Leadership and Coaching: Double Vision

There’s a dead German guy, name of von Goethe. He lived through a lot of upheaval–the American and French Revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, etc. He’s an important writer and he’s famous for quite a few trenchant observations such as: “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

One of my proudest moments as a coach comes from this–finding a kid that my assistant coach didn’t want at all (the ass’t’s comment was “Are you f-ing kidding me?”) , seeing her potential–and now watching her on ESPN+ broadcasts playing D1 ball. Goethe’s quote fits with my beliefs–it’s why I wrote this book.

It’s a challenge as a coach–to see the players as they are now…and then for what they can become, what their potential is. Is there a way to stay focused on that potential? I worked in a club once where I had a disagreement with the director–there was a kid who made a couple bad decisions and the director flippantly said, “You can’t save them all.” My response angered him. I told the director, “But you have to try.”

How do we get past the here-and-now to keep focus on the future? I don’t know….but it raises a different question–>How do we not let the past shape our views entirely? How do we focus on the future of that young person when we keep thinking back to when they were caught by police shoplifting at age 14 or busted for alcohol possession at 15? No, those aren’t things within practice, but they shape our opinions. Is there a way to prevent having our opinions “fixed” into a specific mindset?

If we are thinking of an athlete’s potential, how do we handle the young person who makes numerous mistakes or repeats the same ones over and over and over? At what point do we adjust our vision of that individual’s potential, lowering it to fit what we see rather than what we think could be?

And writing all that made me realize–this isn’t anywhere close to a new problem. It’s the basis of Abrahamic religion. Look at Hebrews 11:1 – “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Have we really made progress in this regard? Again, I don’t know.

Maybe that’s the problem with potential. It requires faith. There’s no science possible to guarantee young people reach their potential. I think everyone knows people who are ‘late bloomers’ or find their passion long after school is over; not everyone leaves school and walks straight into their dream career.

*** Coming back to this a while after writing this initially…

Believing in potential is tough for some coaches because their jobs are based on scoreboard success rather than player personal growth. It’s tough because some coaches find their self-worth in the scoreboard so that failure there is seen as a personal failure/loss of face.

Believing in potential is tough because kids are rebellious. They resist authority, they are 150% sure they have the answers–if only old people would get out of the way (to be fair, there are people who SHOULD get out of the way….). Those kids fight you even when you’re trying to help…and it’s exhausting to run your head into a brick wall hour after hour. Right?

So of course, I wind up back at two things, one old, one new.

OLD: “As a coach, if you don’t know what to do, ask yourself ‘Is this in the best interests of the young person?’ If it is, you do that. If not, keep thinking until you find the answer.” NEW: Genuine concern.

I think ‘genuine concern’ is the best way to maintain double-vision, to worry about your athlete now as well as for where they will be in a year, five years, or even twenty years down the road.

***

One more revision as I think through things. When I wrote the first bit, I was not coaching at all. The second bit came once I started trying to assess my career and what I could do to improve myself moving forward. Now, I’ve returned to coaching–back to working with high schoolers (and junior high athletes), an opportunity to put so much of what I’ve been thinking about into practice. I’m worried that I’ll revert to old habits in so many things. ‘Double vision’ though–I think what I’ve done previously is the right thing…and I’ll use that to help young people grow into bigger Shoes.