Leadership in Coaching: 5 Simple Ideas

The advantage of simplicity is it makes things easy to remember–ever notice catchy phrases are never long in ad campaigns? That’s the advantage of 5-4-3-2-1 in terms of thinking about leadership.

So when you start thinking about something, you find examples all over the place. Of course, if you talk about it, your electronic devices now spy on you and channel your conversational words into targeted advertising. Click on a link, you’ll get even more on that subject.

[NOTE: If you do this in the presence of someone else’s electronic device, it’s likely they will ‘sync’ and whoever you are with will start seeing ads based on your searches…this MAY be useful for messing with other people 🙂 ]

So while I’m spending my designated daily time I set aside for just thinking/letting my mind roam…I came across a different set of guidelines for life that apply to leadership.

1. Do not let hate manage your decisions.

2. Worrying about everything bad that can happen does you no good.

3. Give more.

4. Expect less and accept that not all goals will be reached.

5. Live simply.

As a set of rules for living life, solid. I think they offer wisdom for leadership as well.

Decisions from hate:

Obviously hate is an opposite of ‘genuine concern’. With hateful decisions, the intent is to hurt an individual rather than do anything positive for your team. I’ve seen decisions taken by coaches out of anger and hate. They never seem to work out in the long run though I suspect they feel good in the moment. Anger/hate are powerful, addictive emotions.

It leaves me wondering about my emotions–do I ‘hate’? Yes–other schools cheating, people lying…but nothing that applies to my decision-making in the moment. The question I have to consider then is do those ‘hates’ affect how I coach/manage a program in the long run…a big question since those are things beyond my personal control and are impossible for me to change.

Worrying about everything:

Calvin Coolidge was known for not worrying about problems. He is told to have given the story: You’re in a car and there’s a rockslide far above you. Why start dodging rocks–because you can’t avoid all of them. It is better to wait a while, see which ones are heading your way and then seek to avoid those specific rocks. Get the logic?

That’s not saying you shouldn’t plan for contingencies–planning is different than worrying. Talking about issues can provide calm when any sort of actual crisis develops. On the other hand–if you spend all your time working on avoiding problems, how are you actually moving forwards?

So then–if you are scouting an opponent, is it actually valuable to spend a ton of time going over what they are going to do? Does that fall into preparation–or worry? Where’s the line? I’m stuck on John Wooden here and his view of other teams–I don’t worry about it. If we do everything right, they’ll have to worry about us. For us to do things right, we have to practice those things and not spend time on what they are doing. [Note: Wooden also had radical (wonderful) ideas regarding the uselessness of timeouts]

Give more:

There’s always something more. Nothing is infinite. When you hit a serious life problem–you go on. When you’re tired, you go on. Giving is something that has to exist if there’s going to be proof of genuine concern. Coaching is about service to others (ditto teaching). When it becomes about you, that’s ego, not coaching.

When I had to step down a couple months ago, I was exhausted. Because of the health issue, I felt like I had nothing left. I talked about that in a different leadership blog–the 5-4-3-2-1 one. I felt like I failed because I couldn’t show genuine concern anymore. This little bit of advice suggests I was fibbing to myself. I CAN give more. What was going on isn’t permanent–it’s also not the only way to ‘give’ as a coach…there are plenty of ways to coach that don’t involve being in a gym (or dealing directly with athletes)–writing a blog…that’s coaching (or mentorship, I reckon).

[SIDE NOTE: Life is much better 8-9 months after dealing with COVID…and it was nice getting the go-ahead from the cardiologist to get back into a gym.]

So writing this, I realize…I do need to stay away from gyms for the moment, continue to recover (and seriously hope the long-haul stuff finally goes away), and then I can go back to finding ways to give.

Expect less:

I’m going to have think a lot on this one. Expect less translates to me as ‘lower my standards’. This (to me) is arguing that it’s better to set lower goals and achieve them than higher goals that wind up unreached. I’ve always figured it is better to strive, to aim for being the best possible in the circumstance rather than achieving something much easier.

Expect less–of others? Is that leadership? Shouldn’t the goal be to get them to achieve more…so does expecting less further that? Expect less–of me? I can be hard on myself if self-evaluating but I don’t want to lessen my standards. I’m also seeing this as the antithesis of ‘give more’. Giving more, expecting less. Am I missing something with this?

…because my thought is to focus on the other four and drop this one to the wayside.

Live simply:

There seems to be a natural urge to make things complicated. I always liked the Bull Durham quote:  “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”

Volleyball’s no different–you can sum it up as “Don’t let the balloon hit the ground.”

For coaches at anything short of pro-level, does it matter if your player touches 11’1 rather than 10’10? Nah. The real question is just “Can she block?”

All sports basically come down to: “Score more than the other guy.”

In any event, I think this just goes back to focusing on your priorities–what do you consider morally and ethically important? Anything else–that’s complication. That means if you value religion–pray, follow ceremonies and strictures. If you want to be a better coach–what are you doing today to improve your leadership or inter-personal skills?

Specifically with leadership–this means, be direct with those you are leading. Be clear. Don’t add unnecessary information, don’t insert yourself into drills where you aren’t really needed.

**** Worrying about everything…giving more….those are areas where I can get better, find ways to get better.

When you read this, did you think of ways to get better?

(Also–if you are interested in education/teaching, over at http://www.dietzfoundation.org, I have a blog that talks about classrooms and academics…no side posts on Iowa State or history…feel free to check it out…and donations are appreciated–we use donations to get books and games into schools and slowly but surely, towards the creation of scholarship for young people seeking to become teachers)