By Mike Phelps

Mike Phelps is an Assistant Editor at Athletic Management. He can be reached at: mp@MomentumMedia.com.

When Jim Langkamp, Athletic Director at Portage (Wis.) High School, first proposed involving the community in hiring coaches, staff members questioned his sanity. They envisioned a room full of Monday morning quarterbacks stepping up to the podium, grabbing the microphone, and blasting current or former coaches. It would be like opening up a Pandora's box, his coaches told him.

But Langkamp was undeterred. He believed that while the chronic complainers in the community are often the most vocal, they're also in the minority. He wanted to tap into the overlooked supporters out there looking to share a constructive voice.

So he went ahead with his idea. And in the end, it was an unmitigated success.

"If high school athletic teams truly are community programs, I believe the community should have input when we hire coaches," Langkamp says. "We should at least listen to what types of things are important to our parents and fans.

"Sometimes the community is viewed as the enemy, and that's not the type of relationship I want to have," he continues. "By asking for input, we open doors to more positive communication, and maybe people will feel more comfortable calling me to discuss different issues--positive or negative."

OPEN FORUM
For Langkamp, involving the community in coaching hires meant holding a forum for all school district residents. But he didn't just open the doors, plug in a microphone, and invite audience members to speak their minds. Quite the opposite, actually. Langkamp had a clear, detailed plan.

Much of that plan was based on a similar initiative used by Springfield (Ohio) City Schools when it hired a new boys' basketball coach in September. Langkamp had stumbled across a news story about Springfield's hiring process and called David Estrop, Superintendent at Springfield, for advice.

At both schools, the goal of the forum was for community members to compile a list of attributes they wanted to see in a head coach. This would then be used to help administrators write interview questions for the candidates.

In Langkamp's case, the forum was held as a general meeting, rather than to review a specific opening. So he began the evening by posing a simple question to those in attendance: What characteristics or traits should the school district look for when hiring varsity head coaches?

Langkamp then laid out the ground rules for the discussion, specifying that no names of current or past coaches could be used in the conversation and people couldn't list characteristics that could be viewed as discriminatory due to age, gender, or race. "One of the keys to making this successful was keeping the discussion topic very focused and on-task," Langkamp says. "We told participants that the forum was meant to specifically answer the question on the top of the agenda, which ensured the discussion didn't deteriorate into a gripe session or take on a negative tone. I wanted it to be productive."

From there, the attendees were broken down into smaller groups of six to eight people and asked to brainstorm their lists of ideal traits. At Springfield, Estrop also included a facilitator--a school employee or member of the interview committee--at each table.

"The facilitator did not participate in the discussion, but simply led the group and made sure everybody was given an equal chance to participate," Estrop says. "It was also an opportunity for members of the interview team to actively listen to the community before they formed their own views. Otherwise, people could say, 'They have already made up their mind.'"

When all groups had completed the task, everyone reconvened to share what they came up with and compile one master list of their ideas. Then the groups were reshuffled, and the new groups were charged with paring the master list down to just 10 attributes. At both schools, groups had to reach a consensus--voting was not allowed.

"We call it our small group consensus process," Estrop says. "We asked each participant to decide, 'Can I live with it? Is it better than nothing?' Voting is divisive, because there are winners and losers.

"Once each group reached a consensus, their facilitator went to the chart in the front of the room with all the attributes on it and placed a dot next to each of the 10 items the group had identified as most important," he continues. "By the end of the evening, when all the tables had reported out, you could see very clearly what the 10 top items were."

To encourage group members to reach consensus, Estrop posed a challenge. "If they didn't reach consensus, they couldn't post their dot," he explains. "If consensus was only reached on five, that group could only post five dots."

Estrop also took an additional step to ensure his small groups wouldn't be made up of like-minded people. When people entered the room at the beginning of the session, they were assigned a number in the order they arrived. That number then corresponded with a table.

"People tend to arrive in groups with others they associate with, and this served to break up those people," Estrop says. "We encourage a diversity of viewpoints. That's important because then people have to talk through things together. They are forced to work toward a better understanding and agreement about what's important."

Both administrators publicized their meetings in the local media, and Langkamp says about 30 people showed up for his 90-minute session, while around 35 came out for Springfield's two-hour forum. Both received positive feedback from the attendees.

"During the last five minutes, I asked if anyone had any thoughts or suggestions about the process and one person stood up and simply said, 'Thank you,'" Langkamp says. "He was sincerely grateful for having the chance to communicate with the school."

"One man told me he appreciated being able to put in his two cents, and that he learned a lot from the other people there," Estrop adds. "He met some new people, found out that not everybody agreed with what he thought was important, and enjoyed reaching consensus. Everyone felt a sense of a accomplishment that they had done something to help move the district forward--and they had."

COMMUNITY COMMITTEE
Another way to involve community members in the hiring process is to include them on your interview committee. At Mountain Home (Ark.) High School, that was never deemed important--until this winter.

In January, the school needed to hire a new head football coach, and Athletic Director Janet Wood formed a search committee that included herself, a basketball coach, the school resource officer, a booster club representative, and a school board member. The committee interviewed six candidates and presented one to the school board for approval.

What happened next caught Wood and her committee by surprise. "The board didn't feel comfortable it had enough information to accept the recommendation," Wood says. "Some of the board members felt we needed a more diverse group on the interview committee."

With that in mind, a new committee was formed consisting of Wood, the school principal, a different board member from the original group, and seven community members selected by the board. The community members were a combination of parents of varsity football players, parents of children involved in the youth football program, and supporters of the program.

According to Wood, the new faces on the committee made a difference. "They were able to see things from a different perspective," she says. "Parents especially gave insight into candidates. They talked about whether they trusted a certain candidate with their children."

