Form, Storm, Norm, Perform

By Matt Gittermann, Head Cross Country/Assistant Track & Field Coach

In less than two weeks the first wave of the UMBC Cross Country and Track & Field teams will return to campus to begin the 2013-2014 school year, a mere few months removed from arguably the most successful in school’s history. Over the next couple weeks we will try to take a look back at what made last year so great historically, take a closer look at this year, while at the same time looking forward to the great promise and unknown that the relative near future holds. 

For me personally, this year has me more excited than any other year I have entered into (no disrespect to the other years and those transcendent athletes during that time period). Six years ago, right around this time, Coach David Bobb and Dr. Charlie Brown gave me an opportunity to take over and rebuild a Division I distance program having only had five years of coaching experience at the high school level and a mediocre college running career. In the span of a week I had to tell my current high school team I was leaving knowing they were going to win a state title, tell an established college team “surprise, I’m your new coach”, get married that weekend, start teaching again at my high school that Monday, then take eighteen kids I had never met to pre-season cross country camp that Thursday. It was a time of high nerves and stepping into a realm I knew very little about. 

Reflecting back on that first year, given a second opportunity, there is not much I would have done the same. There was a large amount of discord and apathy with the team I was inheriting since they had just started the year with their fourth coach in three years, with very little accountability during the final part of that span. And in their eyes, and rightfully so, here was a twenty-eight year coach who didn’t know them wanting to change the culture drastically. And we’re not even going to go into all the other stuff like recruiting and administration that I had to learn on the fly. 

Over the course of that year and the ones that followed, I learned a lot about the importance of culture and norms within a system, company, or group. Usually I am not one for corporate culture initiatives, but it followed the old, “form, storm, norm, perform” axiom to the “t” (for those lucky enough not to have to sit through the seminar, enjoy):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman’s_stages_of_group_development

The first four weeks were classic “form”, a lot of trying to ease myself into the trust of the athletes and feeling out collegiate coaching while the athletes were figuring out a new set of expectations from yet another coach. Then by the second meet at Navy, one month into the season, we went into full out “storm” mode for pretty much the next year and half. During that time frame we had a few athlete not bother to train coming into the season, an athlete transferred, a couple tough talks with athletes who didn’t have the talent to continue at the Division 1 level, and a rough time recruiting because we did not have a culture to sell to prospective student athletes. While we managed to have sporadic success here and there in year two (I had my first conference champion, school record performances, and first batch of IC4A/ECAC qualifiers) the group would shoot themselves in the collective foot and we would be right back where we started before we really accomplishing anything.

Entering year three I was able to begin to implement a basic version or beta version of the cultural “norms” that I had hoped to, mostly by elimination/subtraction of the old, and a large influx of new members (current seniors). And with that came the first bits of the “perform” stage that we had been hoping for. However, at that point we were still missing an identity, a foundation upon which all the values and expectations could be built upon. And without that, we had nothing to fall back upon during harder times. 

Unfortunately that was quickly followed by another “storm” stage in the beginning of year four, before we were able to right the ship in the second half of the year. We ended that year with a good string of successes at the outdoor conference meet, which allowed us to meet as a team and reflect on the year. It was at point that we looked at what we needed to do and how we needed to do it. It was very much one of those moments when you had to decide whether you were on board with the new direction we were going, or your not, no in between or gray areas. As expected, when a group shifts in a new direction, and a higher level of accountability is required, there were some casualties. 

The best indication of the “perform” stage, when you reach it, is that success shifts from sporadic to consistent, motivation shifts from externally for the whole group to internally in each individual, the buy-in factor begins to near 100%, and leadership and accountability comes from the group, not from the coach. For the most part, you as the coach have been relegated at best to the role of facilitator and when things get rolling, you are simply a witness. That was year five. The expectations were clear and the athletes just took them and both literally and figuratively “ran with them”. 

It’s that culture that we have entering into my sixth year. An interesting aspect of the development of a culture, is that once athletes start buying in, it doesn’t grow linearly, it grows exponentially. There is an expectation of success and going above beyond what is asked. There is a culture where athletes hold themselves personally accountable, hold their teammates accountable, and reach out to incoming athletes regarding those expectations. One of the activities we do at camp, is to sit down as a team and think about what our mission statement (how would we define us in a sentence) is, what goals do we have, and what expectations do we have for ourselves. In the past, this would take in upwards of an hour, because there was no foundation to build off of. This year, the activity will probably last all of five minutes, or the exact amount of time it takes to write everything down on a sheet of a paper because everything is already understood. 

And this is where things get exciting. For the athletes, the success we had last year didn’t lead to complacency, it led to a hunger for not only more success, but success at a higher level. They are in the midst of changing what they consider successful in both how the team places at the Conference meet, what is a fast time, to even what a “fast workout” is. Their personal goals have shifted from simply being on the Conference travel team to making a run at the National meet. Their summer training has shifted from the minimal they could get away with and still be successful to figuring out how much their bodies they can safely handle. 

As much as I would like to claim all the responsibility for this recent success, the true key was the development of high-level, quality leaders within the group. There were legitimately seven to nine men and six to seven women who could have been captain this year. Its that depth of leadership that has allowed us to set-up, maintain, and expand the culture of the team. 

Over the next couple weeks we take a look at the upcoming cross country season, take a look back at all three seasons last year, meet the newcomers to the team, get a look at the Pre-Season Cross Country Camp, and take a look forward to the future of the UMBC athletics program and what you can do to help take us in an exciting new direction.