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COSIDA CONFERENCE CALL

August 18, 2016

CLARK TEUSCHER: Welcome to the first installment of the 2016-2017 CoSIDA Continuing Education series, sponsored once again by Capital One. My name is Clark Teuscher. I'm the Sports Information Director at North Central College and the co-chair for the CoSIDA Continuing Education Committee. I'll be monitoring today's webinar as we kick off the new year of programming with effective strategies for the managing and mentorship of staff members, presenting on today's webinar are Jessica Poole of the University of Mississippi, Brad Cygan of Missouri Baptist University, and Lenny Reich of the University of Mount Union.

Attendees for today's presentation are invited to submit questions in the chat window while following along. We'll work as many of those questions into the discussion as we can today.

The webinar is being recorded and will be made available, along with a full FastScript from CoSIDA's official transcript provider, ASAP Sports, for on-demand use exclusively on CoSIDA Connect.

Our first presenter today will be Jessica Poole who is the Assistant Athletic Director for Media and Public Relations at Ole Miss, and a member of the CoSIDA board of directors. She's here to speak about the mentoring of students and provide helpful tips for first time managers. Jess.

JESSICA POOLE: Hey, guys. I'm just going to show you my screen. I've got a little PowerPoint. I just want to talk a little bit about mentoring. Mentoring is a huge part of my entire career. So I'm kind of a pay-it-forward kind of person, and I take a lot of pride in helping staff members and students get to the next level. This slide is just a couple of tips I've found over the years to help guide people on their path.

The first thing is to help find strength and utilize those strengths. I think that everyone has something to offer. You may not be the best writer, but you may be great at social media. So just kind of finding each person's strengths and niche, and putting them in a position to succeed using those strengths. And I think that's a really big thing that a lot of us think everyone should be good at everything, and that's just not realistic. So we've found you have to help find your employees and students find their niche and help them succeed through their strengths.

I think it's also really important to empower your employees and be an empowered employer. If you show them that you are going to the table and what you're doing, you're kind of leading by example and giving them the power to take on projects and to kind of lean outside of their comfort zone and do a little bit more because that's what you're doing, and I think that's really important, because then it kind of fosters that growth.

The biggest thing is make sure you're open to not just teaching but learning. I have a funny story about this. I had a student who worked with me for three years, and last year he graduated. And I found myself thinking, I think I learned more than he did when it was all said and done and I think that's really important. If you're always open to learn from the people that you're mentoring, you're always going to get something out of it and the relationship's going to forever be beneficial.

I would circle this one: Be available and accessible. As a leader, I think sometimes we kind of get tunnel vision as we all do in this profession. It's very easy to do. I simply work with my door open, and if someone needs to pop in and talk to me, they know they're able to do that, so I think that's important.

Get to know people as people. This quote, "People don't care what you know unless they know you care" is really the motto that I go through in life. It really makes a difference when people know that you care about them, aside from their game notes, their press releases and their social media. It really does make a difference.

And then just do the work. You have to commit to being effective and active employees and mentors, and if we share in our group's successes and failures, we all grow. And I think that's one thing that I really, really take to heart is that we're a team. All of us have to have our own roles to play, but at the end of the day, we succeed together and we fail together. So those are my big key points that I always try to circle back to.

Just something for people that are kind of in a leadership role for the first time, do not panic, do not panic. You're going to make mistakes; we all do. But if you can just kind of take a deep breath and just as Dory says, "just keep swimming," you'll be fine.

Listen to your staff. I think that's one thing that I think is just super important is that they're your people. Those are the people that are in the foxhole with you. They see and hear things differently than you do. So use them as resources.

Observe, observe, observe. Make sure you're really observing every side of a situation. Whether it's a situation with administration, a situation with a staffer, a situation with a coach, whatever that may be, make sure you're fully taking the time to observe the situation before taking action. You don't want to be hasty when you're in these type of leadership roles because that can create a domino effect in a good way or a domino effect in a bad way. You want to make sure that you're gathering all of the information before you make those types of decisions.

