Nick Saban explains the difference between a mistake that deserves getting chewed out and one that deserves encouragement “I always sort of had a lot of respect for the fact that any player that’s a competitor wants to do well. And I think when you start with that, you have a better perspective because you look at things from their perspective, not your perspective. And I think that’s very helpful.” “Sometimes when guys are not doing intangible things, whether it’s giving effort or focusing or making mental errors or things that they can actually control, that is something that you can’t tolerate. And you really want to maybe sometimes get after a guy a little bit for it.” “But when guys are doing those things and just not having success, I think that’s when you want to pat them on the back and get them to believe in themselves and have an understanding if they continue to do things the right way, they will eventually have success.” “And every player’s different. Sometimes you got guys that are obsessive-compulsive type personalities that are really hard on themselves, and I don’t think you need to get on those guys because they’re already getting on themselves.” “Then you have other guys that may not be self-starters, and you got to push them a little bit more to get them to be what they’re capable of being. I think all those things were factors in how you kind of approach a player and try to get him to be the best he can be.” “I always tried to focus on the individual and not look at it like one size fits all, and try to take the best approach with that particular guy to help him have success.”

Nick Saban says one of the biggest mistakes leaders make when their environment changes is sitting around complaining about the new rules, and says his philosophy was that complaining is actually a distraction to the solution, so you should always spend that energy figuring out how to adapt “You have to be flexible, number one. If you’re flexible, then you have a willingness to adapt. And I think your willingness to adapt is really, really important because things are changing.” “There’s a lot of changes that are ongoing that you have to adapt to. And I think that rather than complain about it, which a lot of people sit around and complain…” “Complaining is actually a distraction to the solution. I think that you’ve got to spend most of your time trying to figure out, ‘What is the solution? How can we adapt?’” “That’s the way we’ve tried to look at all these challenges, to try to improve the quality of the program that we have.”