Becoming a Professional MVP: Preparing for Draft Day

The first round of the NFL draft will be taking place on primetime television this coming Thursday, May 8^th. As the NFL teams will be jockeying for position, power and presence to make selections based on their own needs and wants, the college football players vying for a spot on the roster will simply have to wait anxiously for their name to be called.

Becoming a Professional MVP: Passion is to Sports as Excitement is to Your Career

The definition of sports can mean many different things depending on who you ask – ranging from the mainstream sports of basketball, baseball, football and hockey to biking, hiking, yoga and anything in between. But one thing that most of us can agree on is that passion is the underlying theme that drives us to pursue that particular interest area of physical activity.  

Becoming a Professional MVP: The Kobe

In 1996, the Charlotte Hornets elected to draft a young 19-year old kid from Philadelphia, as the 13th overall pick, to play for them in the NBA – his name, Kobe Bryant. Wait!?! Kobe has only played for the Los Angeles Lakers, right?

Becoming a Professional MVP: Stealing Second Base

by: Patrick Gallagher

MLB’s 2014 Spring Training is in full swing (yep…pun intended); and so I found it appropriate this week to use baseball as the platform for this post. Imagine you are up to bat, knock a single through the gap and are currently standing on first. It’s now time to advance to the next base – take a deep breath, get into your stance and start thinking about stealing second.

Becoming a Professional MVP: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

"If you make an effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be. Not necessary to what you want them to be, but they will be about what they should, and only YOU will know whether you can do that. And that’s what I wanted from them more than anything else. And as time went by, and I learned more about things, I think it worked a little better, as far as the results."

 

John Wooden, one of the most respected coaches in the history of UCLA men’s basketball let alone the history of sports (6-Time Coach of the Year!), stated the above when asked to talk about what teamwork means to him. As I personally reflect on the aforementioned passage, I started to think of how I’d like to be talked about amongst my peers, colleagues and coworkers when we’ve all clocked out for the day and the water-cooler talk that happens outside the office begins. With that in mind, I believe the best approach we can take to working with a group of people in an organization (whom we may or may not get along with) needs to be viewed as if we were structured together as teammates; with the intent of being the best we can as a group.

 

Becoming a Professional MVP: Help Me Help You

As athletes, we all want to perform at our best when it comes to game time; and so we strive to be as ready as possible through tireless hours of practice and preparation. One specific area of preparation that is rarely talked about amongst the average fan but is an understood necessity between coaches and athletes to be on the same page relates to their time spent in the film room. 

Becoming a Professional MVP: Seasons Greetings!

Finals are done – thank goodness! Grades are in – fingers crossed! And now it’s time to roast some chestnuts on an open fire…

Becoming a Professional MVP: Pre-Game Routine

By: Patrick Gallagher

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out,” stated Robert Collier, an American author who wrote about the psychology of confident action and becoming your best.

Becoming a Professional MVP: Finding Your Triple-Threat Stance

With the Philadelphia 76ers starting the NBA season 3-0 (yes, you heard me correctly), I couldn’t help but turn my attention this week to a fundamental basketball skill that I’m sure you were instructed to develop from a very early age: getting into the triple-threat position.

Becoming a Professional MVP: The Bootleg Run

By: Patrick Gallagher

 

Shhhhh! Don’t you dare say a word about it – just keep your head up, your mind sharp and your mouth shut if you want to achieve it.

As you may or may not have noticed by now, the bi-weekly posts included in our “Becoming a Professional MVP” column highlights professional development advice using sports moments as the parallel. For me personally, I can remember my father using sports as a crutch to teach me life lessons so that I could more easily relate to the message he was trying to have me understand. And so now, as a way for me to pay it forward, I’m excited to continually share with you various tips (via sports) that aim to help you launch a successful career. This week however, we will actually shift just a bit from professional development to personal development and learn how ‘the bootleg run’ is analogous to keeping your mouth shut when it comes to your meeting your personal goals and objectives.

Becoming a Professional MVP: No-Huddle Offense

Are you ready for some football? In the late 1980’s, it was believed by some football historians that the 1988 Cincinnati Bengals football team was the first to revolutionize the offensive philosophy of the game. That year, Boomer Esiason and his team based their game plan on having an attack or ‘no-huddle’ offensive style and remained fervent on changing how they attached their opponent throughout the entire season. Their hope was that they could implement a hurry-up, no-huddle offensive system that would speed up the game while mentally and physically wearing down their opponents. Simply put, they wanted to achieve better results when dealing with the crucial moments leading to a win or a loss. Their no-huddle offense proved to be successful and is now a fundamental staple to every NFL franchises’ game plan in order to stay competitive. So how does this relate to us and our professional development in becoming the MVP within our organization?

Becoming a Professional MVP: The Press Conference

By: Patrick Gallagher

Imagine for thirty seconds you are the Head Coach of a top-tier Division 1 program and have been called to the stage after a high-profile match up for the post-game press conference. Your job in this very moment: answer questions from the media. Coach, how do you think your team played tonight? What made you decide to use that final timeout with so much time still left in the game? Where would you rate your performance tonight?