I think my biggest thing for new leaders is make sure you're cultivating a marketplace of ideas. You have brainstorming sessions with your staff, make sure that everyone's able to contribute. I always found when I was being led that I feel so much more invested when I can say I brought that idea to the table. So make sure that you're allowing that and encouraging that.

It's really important that your staff and the people that you're working with know that you respect and you want their opinions. Because the second they start feeling as if it's a one-sided show, they're not invested. And invested people make the best employees.

This quote is: "Don't be so afraid to fail that you fail to succeed." Failure is a part of succeeding. You cannot succeed without failure. So just kind of throw the idea of "I don't want to fail" out the window, because at some point you're going to fail, and that's okay because the best ideas come out of failures.

Then just some general takeaways I always try to impart particularly on my students. You don't need a title to mentor or manage. Some of the best leaders, mentors and managers are just people that have a passion for something. So make sure -- you can lead from any seat. That's important to impart on our students.

I know my students here, I always tell them to take initiative. If you want to be the full-time person for the woman's golf team, show me that that's what you want to do and then do it. Take the initiative and then run with it.

Then also learn to lead and manage up, down, left and right. I think that the best leadership is done from all sides, not just from the top down. Leadership is one of those things where, yes, there's a flow and an orb chart and all that stuff, but everyone and anyone can be a leader and can impart leadership tools to people. So I think that's it's important that we do that.

Just because your title is not the Assistant AD or whatever, you can lead from the seat that you're in, and I think that's really important for our students as they go out into the marketplace to make sure that they know that they're able to do those type of things.

Then this is just my favorite quote, so I thought I'd share it with you guys. "If your action inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

I think at the end of the day all of us want to be leaders. All of us want to impart leadership ideas, and I think that just we lead by example, and I think that's the best thing to do. So those are just my tools on managing and leading. So if anyone has any questions, throw them in the chat box. Thanks, guys.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Jess, in your experience, do you have any stories in particular that come to mind about students who have taken that initiative and that opportunity to step forward and show you they were capable of more in their roles?

JESSICA POOLE: Absolutely. I'll brag on my student that just left me a little bit. I had a student for three years who had been with me my very first day at Ole Miss until last year, and he just was a go-getter. He kind of took little bites of things that -- I'd give him simple jobs to do, and he'd say, well, what if we do it this way, or what if we do it that way, or what do you think about this? And he just thought differently and was very out of the box.

So by him just taking that initiative, I thought that I can give this kid a little bit more than I could give the average person, and he just ran with it. Honestly, the last two years he's been every single bit of the full-time SID for my women's golf program. I just kind of am in the background to help him if he needs anything.

But he really stepped up and got interested and got to know coaches and got to know players, and just really took the initiative. But he started off small and kind of asked me if it was okay. But he just ran with it. I was very happy to give him a sport.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Thank you very much, Jess. Brad Cygan is the Sports Information Director at Missouri Baptist. He's also an at-large member for the board of directors for NAIA-SIDA. He's here to share the rules and procedures he follows in the mentoring of his staff members. Brad?

BRAD CYGAN: Thanks, and thanks to all of you for coming on today. The things that I'm going to kind of talk about, and I think you can all see my screen right now.

Before I get into the six rules that I follow, just a few general thoughts. First of all, a little bit about me. I've been here since 2011 and I've had a total of seven people that have worked for me either as a grad assistant or a student that have gone on to careers in this field, both in pro sports or on the college ranks. So, so far, so good for everybody.

But the approach that I always like to take with young people is mainly in showing them the basics. It's really encouraging activity and creativity, kind of what Jess was talking about just a second ago. In order to really be good in this field, you really need to learn how to be proactive and find your own way in terms of what the best way is to cover a sport in your own manner. And in order to do that, you have to have that creativity and be in a -- really be in an environment that promotes creativity. So that's one of the things that we'll talk about kind of in the rules that I follow.

For me, with younger people, the best way to understand new trends and what student-athletes are seeing rather than what I am seeing on a daily basis in terms of social media and new technology, my student workers, grad assistants and interns are all going to understand that way more than I will, so I let them lead me a lot and really make them a big part of that process and talking to me about that.

