For the Taking the Lead series, we asked leaders in various fields to share insights on what they’ve learned and what lies ahead.

Janice Washington, head coach of the Lincoln University women’s basketball team, is hardly a newcomer to her field. Washington, 44, is in her 18th year of coaching, including stints at Daytona State College, Campbell University, Lackawanna College and Vicenza High School in Italy.

But during a recent video call, when Cheryl Reeve, the head coach and president of basketball operations for the W.N.B.A.’s Minnesota Lynx, started to talk about leadership, Washington grabbed a pen and started taking notes — and for good reason: Reeve, 56, is a three-time W.N.B.A. Coach of the Year and has led Minnesota to four league championships. In 2019, she was named the league’s Executive of the Year.

Washington may have been note-taking out of a desire to follow in Reeve’s footsteps — and her time at Lincoln has offered a promising start. Last year, her career took a leap forward. In her first season at Lincoln, a Division II program, she led the team to its first C.I.A.A. Tournament title and a berth in the NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball Tournament. In June, she was named the Clarence “Big House” Gaines College Basketball Coach of the Year for Division II by the National Sports Media Association.

Her second season didn’t start quite as smoothly. With 10 new players on the roster, as well as several new assistants, the Lions started 10-6, far-off the pace of their 22-8 record in Washington’s debut season.

Then something clicked for Lincoln in early January. After Washington’s conversation with Reeve, one of the sport’s brightest minds and most recognizable faces, the Lions won five games in a row.

Ms. Washington’s team is peaking at the right time, with the conference tournament set to begin Feb. 21. During this conversation, which has been condensed and edited, Reeve told Washington that she’d be watching.

What does it take to be an effective leader?

JANICE WASHINGTON Communication. Not overly aggressive, but very specific and assertive. Leaders have to be effective in their communication, especially at this level, to make sure that all of the components and pieces of this entire operation are flowing in a manner that is going to allow our team to be put in a position to be competitive.

CHERYL REEVE At the core of any successful team, or relationships with players, is exactly that — relationships. There’s got to be a level of trust that they know that you’re going to be prepared. They know that what you’re doing with them is the right thing. And the way you accomplish that as a coach is communication. Sometimes coaches think that it’s all about their system and their basketball prowess. I think it’s about how players feel. They’ve got to feel good and believe in what they’re doing and they’ve got to believe in the people that they’re playing for. It’s our job as leaders to get them to want to run through a brick wall for you. And that comes from building trust.

WASHINGTON That was one of the challenges for me early on in my coaching career. I’m all of 5-foot-1. When I played in college I was a very aggressive player. And when I initially started coaching, I was very aggressive. It didn’t translate my first couple of years, because I didn’t know how to develop relationships with the girls. Your players won’t necessarily care how many plays you can diagram if they don’t know you or trust you.

How do you manage players’ personalities?

REEVE For me, I preferred a coach that was on me. My dad was that way. I don’t want someone to tell me that I did something well. I don’t take compliments well. What do I need to do better? So I’m always kind of tending toward that. There are other players that need to hear the opposite. They need to hear the things that they did well. They need the affirmations.

WASHINGTON Like Coach Reeve, I expected everybody to go to the gym to get better and get shots up even when the coach doesn’t demand that. But you learn that each player is going to be different. What motivates them is going to be different. When you’re approaching your point guards, you might be able to be all on them. But the second you do that to one of your bigs [bigger players], they might be teary-eyed. How do you love on ’em?

How do you pick yourself and your team up after a tough loss?

WASHINGTON It’s basketball. You don’t have time. [Reeve chuckles.]

You have to be preparing for the next thing. We’re constantly watching film on what we can improve, be it in practice, be it in games. It may be one day we’re just watching all of our turnovers or one day we’re watching all of our offenses, or all of our defensive sets. I’m constantly reminding them that it’s one game and one game doesn’t write the story for your entire season. We have to have short-term memories and be better prepared and make sure that we’re doing what’s necessary, going the speed and pace that we need to in practice and making sure we’re focused and locked into what the scouting report entails. We have to move forward. We can’t stay in the past in those moments. We have to just be very mindful of the moment that we’re in.

REEVE There’s a way in handling it that I’m still working on after tough losses. They need you in those moments to be their leader, to talk about what’s next. And you do have to flush it. That was something that [former Minnesota Lynx star] Sylvia Fowles used to say: flush it and move on. And you have to have a great support system. I think coaches have to have a place that they can say the things that they want to say, how they want to say it. We have to be able to have our outlets. That’s been vital for me. Sometimes it’s your coaching staff.

What’s the most important piece of advice you’ve learned from an assistant?

