Getting back to the high-performance manager, but sticking with the specifics of how to do things – let’s talk about meetings. We all hate that meeting request via email from certain people. They never start on time, they go over time, or frankly, they didn’t need to be a meeting in the first place. In your high-performance team, you will need to make sure every member of the team has a chance to have their input, but you also don’t want death by meeting. So, how do you get this done? In doing so at the end of this you will best understand how to get everyone on the same page while maximizing everyone’s time.
Time – the precious commodity
Your job essentially is trading time for money. University A pays you salary B for you to get job C done. However long it takes you to get the job done is your productivity number. The more time to get the same job done, the less effective you are; the same goes for meetings. You need to have everyone on the same page but you need to maximize your and everyone else’s time. So, how do you do this? First off, don’t schedule a meeting if one truly isn’t necessary. Here is the basic rule:
- Don’t meet over something that can be an email.
- Don’t email something that can be a text.
- Don’t text something that can be said in passing.
- Have an agenda and stick to it
- Start and end on time
- Zoom rules apply (less than 45 min)
Who needs to be there?
With this, less is more. Get the heads of the departments in the room, that’s it. Let them disseminate the information to their peers and subordinates. Remember, you are trying to get 5-6 people from different departments (different schedules) to be able to meet at a time that works for all. Adding more people only makes this harder.
For me here are the key stakeholders:
- Head athletic trainer
- Head sports performance coach
- Head of academics
- Head sport coach
- Director of operations
- Head Nutritionist
- Optional: Sport Administrator
That’s it. Let the head ATC relay the information from the primary care physician, orthopaedic surgeon, sports psychologist, chiropractor, and physical therapist. The performance coach can relay any information about sports science. With all these stakeholders in the room, everyone can talk about the well-being and health of the team they work with. Depending on the time of the year, travel can be discussed along with practice/training planning, meal/snack choices/timing, class/training time balance, and health updates. For me, this meeting occurs weekly on Monday at the start of a new week. Everyone comes to the meeting prepared to talk about their area, we keep the conversation moving and are able to discuss within 30 minutes.
When to go granular
There is a time and place for depth rather than breadth. This is when separate meetings throughout the week make sense. The same rules apply with starting/ending on time with an agenda; the only difference is fewer people in the room. This is where sub-sections within the high-performance team can talk more specifically about things.
The sports coach can talk with his/her assistants about practice design, the medical staff has their meetings with PCP, surgeon, chiro, and the performance coach meets with their staff & the sports scientists. There are also points in which departments need to overlap. For me, this is the in-season and occurs 24 hours post-game with the medical staff. After the game is complete, all players check in with and are evaluated by the ATC staff for any new injuries. I will meet with the ATC staff just over 24 hours post-game to discuss these new limitations with respect to the following day lift. This allows my staff to be prepared for any individualization that needs to occur in the weight room.
The next opportunity to get granular is with the whole medical staff. This meeting is more rehab based with check-ins on any long term rehab, post-op, or pre-op cases. In this meeting, the ATC staff, PT, and chiro will have their input with my staff. This is the opportunity to talk through each student athlete’s progress and exit criteria to the next phase of their return to play/performance design. The ATC will be communicating this information with the surgeon and PCP as their schedule is more difficult to manage mid-day. This meeting occurs weekly on Tuesday.
Off script
These examples are also in combination with the daily interactions among the members of the high-performance staff. If the only time you are meeting with your ATC, nutritionist, director of academics, ops guy, sports coach, etc… is at these high-performance meetings you are missing the point. Taken from the book “The Like Switch” by Jack Schafer, you need to be seen and associated with the people you work with in positive ways. You want them to like you – so the only time they see you can’t be when you are discussing business/work-related things. You need to find time to drop by and show some face time with them. 3-5 minutes spent this way can go miles when it comes to helping design things that need to be done to help the athletes. Additionally, it can help speed up those high-performance meetings.
Additionally, I’m assuming 99% of you reading this are performance coaches. The person you want to spend a ton of time with and build a great relationship with is your ATC. By constantly talking with them it will make sure you have the most up to date status and limitations.
Real example
So, what does an in-season, high-performance manager’s schedule actually look like with respect to meetings?
Saturday: Game
Sunday: post-game injury update with ATC
Monday: high-performance meeting with head athletic trainer, head sports performance coach, head of academics, head sport coach, Director of operations, and head Nutritionist
Tuesday: rehab meeting with medical staff
That’s it. By having these opportunities to sit down with each staff at these key times and bring qualitative and quantitative data we are able to meet frequently and briefly. None of the meetings last longer than 30 minutes and all members of the meeting have the freedom to talk.
What I haven’t mentioned is the fact that I have an office in the ATC room as well as the weight room. Having these 2 office locations forces collaboration with the S&C staff and with ATC staff. I am the bridge between my staff and the ATC staff. Additionally, we keep the GPS docking station located at my office in the ATC room. By doing so the ATC staff and I will communicate any up/downgrades from the prior day’s injury report while planning my during practice RTP work. Once practice is over and the GPS report is visible we talk about the day’s data and how the limited players did.
Structure
If you don’t work in American football, but have a team that competes only once per week follow this template
Game -1: post-game injury update with ATC
Game +5: High-Performance meeting
Game +4: Long term rehab meetings with sports medicine
Daily: updates on acute limitations with ATC
Say you work in a sport that has 2 or more competitions per week. Most of these sports will play back to back, if not they will have a low-level practice between. Chances are you won’t be lifting them between games so the Game -1 post-game injury update isn’t necessary. The realistic way of doing this is working off the last game of the weekend, series, or tournament. In doing so you can follow the same formation.
Final Game -1 post-game injury update with ATC
Final Game -2 High-Performance Meeting
Final Game -3 Long term rehab meeting with sports medicine. **if you are crunched for time, this meeting can be scheduled to follow the conclusion of the HPM with only the key medical personnel sticking around for the meeting.
Sport Coach
A key person in this whole equation is the sports coach. They will have lots going on in the season with the technical/tactical prep for the team. Therefore, make sure all your conversations with this key stakeholder are ones that can be related to. You do not need to try to impress them with acute/chronic verbiage. Talk in a way that they will understand. It is on you, the high-performance manager, to relay the information in a way that is easy to implement as a head coach. When doing this you are then able to help shape practice design based on any of the key variables from the GPS report.
Notice I said shape, yes performance coaches should have some input on practice design but unless the Athletic Director has told all the sports coaches that the Performance staff will design the workload for practice – the sports coach ultimately will be the one with the final say as to what happens at practice. Remember that book Like Factor – seems pretty big right now huh? You need the coach to know and like you to influence the practice design and guess what, you might need to let him/her have some influence on your world in order for you to have some influence on theirs.
Ending on time
So, to wrap this up, and hopefully make this worth your time – step back and look at your meeting schedule. Are you playing Tetris with meetings that last 3 hours per day? If so, smack yourself and fix it. Meeting length doesn’t equal meeting productivity. Find out what meetings you don’t need to be at, and which ones you do. Then figure out how to make them more efficient based on the recommendations. Once you have done that, you will keep everyone on the same page and free up more of your day to the things that only you can actually do.
