Ownership and Accountability

Many times in the world of athletics we interchange the terms ownership and accountability. For example, “taking ownership over your actions” can be determined to be the same as “taking accountability for your actions.” Both are valid things to have in a program. But, what if we didn’t need the term accountability at all? What if we didn’t need to hold each other accountable? Wouldn’t the world, and our own individual worlds, be a much easier place to live?
We rarely use the word accountability. In our program, and lessons, we use ownership instead. If you, as an athlete, if you take ownership over an action, thought, experience, mistake, etcetera, and then you would never need to be held accountable by someone else. Whether that someone else is a coach, teammate, parent, teacher, the list goes on and on. If we, as a collective team, struggle at practice what is the conversation like at the end of practice? Is it the coach telling the players what they need to do better tomorrow, or the players telling each other what they as individuals, and a whole, can do better to help the team? 


After games, what does your post game meeting look like? Whether a great game, an okay one, or a terrible one our post game meetings take virtually the same shape. First, we talk about the positive points and build each other up, whether it was getting a bunt down, solid defense, whatever it might have been that day. Then, we take ownership over what went wrong. As coaches we set the tone for what we expect from our athletes. Whether it was that we could have used more small ball, adjusted our outfielders better, whatever it may be on that certain day. The expectation is then that the athletes also take ownership, whether they could have supported each other more, communicated better, executed plays better, whatever it may be on that day. When interacting with your teammates, you take ownership over the program which in turn means that you hold each other accountable to the standards that we as a group have set.


In the beginning of my career I always talked about accountability, and how as a coach I hold my athletes accountable to the standards of the program or my lesson expectations. At the end of the day, whether an hour lesson or a three hour practice, the athletes leave. After they leave, I no longer have the control to hold them accountable. It was a little like being the parent who holds on too tightly (I am not a parent, nor am trying to judge parents!). The more I tried to hold players accountable the less they wanted to take ownership. After switching to an ownership based model, I feel that I get more out of my athletes, and that they get more out of each other. This applies to both my college athletes as well as the youth athletes I work with.


Most programs operate on a mix of the two, and I’d be lying if I said mine didn’t as well. Especially due to the fact that I am a new leader to my program this year, I am teaching and implementing a new culture. As we set a culture, standards, and goals my players are reminding each other and supporting each other as we navigate through the fall.
I watched an interview with Patty Gasso after Oklahoma has just won back to back WCWS Championships. The thing that sticks with me to this day pertaining to the interview was that she talked about how they were always a solid program. Yet, they became great when their players started telling them what their culture, standards, and goals were rather than the coaches telling the players. A player driven culture, while difficult to create, makes all the difference.