Leadership in Coaching: a Matryoshka Doll

In a volleyball forum, one coach posted an article dealing with how coaches motivate themselves. This is the link but be warned, it’s hard to read due to APA formatting and terminology that makes it harder to read than stuff lawyers dream up. (Pro tip: Do the grad school thing–read the intro, then the conclusion, then read whatever extra you want from the middle that you want more information on.)

The issue of motivation got me thinking (again, I know…) about coaching and leadership. Everyone has goals–coaches and athletes. Sometimes these are in sync, sometime not. Sometimes we miss the big goal because we get busy paying attention to the sand rather than the golf balls.

So along the way–not sure why–Matryoshka dolls came into my mind. Those are the Russian dolls that look like Weeble-Wobbles or Fisher Price toys–but they open up and inside you find another Matryoshka and inside that is another and another…until you have an entire family of dolls, always surprised by the craftsmanship of the next, tinier piece.

But we miss that sometimes.

I have players from a team long ago who remain upset that they lost their last match, that because we lost on the scoreboard we are ‘lesser’ than that other team. When the subject comes up, they then get mad at me because I’m not mad. I realize there’s more to winning than on the court (yay me–I mean, my blog so I get to pat myself on the back once in a while…because in this case, I *do* have it right). Outside the court lines, our opponent had a 50% graduation rate, no academic all-Americans. Our graduation rate for that cohort was 100%, seven academic all-Americans. Fourteen of those fifteen went on to get their four-year degrees. The 15th? She quit school to work at her/now her husband’s business full-time…they are doing well and she realized she needed to be hands-on rather than sitting in a classroom. We won. No, not on the scoreboard–but where it mattered.

Leadership is making sure to stick to the proper values.

I have a coaching friend who struggled through a poor season. With COVID and everything else, a lot of stuff affects teams. She felt she was a failure, that because they don’t have many wins, she has no value in her coaching. She got caught prioritizing the scoreboard. I asked about the other stuff–the important stuff…and she noted her players are still working hard, they are never late, they are supportive of one another (and of the coaching staff). She noted that they are all excelling in the classroom…so they’re making lifelong friends, learning work ethic, how to overcome adversity AND getting an education. Is that REALLY a losing team?

It goes back to the Matryushkas. The first thing you see with a team is how they are doing with the scoreboard, their win-loss record. You don’t see the friendships, the hard work, the grades, the emotional support/rapport between coaches and players. The problem is, the scoreboard shouldn’t be the big doll. It’s the smallest Matryushka.

In terms of leadership–coaches are always competitive, always thinking about the scoreboard. Nothing I type is going to stop that–and there’s nothing wrong with that…as long as we keep it in proper prospective with what the goals of youth sports should be. Perhaps the secret then isn’t about personal development but how we use these priorities to develop better leadership traits in our athletes.

Using the doll metaphor, that means as a coach, you are the big doll–and your current players are the ones revealed next. The catch is that with you removed, they are the big doll, so their athletes are the next to be revealed and so on through the years. Leadership isn’t necessarily about what happens in the moment but the perspective that its benefits take time to reveal themselves…like a Matryushka doll.

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So, I’m not above admitting struggles in my thought processes. I think what I’ve written above is too generic…it reads intentionally like I’m being preachy and pretentious. That’s not the intent. I debated deleting it–like any of you would ever know I’d done that, right?

I decided to leave it–because it’s good to think…good to come back to something and realize “Wow, that sucks.” Maybe I can improve on it down the road or it will spark something that has a bit of real value.

Reading it again–I think the big thing in there that I’m not hitting properly is that leadership isn’t a solo thing. You can’t lead without others being involved–that they have to consent to being led. That goes back at least as far as John Milton’s writings on government:

“The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all….”

Rule by consent…trust. So I go back, do a quick surf (and go pick up my Montesquieu off my philosophy book shelf and everything philosophers say comes back to “genuine concern“. In the US, the concept of Congress and representative government is also about genuine concern–that we elect individuals to protect our district’s interests, our state’s interests, and to make sure the federal executive branch is held in check, unable to destroy the Republic.

Without consent–those in charge are forced to resort to force/displays of power to have their way. Coaches intimidate, make threats, rely on punishment when consent disappears, when athletes doubt that the coach is looking out for their interests.

Hmph. I’ll come back to this post again in a day or two and reflect…I didn’t really expect that I’d again return to those two basic words: “genuine concern.”