March 09, 2023 | Read Online

2 Lessons From a Remarkable Turnaround

The solution to disappointment isn't always to act on impulse and make a sweeping change.

He had grinded for years.

Five seasons as an assistant coach at Murray State, two at College of Charleston, four at Texas A&M, one at Georgia.

Then, in 2019, Amir Abdur-Rahim finally achieved his lifelong dream: He became a Division I head coach.

But his first season at Kennesaw State was not exactly the type that rejuvenates a fanbase or reassures an administration it made the right choice in its hire.

Abdur-Rahim's team went 1-28, 0-16 in the Atlantic Sun Conference, then followed it up by going 5-19 in his second year.

On Sunday, though, Kennesaw State defeated Liberty, 67-66, to win the A-Sun tournament championship and secure a birth in next week’s NCAA tournament in Abdur-Rahim's fourth season.

There are two key lessons for us as leaders in the remarkable turnaround:

1. Find the victories in the struggle

Many times, we face hardship and compound our challenges with negative self-talk. But Abdur-Rahim resisted that urge after year one — putting together a really thoughtful blog post contemplating some lessons from the losses.

“This season was unbelievably fun,” Abdur-Rahim wrote in the post on Coachspeak.net. “The challenge to wake up every day with the opportunity to impact young lives and be the example of what a leader should look like is indescribable.”

“The best piece of advice I can give you after growing through my first season is ‘expect the unexpected but control what you can control,'" he added. "That was my year in a nutshell. It’s great to have your first 90 days mapped out to help you stay organized, but the truth of the matter is they won’t go as you plan.”

Instead of just lamenting our bad luck or second-guessing ourselves when hardship hits, we might benefit from considering how the lessons of our tough times can set us up down the road.

2. Sometimes, it just takes time

The first two seasons couldn’t have possibly been what Abdur-Rahim scripted, and there is likely an athletic director or two out there who would’ve caved to pressure and dismissed him.

But Kennesaw State stuck by him during the extreme turbulence and didn’t make rash choices based on emotion. The school clearly decided to get a larger sample size and has now been rewarded for the patience that plenty of other schools likely wouldn't have exhbited.

Sometimes, the solution to disappointment or even failure isn't making an abrupt change or deciding we need to overhaul our strategies.

It's just making some subtle tweaks and getting more reps.

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