REEVE I have an assistant coach on the staff now that I rely heavily on. We call her the Bishop. Her name is Rebekkah Brunson. I really cherish her ability to to see something for what it is and put words on it. In our first season in Minnesota, in 2010, we weren’t finding the success that we had hoped. It was a 6 a.m. flight, and we were up early after a tough loss the night before and maybe had lost four or five in a row. We gathered the captains and a couple of captains spoke. And then I got to Rebekkah, and Rebekkah said, “Coach, I just don’t think we’re good enough.” It just hit me like a ton of bricks. Sometimes you don’t have the better team and it’s important to be realistic about the expectations that you’re placing on your players and on your team. I’ve never been good at that. I think we should win every game we play.

WASHINGTON My first season at Daytona, that was the topic of conversation between myself and my assistant coach [Russ Jackson]. I had gotten my second technical foul and I was always yelling at the officials. We had a conversation after one of the games. And what he said was, it’s not the officiating that’s not very good — the team is not very good. We go back and I’m watching film and fortunately it’s very close to Thanksgiving break, so I’m able to go back and watch all of the games. I’m like, “Maybe I need to adjust my expectations for this group and go from winning to where are we seeing growth?” Because I expect to win.

We know what the other team has. I know what we have. And maybe my expectations of our players are much higher than the product actually being put out there on the court. Having somebody that you trust say that to you — it’s different when it’s fans or parents. But when it’s somebody that’s in the practices, they’re at the games, they know what your team has.

What does it take to be a good mentor?

REEVE The willingness to empower. A mentor’s job is to understand where people are trying to go, and that you’re in a position to help them get there. Somebody helped you get where you are.

WASHINGTON One of the quotes on my calendar is: “You can have everything you want in this life if you help everybody else get what they want.” The goal for us is to constantly be able to provide good, positive, effective leadership for the people that we want to see be successful. It’s different for every single one of them. What each of them wants out of their experience here at Lincoln is something totally different. We’ve got a very high academic group of kids. Some of the girls on our team that may not play as much as they want, they’re going to leave here and be doctors and dentists. Being able to just help them be successful in a team environment is so vital. Because when student-athletes graduate, those are the people that companies want — people that know how to play on teams, people that know how to play in the sandbox.

What’s the biggest challenge facing the women’s game?

REEVE Regardless of the level, the biggest challenge facing women’s basketball is societal norms and being held down. We’ve seen exponential growth in women’s sports, largely due to the perseverance, the persistence of women in leadership who have pulled us forward. And I think that continues to be the largest barrier as we continue to get less than five percent of the media coverage. We continue to receive a low percentage of the global marketing dollars. There’s a great opportunity, however, for growth, that’s going to catapult the game into places that people never thought we’d be.

WASHINGTON There’s a big push within the N.C.A.A. with the 50-year anniversary of Title IX. Last year, for our conference tournament, our women’s game brought in around 13,000 fans, and the men’s game brought in around 17,000. Being able to market the product that we have is something that we need to consistently work on and keep striving to improve. The W.N.B.A. started the end of my freshman year in college. I remember my teammates and I all huddled around this little box TV, watching all the games. Part of the reason that I played basketball is because people told me that I couldn’t. There’s nothing for you out there with basketball. Why are you up in the yard dribbling the ball at 6 in the morning?

As women, especially in the sport of basketball, we’ve always been told that we can’t do it. There’s not enough places for you to play. Why don’t you all lower the rim? Why don’t you move the 3-point line? There’s so many things that people want us to do to change our product, to meet them where they are, when we put out a fantastic product already. When people come and watch it, they’re like, “Man, these games are exciting. I didn’t know women’s basketball was this fast-paced.” It’s because they haven’t given it a chance.

REEVE [The former Texas Longhorns and Oregon Ducks power forward] Sedona Prince used social media to bring attention to something that coaches and administrators have been talking about for the better part of 25, 30, 40 years. One social media post [which highlighted the women’s skimpy weight room compared to the men’s version at the 2021 N.C.A.A. Tournament] by a student athlete changed everything. It led to a greater analysis of pulling back the curtain and going “What’s really happening here?” The people in positions of leadership are largely men who have been able to dismiss it for many, many years. Now they aren’t going to be able to get away with that. Now there’s a gender equity report that you can find and you can read.

The narrative by men is that no one is watching, there’s no money to be made. It’s nonsensical from a business standpoint. You take that into professional sports, you take that into sponsorship deals, marketing, TV rights deals. All those things are relevant to the ability for women’s sports to be considered a major sport. And who defines that? Men.

I’ve been in the league 23 or 24 years now, and where we came from and where we are is really, really encouraging. It is happening now at a much faster pace than the first 20 happened. It’s good to see society kind of understanding the dynamics and the ways in which some of these situations are institutionalized. We’re calling it out.