Are you a leader who has reached a point in your coaching career where you no longer measure success in wins and losses, and in trophies and medals? If so, you are a coach of positive significance.  Coaches of positive significance realize that when you invest in people off the field, success on the field usually follows.

This article was provided by Changing the Game Project

By John O’Sullivan

When you are in the coaching profession, one of the things you learn early on is not to take things too personally. Your biggest fans when you win may become your biggest critics when you lose. Your players may love you one moment, and grumble the next, and it is important to maintain perspective and see the big picture even when they cannot. If you are doing your job, your players and fans will not always appreciate the moment, but they will appreciate your great coaching years from now.

Recently I have read numerous articles about longtime coaches resigning due to parent complaints over things like playing time, selection for varsity or JV, and the like. I have read about states passing legislation to protect coaches from parent complaints. Then I read this article about a former high school basketball player who was suing his former coach and athletic director because he didn’t get enough playing time.  This is insane. This I took personally.

It reminded me on an incident a few years ago when I was the Director of Coaching for a youth soccer organization and we were conducting a membership survey to learn more about what was going well, and what could be improved in our organization. Amongst all the valuable feedback we received, one comment stood out, and I took it personally. It said:

“How hard is it to coach? All you do is come up with a drill or two, and sit there in your chair and watch games. Anyone could do it.”

Really, I thought. Do you have any ideas how many hours a week a good coach spends planning practice, and then analyzing how it went afterwards so it can be better next time? Do you know how many hours a great coach often agonizes before and after a game, second guessing decisions he or she made so that next time it gets better?

Do you know how many hours a coach spends talking to players, not about only sport but about life? Do you realize how many hours are spent dealing with a parents’ divorce, a broken heart or problems with drugs or alcohol?

Do you know how many hours a coach spends with other team parents, helping them reach their teenager when he is going through a difficult time? Do you know how much time goes into helping an athlete find the right university or path after high school?

Do you know how many hours a coach spends with your kids, instead of his or her own?

Here is something most people who have never been in the coaching profession don’t know: the hours spent by a great coach on the field or court developing athletes are usually dwarfed by the hours spent off the court developing people. This happens behind the scenes and out of the public eye.

I call these great people “coaches of positive significance.” These are leaders who have reached a point in their coaching careers where they no longer measure success in wins and losses, and in trophies and medals.

These coaches develop better people and better players. They measure success not in championships, but by the number of significant life events they are invited to by their players. When an athlete invites a coach to a wedding, or graduation, or other such event, the athlete is doing that not because he or she won some championship. The y invite a coach who has profoundly changed them for the better as a person.

And here is the secret sauce. These coaches of positive significance realize that when you invest in people off the field, success on the field usually follows.

Sadly, in our current era of entitlement, and parents who think they are helping their kids by mowing down all obstacles (we call them lawnmower parents) in their child’s march toward Ivy League schooling and college athletics, our coaches of positive significance are becoming an endangered species. These amazing people who are willing to push your child, to take him or her out of their comfort zone, to say “good, now do more,” are being threatened by a minority of parents who are willing to yell loudly and make a big stink every time their precious little child faces some adversity.

These coaches are no longer able to push athletes to be better people and better competitors like they used to. They no longer can cut a kid without fear of repercussions. They no longer can hold an athlete accountable for their poor decisions without worrying about a mom or dad undermining their authority. They know that in many situations if they cut an undeserving player and say “now go home, work hard, get better and prove me wrong next year” they will spend their season in meetings with school board members explaining themselves and being second guessed.

This is very sad.

You see, coaching is one of the toughest jobs in the world. As my friend and coaching mentor Bruce Brown of Proactive Coaching is fond of saying, “we work with kids, in highly emotional situations, in public, while keeping score. And the words we choose to say in those moments, either helpful or hurtful, can stick with a kid for a lifetime.”

