist within your team?

• How do you involve your team in setting group priorities?

This Week’s Guest

Ron Adams is a basketball coach from California, USA. His coaching career began in 1969 as an Assistant with Fresno Pacific College, followed by several years of honing his craft with various universities and a stint in Belgium.

As of 1992, Ron has worked in the NBA, acting as an Assistant for San Antonio, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Boston, and now Golden State. Altogether, his teams have reached the postseason 17 times, including four finals and four championships during his time with Golden State.

On Building Families

In each issue of the Great Coaches newsletter we share a different short lesson on leadership, inspired by the insights and ideas shared by our podcast guests.

This week’s guest, basketball coach Ron Adams, spoke on the topic of filial love and creating bonds within his teams. This is something that can be incredibly difficult to do; while many companies and teams refer to themselves as “a family”, there’s a lot more to the process than holding team-bonding events and encouraging mutual care.

In this great clip from one of our past interviews with another basketball coach, Mike Thibault, he reminds us all that familial connections are the result of daily action. That every single shared experience — whether that be training, travelling, or anything else — presents an opportunity for building bonds and forming unity.

Families aren’t just groups of people who like each other, or people connected by blood or title. Families are built on trust, love, and shared difficulties. Families weather storms together, support each other when one person is struggling, and treat one person’s victory as a success for the entire group. If you’re looking to build a ‘family’ out of your team, then you’ll need to employ a lot more than ice breakers and pair work during practices.

Make sure to listen to this week’s podcast to find out how Ron Adams achieves it.

Looking for more inspiration? Our workshops and events deliver the insights of the Great Coaches straight to your team. They’re also tailored to the topics and issues that most impact you and your organisation, helping to boost engagement and encourage your team members to develop and build on the skills necessary for success.

For more information, get in touch today: [email protected]

Steve Kerr on Leadership

If you have some time this weekend after listening to our podcast, then I highly recommend watching this great video from ESPN on Youtube.

Steve Kerr is the Head Coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors — the team this week’s guest Ron Adams coaches as an Assistant — and in this great video he joins the team’s manager, Bob Myers, to discuss coaching, fearlessness, and the impact of his job on his family life.

It’s a great interview, and a brilliant accompaniment to our own podcast episode with Ron; another perspective on what it takes to coach a successful team.

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