Leadership and Coaching: When to do ‘nothing’

I read something on ‘the butterfly effect’ recently–it was something I was exposed to back in 6th grade. Awesome science-fiction but I didn’t get it at the time, not like reading it now causes me to think.

Butterfly effect: Basically something REALLY small or profound like the death of just one butterfly can have long-term massive repercussions.

I turned this to coaching/leadership. I think one of the stereotypes we have of leadership is that the leader is a go-getter, that they are out front, obvious and visible. A leader is active, gives feedback constantly to her team, etc, etc. Watch a basketball game–who is standing barking at the players…that’s the head coach, the leader. Volleyball–same thing, but there are exceptions. Watch Penn State play–the assistant coaches are up doing the talking…the head coach is sitting, calm, jotting comments in a notebook (or writing his order to-go at the restaurant for afterwards….I jest!). To an outsider, the assumption is immediately that the person up and talking is in charge.

ASIDE OBSERVATIONON SOCIETY: There are exceptions to this. Go watch sports and officials/event staff. If there is a male coach and a female coach, invariably they will make the assumption that the man is the head coach rather than the assistant. One of the first signs you can tell that event management is on-the-ball is that they know in advance who does what for visiting teams/programs.

There’s no question Russ Rose was in charge at Penn State (VB coaches know that). So really–it shows that you can lead without being loud, you can lead without eyes being on you. Leadership can be quiet.

And leadership can come from doing nothing. I think that’s critical especially with younger athletes. Does a coach need to prove his knowledge at every point in a practice–or to demonstrate he can hit a ball really hard or dig the 8th grade team’s best hitter?

Another aside: The blog is free. It’ll stay that way, but if you read it regularly–would you consider donating to my Foundation at http://www.dietzfoundation.org? It’s 501-c-3, tax deductible for you, and donations go straight to helping teachers or people looking to become teachers. Even if it is just $5/month, you’d be surprised how much can be done with that…if 100 people did that every month, I could endow a college scholarship annually with just that money…really. Please think about it.

I had a “teacher” who scarred me–made me hesitate getting involved in education (teacher is in quotes because real teachers don’t do what she did) because of her words. They have a trickle-down effect. Hers were massive but just one statement from you as a coach such as “That wasn’t good” or “I’m disappointed” can do real damage…and enough kids have been told they are ‘disappointing’ that if I can’t think of a replacement word for it, I refer to it as ‘small-D disappointment’ instead of ‘big-D disappointment’.

Words have power. Sometimes they have the power to help. Sometimes they are vicious and harm. Leadership is knowing when to keep your mouth shut as much as it is to say something.

Leadership is also realizing you’ve said something boneheaded or hurtful and acknowledging it, making amends if possible. That’s taking responsibility for your own actions.

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Maybe this is like psychological reinforcements (positive and negative). When you say something, take action to benefit others–that’s positive leadership. When you choose to stay quiet or take no action, permitting your group to work things out independently, instead of criticizing or saying something harsh–we’ve removed ourselves as an obstruction, thus this would be ‘negative leadership’.

–the problem with that term though is that no one ever uses positive/negative reinforcement properly anyways, always confusing negative reinforcement with punishment…so does it help in trying to understand effective leadership to create a term ripe for misuse?

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I’ve come back to thinking about this the past few days (and edited the tense of Russ Rose’s coaching). The question is “When is doing nothing beneficial?”

I think in terms of interpersonal drama between players–a coach should do nothing–right up until it affects on-court performance. Players have to have the opportunity to learn how to handle relationships for good or bad. I also think that if a coach inserts herself into a situation, it is just as likely to cause problems as bring about a solution–inevitably someone will interpret the coach’s action as choosing a side or playing favorites–which leads to further drama beyond the original situation.

I think there’s value in ‘nothing’ during a game as well. Coaches tend to be uncomfortable with dead air. There’s this primal-coaching idea that there should be constant talking and chatter between players, coach-player, and player-coach. I’m not sure why though. Isn’t that what practice is for–to work out the bugs, fix the problems, so that they can go out and play? The problem is coaches feel peer-pressured into micro-managing…multiple sports.

Do you really need a coach to provide the insight that Dana Rettke is going to hit a slide? Do you need to call a serving zone for your player as a reminder to not serve Morgan Hentz?

Watch basketball coaches–when is the last time you saw a coach sitting back and not pointing out what to do or calling a play? Baseball managers are calling pitches from the dugout. The only NFL quarterback to call his own game this century was Peyton Manning–otherwise everything comes in from the sidelines until a team runs a ‘hurry-up’…

Oh well…I don’t really know how to quantify the value of ‘nothing’–and not sure how many coaches would try and work it into their gameplan. When I explain it, I get a lot of skeptical looks, a lot of “Okay, whatever”…as coaches go back to their comfort zones.