When you reflect on Coach Brown’s words, calling yourself coach can become quite a scary thing. A coach can be one of the most influential people in a child’s life, either positively or negatively. There are millions of coaches who take the field each and every year, yet only a tiny percentage make a living wage from it. The vast majority are volunteers or get a small stipend. They don’t coach for money.

They coach because their child is playing.

They coach because no one else volunteered to step up and coach.

They coach because they love kids, and love a game.

They coach because in their childhood a person called Coach made them a better athlete, and a better person.

They coach because it is a way to give back to their community.

And yet at the drop of a hat, these people can be embroiled in a lawsuit, or confronted by a gun wielding parent, and be judged by the same standards as we judge our highly paid college and professional coaches that we see on TV.

I speak to friends in the college coaching profession, who tell me how their athletic directors – who years ago all used to be former coaches – are now often former corporate CEO’s who are no longer focused upon the athletes as people, but as tools to raise revenue and win trophies and recognition. They are now under the orders of a boss whom believes you run a company by firing a certain percentage of your employees every year, and as soon as a person under you makes a mistake, you cut them loose. They are told to get rid of problem athletes instead of mentoring them. They are given one-year contracts and judged on a season of wins and losses, instead of a lifetime of developing people.

But this is not the type of conditions where coaches of positive significance thrive! Can you imagine being a college football coach? Can you imagine having 100 teenage sons? Do you think at least one of them might be making a bad decision each week?

Do you think its right to cut a kid loose for every bad decision, especially when you have sat in that athlete’s living room, and promised his parents or guardians that you will look after him when he is away from home, and care for him like they care for their son? Isn’t our job not only to mentor a kid when he is scoring touchdowns, but when he is failing a class or making a poor decision? Aren’t coaches supposed to provide him not just with coaching for sport, but coaching for life?

Coaches of positive significance do just that. They teach skills that serve people for decades, not just for a few years when they are athletes. They make tough decisions and teach tough lessons, and have the patience to know that the athletes might not appreciate it now, but will someday.

Some Thoughts for Parents

If your child has a great coach in his or her life, you should be grateful that he or she is willing to give up the time and energy to help your child grow, regardless of whether they get paid for it. You should realize that the time and energy the coach is investing in your child is multiplied by 10, or 20, or however many kids are coached by that person.

Parents, please understand that your child needs adversity in his or her life in order to grow. Your child needs a great coach, not an easy one, and will thank you later for it. When you think back on the most influential teachers, coaches or people in your life, were they the ones who let you coast, or let you give less than your best effort? No way, they were the ones who took you to a place you had never been before, and would never have gotten to on your own.

That is what a coach of positive significance does.

I have gotten a lot of questions about coaches who are bullies, and who create environments of intimidation and fear, and I will deal with that in a follow up article.  Coaches who lead this way are an insult to the profession, and give great coaches a black eye. The coaches of the “Friday Night Tykes” genre call themselves professional coaches, but they are not professional in any sense of the word. I will deal with that situation in another article.

But here I am talking about great coaches. The following is a partial list of items that are NOT bullying by a coach. They are things good coaches do! Examples are:

• Positively pushing your child out of his comfort zone to improve his play
• Demanding focus and effort each and every day
• Playing your child in an unfamiliar position
• Not starting your child in every game
• Having higher expectations for your child than you do
• Having a different opinion of your child’s ability than you do
• Expecting commitment, and reasonable repercussions for players who do not fulfill it, applied equally for every player
• Expecting your child to adhere to team rules and standards
• Holding your child to a standard that you might not hold him or her to. It might cost the team a game, but will teach a lesson for life

This list is not meant to be all-inclusive, but I wanted to give some examples of things that good coaches do to make players better. They are also examples of things parents have complained to me about in my role as a coach and a Director of Coaching. They are the majority of complaints a high school athletic director deals with on a daily basis.

The above examples are not bullying; they are good coaching! Improvement in any achievement activity does not come without struggle, without times of discomfort and difficulty. Good coaches know how to put athletes in these situations, yet create a climate where these things are well communicated and understood to be part of the learning process. No child has the right to start every game, or play every minute, or play the position she wants to play. This is not how you become a high-performer, and good coaches understand this. So parents, please, get over it and move on. Make it a teachable moment.

