Contrary to common belief, leaders CAN be made. Yes, some may be born with a stronger inclination to lead than others, but leadership is learnable. There are numerous examples of NBA stars that came into the league ill-equipped to assume a leadership role on their team but eventually grew to become incredible leaders for their teammates. Most notably, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant developed their interpersonal skills in particular over the course of many years before gaining the respect of their teammates as ultimate team leaders capable of pushing their teams to win at the highest level. The road to becoming an ultimate leader is a rocky one and presents many challenges along the way. D.I.M.E. leadership is an easy-to-memorize acronym to help promising, aspiring, and established team leaders remember and execute crucial components of leadership consistently. In essence, it makes the road to becoming a great leader less bumpy and windy and provides DIRECTION!
The D.I.M.E. acronym stands for… Distribute Information, Motivation, and Energy!
Great leaders do all of the above every single day, every single practice, every single game! Coaches, you should reiterate the importance of D.I.M.E. Leadership verbally and in writing (e.g., locker room posters, personalized notes for players) at every opportunity so the acronym becomes a commonly used word in every player’s vocabulary. Most importantly, challenge your players with tangible goals in each area, consistent with these examples:
- Distribute Information to your teammates by breaking down three plays for your new teammates after every pre-season practice to speed up their learning curve.
- Distribute Motivation by sharing a powerful statistic with your teammates once a week, e.g. “Conference opponent X won 70% of available lose balls in their games last season. Let’s beat that standard by doing _________ as a team.”
- Distribute Energy by giving at least 100 positive physical touches (high fives, pats on the back) to your teammates per practice and making this form of communication contagious.
The more specific and measurable the goals, the more effectively your players will follow the D.I.M.E. leadership principles and the more your team will benefit in the win column in the long run. As John C. Maxwell once said “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” So point your players in the right direction…