Leadership and Coaching: Positive Emotions

More than 150 years ago, the United States was torn in half by racists and separatists who attempted the destruction of the United States. It took four years but their efforts were beaten down and the U.S. survived after 2.6 million men answered the call to duty with nearly 400,000 killed or wounded during the war.

Because of where the fighting took place, political and military leaders saw the consequences on a daily basis as convalescing soldiers walked the streets of the nation’s capital and filled hospitals before heading to the front again or being sent home. There is no way words can describe how grim this was and the mood and tone of most leaders became equally grim.

Lincoln understood this but he made a conscious effort to listen and tell jokes and funny stories. He was confronted about this–that his laughter was inappropriate for the office of President. Lincoln’s response: “Gentlemen, why don’t YOU laugh? With the fearful strain upon me by both night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die.”

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So now we get to the coaching–though ultimately, knowing history has great value so for more on the Civil War, consider finding “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James McPherson. You can thank me later.

I spend quite a bit of time observing people. When I watch coaches–regardless of level–I see scowls. I hear yelling and forceful gesticulations, but I don’t see laughter very often. Do we take coaching too serious? Do we equate serious of emotion with quality of coaching? I can’t remember the last time I saw a coach laughing on the bench/sidelines of a game while the game was ongoing other than perhaps the last seconds of a game already decided.

Why?

I have no answer. I’m also not innocent of this by the way and I think I got ‘worse’ about this over the past several years–perhaps because we became REALLY successful and I was determined not to lose that level of success…and in the process lost the success BECAUSE I wasn’t laughing at funny things during games or even practice.

It’s a small sample size but I can point out times where laughter–the emphasis on the fun part of sports–meant the difference between winning and losing.

1 – Coaching HS, 2001. We were playing a big conference match and struggling–that’s bad in Illinois where you only play 2-of-3 rather than the normal 3-of-5. I was tight like the players, tense. The other team hit a quick set and our middle, Ashley, jumped, got a pretty solid block. The ball went straight up. Ashley turned to look where the ball had gone–unaware it was straight up. The rest of the team screamed ‘Ashley!!!!’ so she turned around to face the net–thinking she needed to block again. The ball came down, hit her on top of the head and bounced straight back up. When it hit her, she turned around again to face her teammates–and then the ball fell and hit her head again. There was a pause, the ref signaled ‘double hit’, and then the entire team broke out laughing as Ashley rolled her eyes, a bit embarrassed by it all. We lost the last few points of that set but came back to win the last two.

2 – We were playing for a chance to go to the NJCAA National Tournament. We were the favorite but because of nerves, we lost the first set. We were down in the second set, too. 12-6…not looking overly good. At that point, our outside hitter crushed a ball and–you know how it goes when you’re struggling–the other team’s defense dug it. The ball came towards the net and our athletic MH/OPP, Michaleen, jumped to crush it for the overpass-kill. There was a problem though–she’d misjudged the ball and it was going to go past her…so mid-air, she turned and set the ball outside and as she did it, she exclaimed “Whoops!” in a loud falsetto voice (she was not a loud person). Our libero tripped over her own feet laughing, two others looked at her with weird expressions and I sat equally confused. We lost the point–but it broke the tension as the girls started trash-talking Mich and making fun of the ‘whoops’ sound, saying it repeatedly now after making passes or sets and between plays. We scored 10 straight, wound up winning the set 25-19 and took the last two sets easily.

3 – We were at Nationals in 2016 playing in the Elite Eight. The girls felt some pressure based on the previous year’s success, so we fell in a 2-0 hole against a top 10 team. Those are difficult to climb out of (but the 2016 team went five sets a dozen times…). I was talking with my assistant wondering if we should make lineup changes. I came over to the team to tell them and found one of our back-row players, Michelle U. leading a half-dance party, have-pep rally, telling everyone we didn’t need to change anything, that we were undefeated in five set matches and you have to lose two sets to get to the fifth set in the first place. She didn’t see me behind her as she was doing this–but the players did…and they got those eyes like they were in on a funny joke. Michelle turned, “Ope, sorry, Dietz.” Everyone laughed–and I immediately scratched out the changes I’d planned and we went with our usual lineup–Michelle and the laughter solved more than anything else would.

Do you laugh during big matches? How do you have fun while coaching?

If you lose that fun-factor, how do you refind it? Can it be refound? Have we changed sports so much with the emphasis on winning-at-all-costs that “fun” is being driven to extinction? Like I said, over time, the fun factor for me was eroded–it often became about winning on the scoreboard at the expense of fun (thankfully, never at the cost of integrity/ethics).

Has time off for reflections restored the fun factor?

No answers…only questions…

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So now we are 8+ months post-writing this initially. I’ve started coming back to all of these again regularly as I gear up to begin coaching again next week (8/8/22). I don’t know if the time off restored the ‘fun factor’ or if it is the people I am coaching. It is fun now, though. If it wasn’t before–that says something about my recruiting more than anything else, I reckon–and trying to compete without cheating or cutting corners. I wore down from that–for sure.

*** Another update: After high school in the fall, I’m now gearing up for Junior High. Laughter and the ‘fun factor’ definitely make things better…150% sure of that. It’s not just about the volleyball–it’s about the bonding that comes with it–between players/coach and player-to-player as well.