Actually, on second thought, go up and thank that coach, he or she is doing your kid a favor!

Some thoughts for coaches

Coaches, the professionalization of youth sports has made our jobs very difficult. The pressure we are under to win has never been greater. Never before have the difficult choices we face between developing players and developing people been placed under more scrutiny. We are constantly second guessed by pseudo experts who are willing to invest the time and energy to remove us from their child’s path to stardom.

Being a coach of positive significance has never been harder. But it has never been more important!

The world has never needed you more than it does right now. Our kids have never needed you more than they do right now.

A person called coach, who creates an environment of love and respect in order to teach children about sport and life, has never been more important than it is today.

It can be very easy to put up a wall, to shut your door and say it’s my way or the highway, in order to keep out all the riff raff and just coach. But please don’t!

Don’t let the vocal minority push you out of something you love. Keep teaching, keep mentoring, and keep modeling good behavior for your players. Those kids whose parents are the most troublesome are the ones who need you the most, because they are not getting it at home!

Never stop learning and improving yourself. If you are a new coach, find a mentor! There is no more powerful way to improve your coaching than by connecting with a coach who has been there and done it before. This is a necessary part of your education, yet one that many coaches never get.

Keep educating yourself. You do not know it all, you do not know enough. You can always improve. This is what we tell our players, and we need to take our own advice.

On that note, I want to tell you about a unique coaching education opportunity.

I have been interviewing master coaches and studying cultures of excellence in youth sports in preparation for writing my upcoming book (“Beyond Xs and Os: Developing a Positive Coaching Legacy” is the working title), and I want to share that information with you.

I have been conducting coaching education classes throughout North America, and recently in Europe, discussing the common characteristics of these coaches and the environments they create. And in doing so, I have come to see a gaping hole in our support and education of coaches.

When I conduct coaching seminars, I ask the coaches to list five words or phrases that describe their best coach and/or teacher. We put these on sticky notes and place them up on the front wall of our talks under two categories: “Technical/Tactical knowledge of the game” and “Connection/Emotional intelligence.”

I have asked thousands of coaches to complete this exercise, and what I have found is an eye opener to both me, and the coaches in attendance.

80%-90% of the characteristics that make a great coach, as stated by coaches themselves, have nothing to do with X’s and O’s. They have nothing to do with knowledge of the game. That is a minimal requirement that a coach needs to be great. The vast majority of sticky notes describing the characteristics that make a coach great are posted under ‘Emotional Intelligence and Connection.” And here is the problem.

We don’t teach any of this to coaches! We spend 98% of our “coaching education” collecting drills and studying tactics, yet we say that only makes up 10-20% of a great coach! I have yet to meet a coach that put more sticky notes under “Knowledge” than he or she put under “Connection.”

Most coaches I cross paths with think that collecting drills and immersing themselves in the X’s and O’s is the path to greatness. But the coaches I have been interviewing for my research into cultures of sustained excellence understand that knowledge is what all coaches need, but it does not separate the good from the great. These master coaches have learned that you get the most out of athletes and teams by valuing them and connecting with them as people first, and players second.

They know that you coach a child, not a sport.

They know that their knowledge of the game only takes them so far. They must teach so kids learn. They must communicate so kids listen, and listen so kids can will talk. They understand how to push each individuals buttons, to get the most out of every relationship, and thus every player. Their relationships with players is what leads to excellence, and the excellence is what leads to success in the win and loss column.

These coaches are also lifelong learners. They never stop improving themselves, they never say “I know enough, now leave me alone.” They are always open to something new, something different, something that can help them connect and push their athletes at an even deeper level.

I believe every coach can learn to be one of these coaches, but not through traditional coaching education. You need to take one step further, but it is a step that makes the biggest difference.  You can start becoming one by studying these coaches and master teachers, learning about their cultures of excellence, and taking your coaching to whole new level by leaving the X’s and O’s alone for a bit.

