Smart Coaching Blog

Solutions for Smart Coaches and Athletic Directors

Archives for May 2018

Coaching Coaches

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One thing that has served me very well over the course of my career has been that as a young coach, the people I worked for set specific and bright line expectations, had the courtesy to say when I was doing a good job and the respect for me to tell me when I wasn’t.

For a long time, I thought this was standard, but over time as I was able to work for more people and then as an AD, I was able to observe other programs and hear stories from other schools, I realized the practice of coaching coaches wasn’t as commonplace as it should be.

For coaches, failure to do this falls into one of two categories:  they don’t trust others to comply or they are avoiding an awkward or uncomfortable situation.

Head coaches often times fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves.  They don’t trust their assistants, much less their student-athletes or parents to do basic tasks that will free the head coach up to complete projects that only they can do.  When I was a head wrestling coach, I attempted to delegate some but by and large was doing all sorts of tasks that my assistants could have done almost as well as me.  I let perfect become the enemy of good.  Some coaches and AD’s also fear that they won’t be as valued if they give up some responsibility to others.

When I became the head football coach and athletic director, I HAD to learn how to delegate.  The key to this was building systems so that I could “plug and play” coaches, parents and athletes into projects or tasks without having to do a lot of orienting, etc.

The second category of athletic directors/head coaches and who aren’t coaching their coaches are those that are avoiding uncomforable conversations.  This can be because they struggle with confrontations or that they didn’t establish proper expectations in the first place.  It also can be because they suffer from imposter syndrome, where they feel an older, more experienced coach may not respect their leadership or opinion.

As leaders we have to understand the importance of establishing expectations and providing feedback.  Coaches have to be coached–encouraged, guided, corrected, held accountable and praised for the time, energy and effort they give to our programs and more importantly our student-athletes.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and decided to write a book on the topic.  Right now, you can purchase the Kindle version of my book, The Athletic Leader’s Guide to Coaching Coaches on Amazon.com for $9.99.  Soon, I will have it also available for sale on my site as well as several other resources that I think coaches and AD’s will appeciate.  The book is written for both coaches and AD’s with research driven solutions to the issues with have with staff development and supervision of our coaches.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Transformational Coaching

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One of the first things I share with my coaches when we have our pre-season inservice meeting is that regardless of our vocation, when we coach kids, we are educators.  My belief is that interscholastic athletics exist first and foremost to enhance and augment the overall educational experience of the student-athlete.  

As such, the expectations that we have of our coaches, as well as student athletes should be in line with the expectations we have for the classroom.  Our behavior and goals on the court/mat/track/field should vary by degree, not in nature.

I share this with them not only to draw a bright line that all can understand regarding behavior but also to empower coaches who may not be teachers that they have a vital role in the education of a young person.  We believed that there were two sides of the coin for a championship program: strong relationships and high expectations. Without the former, it is difficult to truly fulfill the former.

When we talk about relationships, we must address our purpose as coaches.  If we only coach to win games, we are in jeopardy of being transactional coaches who only care for athletes so long as they serve a purpose.  If we not only are striving to put the most competitive team/athlete in the field of competition as well as equally concerning ourselves with the development of the athlete’s as a whole person, we operate as transformational coaches.

Recently, I came across a short quote that was posted on Tumblr by a person known as Autistic Annie that resonated with me.  I think it is an interesting thought that could lead to some deep and rich discussions about coaching and what “respect” is in that context.  Here is the quote as originally published:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

In reflecting upon this, it struck me that I may have been guilty in the past of making this semantic error.  As transformational coaches, we need to first recognize the value of all athletes as people first and expect in return that they return the favor.  Too often though, I think coaches make the mistake of basing their “respect” for an athlete upon what that individual does, rather than upon who they are.

If athletes can’t comply with the rules and expectations of their coaches, there is only so much that can be done.  But, we always have a “trade them or train them” deadline.  It is reasonable to distribute playing time at the varsity level proportionally with an athlete’s ability to help the team. Regardless of this, we are going to love them as best we can as people and making everyone accountable to the same high standards.

At the very least, I think the quote above is a great discussion starter for someone interested in exploring their coaching practice.  Hopefully, it will help you take a deeper look at your relationship with your athletes (and coaches and maybe even parents) and spur you to become more intentional about those relationships.

Optimism without Naiveté

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Pollyanna.  Naive. Delusional.  These are three words that critics of a positive or optimistic coaching style use and, let’s face it, in some cases, they might be more accurate than we’d like to admit.  One of the problems with using the phrase, “positive coaching,” is that people associate it with The Power of Positive Thinking that if you believe something it will come to pass regardless of your actions or external limitations.

Realism is absolutely needed in many situations that coaches and athletic directors run into on a daily basis such as student safety, fiscal policies and procedures and transportation.  Although you want ourselves and our coaches to have hope and optimism for a bright future, you also need a healthy dose of realism to ensure success.

Vice Admiral James Stockdale was shot down during the Vietnam War and spent seven and a half years in a brutal prison camp where he was tortured and left in solitary confinement for much of his time there.  How was he able to survive while others succumbed to the terrible conditions of the camp?

Stockdale said that prisoners who thought they would be home by Christmas and when that came and went, would say they’d be home by Easter would eventually wear down and lose all hope as these mental milestone came and went.  Stockdale said it was “naive optimism,” that got you killed in those prison camps.

Stockdale had a different approach.  As he put it, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great coined this concept as the Stockdale Paradox.

So then the question arises, how does one both remain optimistic in the face of extreme adversity or negative situations?

Recently I came across the concept of what Martin Seligman refers to “Explanatory Styles.”  An explanatory style is essentially your internal dialogue when something happens. Seligman through research identified two basic explanatory styles:  optimistic and pessimistic.

Seligman further identified three crucial dimensions to your explanatory style:

  • Permanence: Is it likely to continue? Is it permanent or temporary?  If it’s a bad thing, the optimist tends to think it’s a fluke. If it’s a good thing, they tend to think it’s permanent.
  • Pervasiveness: Is it reflective of your whole life? Is it “universal” or is it “specific”? With a good event, the optimist is more likely to extend it to her whole life. With a bad event, she will tend to isolate the incident as specific to that situation.
  • Personalization: Internal or external? Something good happens. An optimist pats himself on the back (internal)—saying he did a good job.  Something bad happens. The optimist looks to things outside of himself (external) to explain the event—from bad luck to an off day.

Seligman took his theories to several places to study.  At Metlife, Seligman was asked to screen all of the new hires at the company for their explanatory style.   He found that insurance agents who scored in the less optimistic half of his test were twice as likely to quit as agents who scored in the more optimistic half. Further, the agents from the top quarter sold 50% more than the agents from the bottom quarter.

In the NBA he found that teams, and not just individuals, have a meaningful and measurable explanatory style. Following a loss, an optimistic team was much more likely to beat the spread. A team’s explanatory style for bad events strongly predicts how they do against a point spread after a loss.

So, how to become more optimistic?  Pay attention to your internal dialogue, notice the patterns, and try to focus on the permanence, pervasiveness and personalization you ascribe to an event.