Leadership Lessons from the Carolina Leadership Academy-Jeff Jannsen

The groundbreaking Carolina Leadership Academy has proven to be a tremendous win/win/win experience for student-athletes, coaches, and administrators. Here are some important lessons we have learned at Carolina that you can use as you look to build a program at your school.

1. Captains and Coaches Must Create a Leadership Team

If you want your leaders to be an extension of you, you must extend yourself to them. Coaches and captains must work together to forge a formidable leadership team to truly be effective. You must invest the time to teach your captains what it means to be a leader, help them understand your philosophy, and how to hold their teammates accountable. Invest the time on a regular basis to communicate with your captains so that you are all on the same page. The vast majority of captains in all sports want their coaches to invest more time with them.

2. Evaluation and Feedback are Critical for
    Development and Measurement

You must help your captains gain a better understanding of themselves as leaders. Invest the time to have them evaluate their leadership strengths and areas to improve using the Team Leadership Evaluation.

Most captains (74%) have an inflated view of their leadership skills. Thus, it is critical that you provide them with feedback from yourself as a coach as well as their teammates. By helping captains have a more objective view of their leadership, you can focus them on maximizing their strengths and shoring up their areas to improve.

With this systematic approach to leadership, we found that 96% of the student-athletes who graduated from the Carolina Leadership Academy rated themselves as better leaders following the program. Similarly, 88% of the coaches also rated their captains as better leaders following their training in the Academy.

3. Athletic Administrators Need to Champion and
    Model the Cause

Without question, one of the biggest keys to the Carolina Leadership Academy is that it was initiated, embraced, and reinforced from the top down. UNC athletic director Dick Baddour envisioned developing a state of the art leadership program and has been an active and visible champion of the program from day one. His strong support sends a clear message to everyone in the department how important the leadership initiative is for everyone. Further, by targeting all levels of the athletic department (student-athletes, coaches, and staff) a common language and understanding of leadership permeates the department. Leadership is now being discussed and modeled on all levels.