Of course, we still have to have a strategy with however we do anything, but ultimately for me it's about giving them that opportunity to add to it and finding their best qualities. So a lot of these kids have a lot of things to add that are really positive to your athletics program. So giving them that opportunity to really shine in some of those things.

Moving on to some of the rules that I like to really impart. The first rule that I usually lead with is put learning first. In order to do that, you really have to invest in your people.

So anyone that's working for you, especially at this level, at the NAIA Division II, Division III, and small college level especially, these are people sometimes that it's their first opportunity to work in sports information. So if this is a career path that they want to be in, you really have to invest in them. I always try to make sure that I'm teaching at all times. Even though it's something that might be easier for me if they're a very good photographer, just letting them do that all the time is easier.

Sometimes I have to take a step back and do the hard thing and really try to teach them more than just that. It's going to save me a lot of time, probably in the end, to have more people that are more focused to understand a broader spectrum of concepts and ideas. Really investing in them to allow them to learn as they go.

So the ultimate goal for these folks are going to be to get a job, and most likely not here. So we have to always be thinking about that and what's going to make them marketable and what's going to make them good in the profession.

Number two, and this is a tough one, is to let them fail. The ways that I've learned most of my career is when I screw something up at a game or the technology completely crashes on me and I have to struggle and figure out a different way to do something. We've all gone through that at every single level, so the way that I've realized that I've learned from those mistakes is to actually have those happen to me and learn how to dig myself out of them.

So that's not just leaving someone alone without a net, but that's giving people the opportunity. Once they think they've got things figured out, usually I find that, especially young people, they have this sense that they've got everything figured out really quick and they think they're ready to go on their own. So I like to let them do that to an extent and really just kind of be there as their safety net and allow them to fail.

So once they do that and once they see things that don't work right on game day or things that don't exactly operate the way they've seen in the past and they don't know how to overcome it, or they don't have priorities in order what to cut, what to keep doing, they learn how to do that pretty quick.

So showing them that and giving them that real world experience, I think, is vital. Problem solving above all, that is so key in everything that we do. We have to be problem solvers, and the one thing that I tell to everyone who has ever worked for me is that that is the main crux of this job is to be a problem solver especially on game day.

So any good SID is fix just about anything, but when those problems happen with us, I want to make sure that the communication is all there. So I always talk about it with the entire staff either after the game or the next day, and we talk about what went wrong, here's how it went wrong, and what do we do when this happens to you. So keeping up those lines of communication open for me is key.

Time management, for me, leads to details. So we all know the FLSA is going to really impact everything that we're doing right now and trying to sometimes crunch what we do into a 40-hour work week. Really showing young people time management and how to manage their free time is not necessarily being free, but more what can I do to get ready for something two, three, four weeks in advance? How can I start getting ready for things that we know are coming up, so you're not spending a lot of additional time at the back end really just trying to catch up.

So really the time management skills. I'm always implant the idea of work smarter and not harder, and I say that over and over again, and that's one of the big things for me.

The fifth one is don't micromanage good people. The creative process can be stifled if you start to micromanage folks. The one thing I'll always like to do is allow people to find their way, find their creative side and just find how they want to do this job, because my way is not necessarily the best way. I learn just as much from younger staff than I can teach them.

So giving them that opportunity to do things on their own. If they have a problem, they come to me, we talk about it, but I think that's kind of a good way to build people up as well. So really, that kind of also stems into the communication you're having back and forth and making them part of that process of decision making.

Jessica talked about that too, and I really, really love that. That you always want to make sure that you communicate and people understand the why of what you're doing just as much as what your expectations are, but the why, and why you're doing everything that you do. That usually goes a long way to getting things done in a quality manner.

The final rule that I always use is live your standards. So every one of us has a standard of how we want things done in our office and for the university. So really imparting that standard and really engraining that in everyone. So the standard here is that we expect a lot of ourselves. We expect that things are going to be done at the highest level possible, details, details, details. So we're always talking about that, what our standard is, what our expectations are.

