June 16, 2025

Leadership Lessons on Coaching Effort

Leadership Lessons on Coaching Effort

Send us a text Episode 139: Are you responsible for coaching your team's effort level? The question struck me after hearing WNBA Coach Becky Hammon's bold post-game declaration following a tough loss: "I will not coach effort." Her philosophy is clear—professional athletes must bring 100% effort or risk being benched. But how does this translate to finance leadership? Unlike professional sports, we lead teams with varying experience, motivation, and career aspirations. The approach that work...

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Season 19

Send us a text

Episode 139: Are you responsible for coaching your team's effort level? The question struck me after hearing WNBA Coach Becky Hammon's bold post-game declaration following a tough loss: "I will not coach effort." Her philosophy is clear—professional athletes must bring 100% effort or risk being benched. But how does this translate to finance leadership?

Unlike professional sports, we lead teams with varying experience, motivation, and career aspirations. The approach that works for championship athletes may need substantial modification in our world. As finance leaders, our expectations about effort should adapt based on team member seniority and organizational level. A CFO might reasonably expect consistent high effort from VP-level direct reports, while more junior team members may need different guidance.

This episode explores the delicate balance of expecting versus coaching effort, drawing parallels between sports leadership, military command, and finance team management. We examine the tools available to finance leaders—from bonuses and promotions to training opportunities and key project assignments—and how these can be used strategically to address effort disparities without "benching" team members in the traditional sense.

Most importantly, we consider how our own example sets the standard. The effort we demonstrate daily as leaders becomes the benchmark for our teams. High-performance organizations don't just happen—they start with leaders who consistently model extraordinary effort and establish clear expectations about how work gets done.


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For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy:  financeleaderacademy.com.

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Chapters

00:00 - Coaching Others to Excellence

Transcript
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I love coaching others to excellence. Coaching is a calling for leaders to help lift their team members to a higher level of performance, to be better today than yesterday, and to help them achieve their potential. How do you handle coaching the effort level of your team members? What are your expectations for your team when it comes to the level of effort they put in? How comfortable do you feel about your own coaching ability? Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host. Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. You can also follow finance leader Academy on LinkedIn. Thank you. This is episode number 139, and I'll be asking today about your thoughts on coaching effort self help.

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Author Napoleon Hill said, strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. I changed up topics for this episode this week because I saw something so important that I wanted to share it right away. Coach Becky Hammond, head coach of the Las Vegas aces of the WNBA, was giving a post game interview.

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The Aces, a recent WNBA champion, were dominated by the expansion team Golden State on June 7, the final score was 95 to 68 now that was a beat down if you know the ACES at all, Coach Hammond is an incredible coach. She was an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs, and in my mind, was on track to take over the Spurs from Coach pop before she took the ACES head coaching job, I have nothing but respect for Coach Hammond. She is a great coach, and she has a great roster over there. What I want to talk about is what she said in the post interview. She said she was not going to coach effort. She was implying that her players had better show up with that already figured out. I was intrigued.

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When I was serving in the army, we demanded an expected effort.

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I have coached effort many, many times with my soldiers and subordinate leaders when I was serving. So I want to dive into this a little bit more over the next couple of minutes. Coach Hammond's expectation is that you show up with 100% effort already. She said that you are in charge of your own effort, and that she would pull players from playing if they don't put in the effort. Additionally, she believes that when you don't have to dedicate time to encouraging effort, you can coach on other areas, like fundamentals and other critical skills, team synergy and chemistry and how to work together as a team to achieve organizational goals. Now I love this approach and expectation in the military. Again, we can demand effort, and again, I have coached effort many times. I fully support her decision to say she is not going to coach effort. Coach is saying is that when you show up to work, you show up ready to give your all 100% I don't want you to be here on my team if you refuse to put in 100% that was her message to her team in that post game interview, and I bet they heard her. Now, how can this leadership approach from Coach Hammond help us in how we lead now, let's be real here. We don't lead athletes at the highest level, we lead people of various levels of ability and motivation, various skill levels, and they all have different goals, desires and aspirations. It's not so cut and dry for us. We have so many other factors to consider when it comes to effort. A lot of this depends on the level of yourself and the level of your subordinate team members. Now, if I'm a CFO and my immediate subordinate team members are at the VP level, my expectations are high. I'll give little latitude for anything but 100% unless there is something else going on, like a medical issue or a family challenge or something else like that going on. Now, as the leader, you have to do the work on your end. You have to identify performance shortfalls and then develop a plan of action. We don't have the ability to bench a player, so to speak, like they can on a sports team, but we have tools.

00:04:35.240 --> 00:05:01.620
We can bench team members in different ways. Now, your tools are bonuses, promotions, training and travel opportunities, invitations to special events, networking opportunities, assignments to key projects, but always ensure you're following company policies and any legal application that there is, and always check your bias for fairness. I think the most of.

00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:42.939
Important lesson here is that, what are the values and expectations for your team and what do you expect every day for how your team members will act, will interact, will approach their work, and how work gets assigned, and what effort do we put in for the high visibility projects versus the routine tasks that we all have now? Do you guys all have IDPs for your team members. How is training allocated? And then so many other considerations. Now, what are your thoughts on coach Hammond's declaration that she will not coach effort. Now I thank Coach Hammond for saying what she said. It definitely got me thinking, and I also believe that effort and high performance begins with us as the leaders.

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How can we expect high performance if we are not doing our job to a high level? Set the example for doing your best always. Now today, I talked briefly about coaching effort.

00:05:57.699 --> 00:06:47.680
Now, what are your thoughts now in the show notes, depending upon which platform you are listening to this episode on, you will see a message called, send us a text. You can use this to send a text message directly to me. Now the system won't allow me to respond, unfortunately, but if you use that feature, I will see your message. So text me your thoughts about coaching effort, and I may mention you in a future episode. Thank you for your support. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share with a colleague until next time. You can check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast, and now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you.

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You.