In the end, the second committee recommended the same coach, but Wood is glad they restarted the process. "Along with providing insight, it also gave the community some buy-in and ownership over who was hired," she says.

COMBO PLAN
At Lakota East High School in Liberty Township, Ohio, Athletic Director Richard Bryant uses both focus groups and community members on the interview team when hiring coaches. The process is long and involves many different stakeholders, but Bryant says it works extremely well.

To start, three focus groups are formed to gather people's opinions on the hire. One is made up of coaches, another of student-athletes, and the third includes parents. Like Langkamp does, Bryant lays down guidelines for forum participants.

"It's like teaching class," Bryant says. "You set out very clear expectations at the beginning of the meeting of what the purpose is. For football, our purpose was to determine what we wanted in a coach and where we all wanted the program to be. It's not a bash session for the previous coach, and his name shouldn't even be brought up.

"We tell participants we're moving forward and tonight's going to be positive," he continues. "If anyone can't handle that, the meeting will either end or specific people will be asked to leave."

After completing the focus group sessions, Bryant moves on to two rounds of interviews, each with a separate committee. The first-round committee is made up of parents, students, coaches, and administrators, while the second round is just administrators. Bryant believes it's critical to have parents present during those initial interviews.

"If you're going to ask a parent to trust someone with their kids, you want to gauge their feelings about that person," Bryant says. "Nothing does that better than face-to-face meetings. Every candidate looks good on paper. But once you see that person interact with a mom or a dad who has a vested interest in the program, you get a better feel for whether the candidate is a good fit for your school.

"It's always interesting to hear what parents think of individuals," he continues. "As administrators, we're often looking at finding someone who has a strong educational background and has been a successful coach at a similar school, among other things. But parents make sure we also think about what kind of person the candidate is and if this individual is going to be a positive role model. I love to hear a parent say, 'I think this guy's going to take care of my kid.' Sometimes that's the most important thing."

Bryant is careful about who he asks to be on the interview committee. "Choosing the parents comes down to the relationship they've had with the school," he says. "We don't want a parent whose focus is on their own kid and how he will or won't be successful at wide receiver depending on what kind of offense the coach is running.

"We tend to choose the parents who are at everything, with the kids who do everything," Bryant continues. "There's a core group of parents you can count on to be honest and are there just because they want to help, not to further their son or daughter's playing career."

Once the committee is formed, Bryant asks each member to come up with two or three interview questions they feel are important. He also provides guidelines to make sure the questions are legal and appropriate.

"We then check over everything and organize the questions on a sheet with a pretty in-depth rating system," Bryant explains. "We allow some follow-ups to the applicants' answers, but we monitor the questioning very closely because it's likely the parents have never interviewed anybody before in this way. You have to be very careful with the questions that are asked so you don't get a lawsuit slapped on you."

DOES IT WORK?
Getting community input during a hiring search certainly takes time, but those who have gone through the process say it is worth the effort. For one, it greatly improves buy-in from the community for the new coach.

"If it's organized properly, feedback from stakeholders is invaluable," Bryant says. "The end result may not be that everybody is 100-percent happy, but there won't be as many naysayers tearing the new coach apart because people had the opportunity to be a part of the process. A little bit of legwork and proper organization can go a long way toward helping you garner community support."

Defining the qualities that the community values and having that list on hand can also make it easier to come to a final decision. "I've found the hiring process to be very difficult," Langkamp says. "You might have two candidates who are really close in ability and you're splitting hairs. It helps to have another tool to separate one from the other.

"The other thing I've found to be helpful is having a checklist you can go over before you sign off on hiring someone," he continues. "You can go down the list and say, 'Does this person have passion? Is he or she a role model? Is he or she a motivator? Is this person going to fit the mold of what our community had in mind?' In the end, it helps you confirm that you got the right person."

Getting the community involved can also be reassuring. In Springfield, once all the dots had been placed on the board and the number-one attribute had been revealed, Estrop was pleasantly surprised.

"It struck me, because I never would have guessed it," Estrop says. "Basketball is a very big deal here in Springfield, and the expectation is to field a very competitive team. But the number-one quality defined by the community was that their next coach value academics more than athletics."

The same was true at Portage. "The thing that stood out to me was how much the community downplayed a coach's sports knowledge," Langkamp says. "For them, it was more about a coach's personal characteristics than being great with X's and O's. That's something I never would have learned if I didn't open up the process and get the community involved."

Sidebar: SIMPLER PLAN
Aaron Braund, Athletic Director at Sauk Prairie High School in Prairie du Sac, Wis., is another administrator who has experimented with asking the community for input in hiring decisions. However, he used a more streamlined approach.

Toward the beginning of a recent coaching search, Braund kept receiving phone calls from residents asking what type of coach he was going to hire. He figured it might be something to talk about as a community.

"So I decided to have a listening session and find out what qualities the community wanted in a coach," Braund says. "I also used the opportunity to tell people about the hiring process and who was on the hiring committee. I then asked for any potential interview questions they would like asked--although I made no guarantees we were going to include every question."

Throughout the discussion, Braund was careful to define the community's involvement. "We made it clear the community was not going to decide who we hired," he says, "but they could share what they wanted in a coach, or what type of person they wanted their kids to learn from.

"The most important part of the listening session was to inspire confidence that the right hire was going to be made," Braund continues. "It assured community members that politics would not be part of the equation. If you can take that fear away, then people will focus on what's important--getting the best candidate for the position."

Braund found that, overall, the qualities he wanted in a coach closely mirrored those desired by the community. But it was important to have their support. "Just to hear that everyone was on the same page helped," he says. "Any time you as an athletic director provide an opportunity for feedback, it's a good thing."