And once you get past that, once people understand your standard, then I always find that it's always something that's always in the forefront of their mind to really make sure they're doing things at a high level. If they're not quite at that high level yet, they keep working on it.

So my current assistant, Kevin, has really taken to that. So a story that I always like to tell is that last year he was just starting PhotoShop, and by the way, he's sitting right next to me so he can hear everything that I'm saying, but he started PhotoShop and he did some stuff that was okay. And at the end of last year we looked at the staff he first did compared to what he did at the end of the year, and that was after we had just let him go and let him come to me with questions about PhotoShop. And he took a lot of time to take some of those things that we've talked about, put those into action and look at a lot of different tutorials and the work was night and day. And that's, I think, part of this process of really allowing people to find their creativity.

Their stuff isn't always going to be perfect. They need to understand that, and then you can kind of move on.

So those are kind of the main things and kind of like what Jessica was saying, I always like to make them part of the process. I listen to their ideas and their thoughts and we work as hard as we can to make those and put those into action. So I think that's just as important as anything, so that's kind of what I've got.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Brad, what would you say would be a key to inspiring staff members to have that initiative to want to take on new responsibilities? And how can you effectively encourage those that might not naturally have that kind of initiative?

BRAD CYGAN: Well, pro-activity is probably the toughest thing to learn. I think what you have to understand is you're not going to be successful in the business unless you have these types of qualities and traits. This is really tough because a lot of people come in now that really don't understand -- or that kind of sit there at the computer and just wait for you to tell them something.

So I really have to be engaged in what they're doing. So if they're going to sit there and not do much, I always try to ask them, Hey, what are you doing? What are your thoughts on the next thing? We've given you cross-country and track & field, what are your thoughts about covering that this year? What do you want to bring to it? And show them I want them to bring their own thoughts and ideas.

It's not just about how we do things, but it's how they want to bring their own spin to it. Usually, what I've found is as soon as they realize that they have a direct impact on what's going to happen, and they have a lot of decision making that they can do, that they really want to run with it and they want to show off and say, hey, this is what I've done. Usually I get a lot of texts and emails saying, "Hey, I just did this. How does this thing look? I'm really excited about this thing that I've created."

So I think it's about getting them to that point where they understand that they have a lot of power with what they're doing. We're going to rely on them a little bit too.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Thank you very much, Brad.

Lenny Reich is the Assistant to the Athletic Director at Mount Union as well as the first Vice President for D-III SIDA. He's applied a D-III model to his strategies for identifying, training and developing student and intern staff, and he's here to share that with us today. Lenny?

LENNY REICH: Thanks, Clark. I'm getting ready to start year number 20 in the profession for me. Most of that time has been at Division III, and also, right now we have 23 varsity sports. We have two post-graduate interns and about 20 to 25 student workers that work for us. We do do some game operations as well, like a lot of the small college SIDs. So we applied some of our things -- let's see if we can see my screen here. I don't know if anybody can see my screen or not.

CLARK TEUSCHER: We are able to see it, Lenny.

LENNY REICH: All right. Leave it to the old guy to mess up the screen. But our three Ds for student workers. We kind of took off the Division III branding platform, that's Discover, Develop, and Dedicate. Obviously these would be applicable to any division.

But obviously, discover, we have to get creative in finding student help to help us out. So we look for partnerships with academic departments. We have a large sports management program here at Mount Union, so we get students that are doing practicums for credit. We also look at our integrated media majors, other communications departments, public relations. Try and find students that can get academic credit, which saves our work study budget and also gives them an opportunity to get some work in there.

And there are obviously people that are really interested in doing it, because they're applying it toward what they're doing with their studies.

We work with the financial aid and work study office. We're fortunate to be able to pay a lot of our students out of our work study account. So we try to find those students and give them an opportunity to make some money and try and structure it in a way where we tell them that some of you might be doing operations. Some might be doing social media, some might be helping us out with more statistics or writing or those kind of things. We really match-up skills with what those people might have or want to do and put them in a position where they can make some extra money and obviously help us out.

