A different kind of performance review: Cortland coach ranks character traits

Cortland, N.Y. â€" Plenty of coaches pore over spreadsheets to keep track of stats, season trends and grade-point averages. But Cortland men’s soccer coach Steven Axtell utilizes Microsoft Excel for something else: a thoughtful approach to feedback that goes far beyond the traditional performance review.

Axtell, who enters his eighth season this fall, has led the Dragons to the Division III NCAA tournament in four of the last five seasons. He credits the team’s success in part to a feedback system that offers starters and role players alike detailed data on where they’re doing well â€" and where they’re not.

On a recent afternoon in his office, Axtell opened a spreadsheet on his MacBook. At the top, he had typed each players’ name. On the left side, he listed about 20 character traits the program values. They include work ethic, confidence, respect, trust, commitment, desire to win and desire to improve.

At the end of each semester, each player gets the blank spreadsheet to fill out. Players rank teammates by assigning either a “0” to signify “no” â€" that player didn’t demonstrate the character trait â€" or “1” to signify “yes,” that player demonstrated that character trait. There’s no in between. Then, players submit the spreadsheet, and Axtell compiles each player’s scores on a team sheet, which he presents in a meeting.

Players think of the feedback approach as novel, friendly and streamlined. It influences how they interact with and think about one another. Confronted with the data, they can see exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are. Because it’s anonymous, they receive honest feedback, not skewed or sheltered.

“I’m a firm believer that the world needs better males,” Axtell said. “That’s the base of all this. You need males focused on giving positive character traits. Empathy is a big one.”

“It ties into male privilege and college campus culture,” he added. “We’re trying to get ahead of the curve with that. Would your teachers give you different scores from your teachers? We go further and extrapolate to everyone in your dorm, even. Would the males in your dorm give you different numbers from the females in your dorm? If they would, that’s a problem because they’re all human.”

Steve Axtell, who enters his eighth season this fall, has led the Dragons to the Division III NCAA tournament in four of the last five seasons.

About three years ago, Axtell created the feedback system, which can be applied to any organization. He hadn’t seen it used anywhere and says it was his idea. At recruiting events, he’d hear coaches talk about character development, but tangible evidence was scarce. He wanted to create something that would allow him to see how his players thought of one another.

Because there are more 20 than players rostered, the sample size is large enough to give players enough scale, enough reason to believe the information. While he hasn’t cut players solely on bad scores, he says a weak evaluation has contributed to why he didn’t keep a player on the roster.

Axtell’s approach recognizes that all players are on the same level. Starters and role players, seniors and first-year players â€" they’re provided the same vote. How many goals a player scored doesn’t dictate how many votes he will get.

“In athletics, you have a tendency to get a really negative manifestation of male groups,” Axtell said. “People tend to make excuses for athletes so much. Sometimes, guys will get here and rely too much on their identity as an athlete than as an academic. That’s troubling. Even the ones that are going professional, you want to be an intelligent human. You want to have a desire to improve and be committed.”

The spreadsheet helps players gain a sense of areas they’re contributing positively, and areas they are not. Several players said they may use their scores during job interviews after graduation. The specific feedback from teammates provides an indication of the type of teammate and person they are â€" and the type of person they can become. They also said they learn how to think about personalities, the consequences of their actions, and how to hear negative feedback.

Players think of the feedback approach as novel, friendly and streamlined. It influences how they interact with and think about one another.

Every semester, Axtell opens his office door. Players can stop in and chat with him about their score. Axtell also leads a team discussion in which they discuss the trends and what factors made them evaluate teammates the way they did. Understanding why teammates evaluated them as either trustworthy or not helps them design a game plan for how to improve.

“The shock value gets you,” said junior midfielder Jake Keller, who transferred from Syracuse and led Cortland in scoring last season. “There’s nothing up in the air. You know truly what you need to improve. You can’t fly under the radar.”

Captain Nevin Nambiar said the feedback from peers could mean more than from people in higher positions, such as coaches. Teammates are the ones players see off the field, where non-soccer decisions are made. Recently, he’s tried to improve the ways in which he shows he’s caring, based on feedback he’d received over the spreadsheet.

“We’re going to be fathers,” Nambiar said. “We have to be good men, and that might mean a wake-up call from your teammates.”

At Cortland, the next tweaks and character improvements are not a thing of the future, to be diagnosed at the year’s end or graduation. At Cortland, they already are happening.

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