​As the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships In 42 years.
 
In his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions with Tim Nash, Coach Dorrance discusses how goal setting fits in with their amazing consistent high level of excellent performance:
 
"We have goal-setting meetings three times a year, and the players select things to achieve. Part of each meeting is how many goals and assists they want to get in the season. Other goals may be making the Sports Festival,making the U.S. National Team, or making the National Team player pool. We want the players to be goal-oriented, and the ones that are goal-oriented develop the most. There's no question about that.
 
With some players, though, you don't even have a goal-setting meeting because they struggle to set goals, they never reach the goals they set and that becomes a factor in their unhappiness. So, we just talk about what's going on in their lives. I just don't think you should force everyone to set goals.
 
Some people don't like to set goals, because they are afraid of not achieving them. I'm not going to sit here and play psychiatrist and try to bend them into a position in which I feel more comfortable. It's ridiculous to construct an organization of one kind of personality.
 
Your life is going to be filled with all kinds of people, and so will your team. If someone is not comfortable setting goals, fine. Let's go in their direction and let them set their own agenda. What do they want to get out of all this?
 
One year, a player came into my office and said, "I want to have a good time every time I come to practice." That was her goal. Once we set that goal, it was very interesting watching her come to practice. Sure enough, she showed up with a wonderful kind of freedom and just had a good time. That was good enough for me. She contributed tremendously to team chemistry. Everyone liked her. I liked her. She wasn't a world-beater on the field, but she didn't have to be. That wasn't her goal."
 
It is beneficial to first find out what the individual personal and professional goals of your team members are. Then you can discuss how they can meet their goals and help the team reach its collective goals.
 
People are more interested in talking about a team's strategic plan when their essential needs are addressed, Your top salesperson might be a parent who is most concerned about picking up their child from daycare before 5:30 PM every day. You are concerned about them hitting their monthly sales quota. Take care of the daycare first and the sales will follow.
 
What are the individual personal and professional goals of your team members?

Anson Dorrance is the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina. In 42 years, his teams have won 22 National Championships. Coach Dorrance and Coach Wooden both believed that giving undeserved or excessive praise, even if the intentions are good, is counter productive to building real self-esteem in the team member and undermines the credibility of the coach.
 
In his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions with Tim Nash, Coach Anson illustrates this idea with a hypothetical story including his wife M'Liss and then four-year-old son Donovan:
 
"My wife and I come home from a long day at work and are very tired. Donovan, our four-and-a-half-year-old son, has just been eating in front of the television, and he decides to leave his dish there and go play in his bedroom. Well, the correct behavior is for M'Liss or me to go find Donovan and say, "Donovan, your dish is sitting there in the living room, and that's not where you leave it. When you are finished eating, you bring it to the kitchen and put it in the dishwasher."
 
Then there is a moment of confrontation with Donovan which is emotionally taxing — in a very small way. He will roll his eyes, object and say he'll do it later. Well, now you're getting a little angry because he's trying to blow you off, and it's not a very pleasant experience. It's not an issue about getting the dish in the dishwasher, but we are not in the mood for this type of dispute. And if we are the sort of parent, educator or coach who doesn't have the strength to constantly have these battles, we pick up the dish and put it in the dishwasher.
 
Rather than confront the issue of strict parenting and having high standards, we go the route of grabbing the dish, throwing it in the dishwasher and ignoring Donovan. And Donovan grows up being the self-indulgent, spoiled individual that has never had to do anything for himself because his parents have done things for him all his life".
 
Today's parents who attempt to "pave the way" for their children's success should consider a quote from Abraham Lincoln: "The worst thing you can do for those you love is to do the things they could and should do for themselves."
 
Coach Anson concluded:
 
"Sometimes people have a misconstrued understanding of how to build self-esteem. The parent or teacher wants to create self-esteem, so they end up praising students or children for things that aren't praise-worthy. It's a hollow kind of praise. We end up developing self-indulgent kids and students that don't have any standards, and we develop parents and teachers that don't have real respect."
 
Who puts the dishes in your dishwasher?

Anson Dorrance is the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina. In 42 years, his teams have won 22 National Championships. One of the similarities between Coach Dorrance and Coach Wooden is that they both pushed their players to constantly improve irrespective of their current performance level or comfort zone. Coach Wooden felt if his team was not making mistakes of commission in practice they weren't playing fast enough.
 
Coach Dorrance describes this relentless approach as playing on the edge. In his fantastic book Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, he expands on the topic:
 
"Next to creating a high level of intensity in practice, the greatest challenge is to have high standards and to have a consistently ascending level of expectation. No one is ever good enough. Everyone can always improve, and practice sessions should be a stretch of each player's limits.
 
It is critical to establish standards, and they are set by highlighting the extraordinary moments in practice, if these moments ever occur. However, we must wait for those moments to occur before we heap praise on the players, or we will be settling for too low a standard. Never endorse what is below standard and your praise will have meaning. Never set a standard that can easily be achieved, and your expectations will create an environment where your athletes are on the edge of their game. It is time spent on this edge that improves your players. The truly great practices occur when we can keep them on this edge the longest.
 
Your strength in coaching is having the courage to constantly deal with the athletes that unconsciously try to take things a bit easier. When I was a young coach, I used to feel that my practices were a great success when I could get through a session and things went smoothly. So, invariably, I would pick training topics that were fun and easy to organize or coach, if you can call it that. And they were always successful. Of course, if there was always success, I was only training the players in areas in 'which they were already competent. And if the sessions were easy to coach, I was doing little to drive the players to their next level."
 
The business application is to develop a great product or process and ask immediately: "How can we make it better?" The key is to get the team on board with the idea that: constant improvement is the goal we are trying to achieve together so they don't feel like victims because: "Nothing in your eyes is ever good enough." Coach Wooden liked to say: "Good; now do it again faster." That's the edge.