Then we talk to our coaches about maybe an athlete that is injured and not going to play or a former athlete that might be in the area or still in school as ways where they can help us out. Especially, we found out especially helpful when doing statistics whether it's for specialized things like volleyball or lacrosse or those sorts of things where you really need somebody that kind of is very familiar with the language of the sport that you can have them around to help those kind of things.

Then to the develop one, we use scrimmages or JV games as ways to maybe practice. One of the things we do here with basketball is we're in charge of the entire scorer's table, so we hire the clock operators, the bookkeeper, all the computer people. Well, we have JV games, we hire the table, so we give an opportunity for students there to train during a junior varsity game. And we host some high school football games in our stadium, so we give students a chance to come and work those events as a way where they have a little more freedom and flexibility to make mistakes or learn on the fly then before we throw them into a varsity contest.

Then we want our veteran students to teach our younger students. Obviously, as we're developing people along, we want our upper class students to teach our younger students how to do things, so there's always a group of people that know what to do and they're training another group of people as they come through. Some of that, you know, finding leaders out of your group of students and giving them responsibilities and increasing that responsibility as they go. Kind of graduating, just as you would, just as your coaches would with players or even in your own office with things. Maybe a freshman is starting out with some very basic game operations jobs, and then over time when you see people that you can rely on that are going to show up at events and things, put them in positions where they can take on greater responsibility as they go, and talk to them about that while they're getting that responsibility.

Dedicate, you know, obviously provide reference letters for people when they go off to work, and not just people that want to go into sports information. I think any of us that have been around for a while that have had student workers are doing reference calls for maybe a student that's going to do something else or helping out with a graduate school application or those kind of things.

Show your students -- we always tell our students starting off if you were loyal and dedicated to us, that we'll be loyal and dedicated to you. And we promise them that there won't be anybody that will fight harder to help them get that next job or get into grad school or whatever else than we will. So we tell them that right off the shoot, and that helps us out a lot.

Provide professional development options. Whether it's getting students involved in CoSIDA through student programs there or whether it's other types of professional development they can get involved in, so that they can see what the profession's like. We have taken students to, whether it's conference meetings, conference events, those kind of things, give them a chance to network within our conference and other ways of meeting people.

Like I said, continue to talk to them about their future and what they're going to do long-term, and see if you can help them with that.

A little bit of data from Division III. 60% of Division III offices have between 17 and 23 varsity sports. 40% of those offices have professional assistants. That means 60% of them are almost doing everything entirely with students and obviously with the changes that are coming with the labor law and the other things, it will be imperative to keep track of what you're doing and be as efficient as possible, and maybe get more students or part-time help that can aid you in those kind of things.

As far as delegating goes, we delegate. Our interns, we give our interns a professional title. They're Assistant Sports Information Directors. They get coverage of sports. Our coaching staff treats them as professional staff members, not as interns, per se. Even though they're on a 10-month contract and a lot of them aren't here past those 10 months, we give them real responsibilities and are treated as members of our professional staff.

And we have weekly strategic meeting kind of on Monday morning. We all huddle together, the three of us. We all share an office, so it's easy for the three of us to get together and we really break down the week that was and the week that's coming up, figuring out if there's some long-range projects that we need to address or work on. Then, obviously, if there were any -- if we have to do an autopsy of anything that happened over the previous week, whether we have to -- we got either something went wrong that we need to address.

As I tell the interns all the time, they can learn the job relatively quickly. What their internship is going to show them is how to deal with situations that aren't in the handbook. How to deal with coaches, people, those kind of things. What happens when the computer goes down, how do you get things done.

In a case we were on a road football game a couple years ago where the power went out in the stadium and the game continued. What happens when those things happen, and how do you deal with those things is where you're really going to experience growth in the profession and moving forward.

And then in dedicate, you know, our interns, we pay for their CoSIDA memberships. We try to get them to the convention or other things when we can. We aid them in networking. The one thing is I really try to give my interns space. I don't try and plan out where their next job's going to be and tell them, oh, you should go do this or you should go do that. If they come and ask me, I have no problem telling them what I think of a job or school or location or some of those kind of things. I don't want to plan out their lives for them. I want them to have that freedom and ability to be able to kind of choose their own path and where they want to go.

Some interns over the years have asked for more help from me and some interns haven't, and that's fine. I think right now we've got about 12, I believe, former undergrad students or interns that are all working in athletic communications from Division I to Division III, and we try to stay in touch together as a group as best we can and see where there are ways we can help each other out. But really want to give them their space.

Then a couple best practices that have helped me out over the years is since we've had interns here we have game-day checklists for what you would need to do if you were going to come run a game at our venue, and it goes from the most basic thing on down to what you can do.

So we really work on that list, update those lists frequently and make those lists available to all the student workers and all the interns, so that they can see, okay, 90 minutes before a game, you're going to do this. And 60 minutes before a game you're going to do this. 30 minutes before a game and all the way through the postgame. And really step by step on how you're going to do those things.

We try and diversify our work force by not pigeon holing people into the same job over and over again. So maybe you run the clock one day, and then the next day maybe you're down on the field or you're spotting for statistics. So that way, if we do run into a situation where we're maybe shorthanded or run into something where we need some people, we can move people around.

We try and share information as best we can with each other, either through online calendars or work-flow software you can use. We use obviously things like drop box and other things to share files quickly. We have a gigantic white board, 4 foot by 6 foot white board in our office, like I'm sure a lot of you have, whether it's a giant calendar or board, and we just write everything up on the board. So all the events are up there. People that are working are up there. So at any time somebody could come in the office and see, okay, this is what we have. Here are the people that are supposed to show up and work, what's going on. And really with three of us and going all different directions, that's sometimes the best way to do that.

We try to structure our work week and our work flow for the week where early in the week we're working on more immediate projects, getting ready for the week ahead. As the week goes on, we start shifting into maybe long range goals for the next season, whether it's working on a schedule poster or bios or other things for future sports at the end of the week or early in the week, we're obviously doing player of the week nominations or making sure our opponents have everything they need and getting our things set up for the week ahead.

We also want to encourage our staff in a positive manner. We try -- it's much easier to be negative than be positive. So we try as best we can, or I guess I try, as best I can to remain patient and remain tolerant. I guess the older I get, the longer I've done this, it becomes a little easier to let go, I guess, a little bit of ownership in things and be able to not -- it's not the end of the world when that music isn't playing 60 minutes before the game starts or the live stats aren't on immediately as the game starts.

I think over time you learn what's really important with things, and like I said, having a positive relationship and encouraging people in a positive manner, I think, goes a long way in helping those people out and helping things out with our coaches and those kind of things.

Our office is right in the middle of our athletic department. Our door is always open, so there are coaches kind of in and out all the time. It's seemed to work really well for us.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Lenny, do you have any tips for getting first year students involved on campus? Are there ways that you've seen that are effective in getting in-coming students hired in and getting them started right away?

LENNY REICH: Well, I tell you what we've tried to do in places is usually at your school orientation there might be some kind of on-campus job fair. So we'll sometimes go to our orientations when they have those kind of on campus job fairs and be around to talk to students.

Right now at Mount Union we have an online job book so students are given access to a book that has all the potential jobs online, so we are listed in that book. Really a lot of it, you'll find out in our case some of our best workers are people that were referred to us by other student workers. So another student worker went and told their friend or roommate or whoever else, hey, I'm doing this and they need more people, so show up and help out.

So it's been kind of a lot of word of mouth, and just knowing what's going on your campus. So our work study supervisor people are really great in financial aid. They're great at pointing students my way, and they're great at knowing that we're organized enough to give them something to do. So on your campus, be aware of how the student employment process works and that will help you get farther along in getting those students.

Q. Jess, we do have some tasks and responsibilities that come up that may not be necessarily what people want to do. How do you inspire staff members to take on tasks that might not necessarily be the first thing that they would want to do in the office or at a game or anything like that?
JESSICA POOLE: I always tell my students the easiest way to get to the stuff that you want to do is to do the stuff that you don't want to do. Because if our full-time staffers know that you're willing to do -- like this week, prime example of this, football season is right around the corner. We needed somebody to help us unstuff media credentials and parking passes. And our passes came and they came and were not exactly cut the way we wanted them to be cut. Well, we had to have a student kind of cut them in a new way and stuff them, and it's boring. It is boring work, and we fully agree with you. But the quickest way to get to the fun stuff is to do the boring stuff. That shows us that you are willing to do anything. That you're willing to jump in when we need you, and those are the things that we need you to have in order to do the fun stuff.

So that's kind of how we explain it here. Really, you don't just show up in our office, and A, get to work in the football press box or do some things like that. There's kind of a little bit of order in the way things need to happen. And if you aspire to do that, the quickest way to do it is to do some of the not-so-fun stuff.

Q. The best way to help transition new hires, which is people who are fresh out of college, from a student life to a more professional adult life?
BRAD CYGAN: That's always an interesting one, because the students always have a completely different lifestyle. They're not used to acting in that professional manner. So I think it all starts with their workload and setting expectations from day one, and we've had that a lot. In fact, one of my grad assistants that just left, I had her from the time she was a sophomore in college all the way through her grad degree. The one thing that I impressed upon her was that this is different. Being a grad assistant now, now you are part of the staff. So you can't have the same relationships with student-athletes that you used to have. You are now a leader. You are now someone who is seen on campus as part of what we're doing here and you have to act in a professional manner.

Setting that expectation, I've always thought is kind of key. But really for me, you have to live what you're telling them to. You can't tell them one thing and then have them see you joking around with a student-athlete or someone else at a game. So you need to make sure that you are always the most professional person there and you're leading by example.

And I know that's sometimes tough with some more relaxed environments, but everything that you do is going to be absorbed by the person that's working for you. So for me, it's always making sure that when she sees me or when any of my former student workers see me that they are seeing someone who is professional, and they also understand what the stakes are.

So if you're setting a playlist for pregame music for basketball, you want to make sure that you've shown them not only the type of music that you can play, but the consequences of having a word that you don't want to show up in that playlist, because you'll get a call from administrators, people at the game, and you'll get calls from angry parents and fans.

So from day one, I want to show everyone that's working for me here's what happens when this occurs. So when they do get that role, they already have a pretty good understanding of the consequences of their actions, both good and bad.

Q. So you have a relatively inexperienced work force, and you have to get them ready to cover a large number of events at the same time in a very short timeline. What is your strategy for getting the work force ready to work in multiple different environments at the same time?
LENNY REICH: Praying (laughing). No, I guess you just have to have -- I would say you have to have open communication, and you have to explain to the head coaches or people working that day, hey, look, there's one of me and three events going on and I can't be at every place at once. So here are some people that are going to be working. Here's somebody that I rely on. If you need anything, let me know. I'll try to help you out. But I can only be at one place at a time. So I think it's really a lot of it.

I always say most problems are solved by just having open and honest communication with people. I think as you're organized and lay out your week ahead, if you think there's going to be an issue or a problem, let your athletic director or assistant athletic directors or game managers or head coaches know what's going on. So that they're aware that, hey, if the clock's a little shaky today, it's because I didn't have all my people show up that run that stuff, or if we're not doing a webcast today because we've got a whole bunch of other things going on.

I think it's always better to be proactive in that stuff than on Monday morning when the AD or coaches are in your office wanting to know why wasn't this done? Why was the clock messed up? Whatever else is going on. Not to say they're not going to say something, but at least if you tell them ahead of time, they'll have a better idea of what's going on and what you're dealing with. And I think that can open up to a greater discussion in your department that, hey, how do we staff these things? Maybe I need an assistant coach or some professional staff member to help me out with stuff. And that's really how those discussions start in getting more help for your office or more resources.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Sounds great. We want to thank each one of our presenters today. We continue to appreciate Capital One's sponsorship of the CoSIDA Continuing Education series. The recording of today's webinar, and the ASAP Sports FastScript will be available for on-demand use exclusively in CoSIDA's online community CoSIDA Connect later today.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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