If this interests you, please join our email list and we will be sending you information on our upcoming Coaching Mastery Course.   I want to teach you some of these secrets, and if you enjoy what you are learning, offer you an opportunity to go deeper, and really study what it takes to be a master coach. There is no other coaching course like this.

Final thoughts

We live in a world where our children need more positive roles models and mentors. They are not learning positive lessons through pop culture, or video games. They need sports and they need great coaches more than ever before.

It is time to start appreciating our coaches of positive significance. If you have one in your life, call him or her up and say thank you! Invite them over for dinner, or write them a letter. It is never too late to thank a person who changed your life!

Also, pass on this article to your team or club. Let parents know that we need to appreciate our great coaches so that they stick around. Stand up for them when others try to cut them down, instead of staying quiet and letting the lawnmower parents have their way. Don’t stand by and let others take away the positive role models in your child’s life!

Many times when the news turns to a discussion of an endangered species, critics say “it’s just a toad” or “it’s just a bird, it won’t be missed.” Whether you agree with that or not, I can promise you one thing:

When they are gone, our coaches of positive significance will be missed!

Don’t let them disappear without a good fight! Love them, appreciate them, support them!

And if you are a coach, become one of them! Become a coach of positive significance. We need you now more than ever!

Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.

This article was written and submitted to me by Björn Galjaardt. The article has application to coaching regardless of the sport that you coach.

With a flirt to water polo…

What do you do? How do you do it? Questions that are less important after understanding the why. Why do you wake up to go to training? Why do you want to learn? Why do I do this drill?

The ‘why’ also works on self-reflection and stimulates the positive actions by self-acknowledgement.

In The Netherlands where I grew up these were normal questions. Even to ask teachers, heck even to ask teachers in primary school (hence the Dutch educational system is in the top 10). From athletes, coaches, parents, stake holders point of view, the ‘why’ is more important than ‘how’ and ‘what’.

Without reason, true motivation will lose its power over time. Why athletes do certain drills has to be made clear. Athletes also need to ask for clarification and, from a coaches’ point of view, the question also needs to be asked back(!). Why do you swim there? Why do you slide left before you baulk? Sometimes athletes already doing great work, but aren’t even aware of it. The ‘why’ also works on self-reflection and stimulates the positive actions by self-acknowledgement. In addition, this doesn’t need to be initiated by the coach. The ‘why’ can work as a mirror both ways! (E.g. Why do I teach reverse guard?).

Fancy terms like “guided coaching style”, “discovery coaching methods” don’t suit everyone. Subsequently not everyone is suited for this style. Meaning that the best coaches cannot always be successful everywhere. Depending on the culture, and many other factors, but also finding the ‘why’ in the team, individuals and support around it.

Sometimes it is a matter of understanding and sometimes there is no need for clarity. Sometimes it just needs to be done. As part of the learning process and extending the boundaries. Lately I read the book Start With Why from Simon Sinek. Although I won’t get a free book by promoting this, it is one of those interesting reads I would certainly more than recommend as ‘food for thought’.

The ‘how’ and the ‘what’ will show results in processes and/or products.

Recently I have been privileged to work on the board with great members in Water Polo Queensland. Finding the ‘why’ resulted in a fantastic strategic plan, great new people and many more positive changes to come. The ‘how’ and the ‘what’ will come out in services, up-skilling programs, development, providing competition, state wide quality, etc. I also see changes in athletes, parents and clubs with who I worked with and extended my network.

Individuals and surroundings will always change. So do teams, coaches and athletes. Daily, weekly, through the season and yearly. Sixty butterfly in late season, learning tactics to twelve year olds, the elbow in the water whilst shooting, the block with the wrong arm, etc. Sometimes pause a second and go back to the ‘why’. It gives more power, energy and above all clarity to fulfill the ‘how’ and ‘what’.

Great coaches and elite athletes understand that performance is a behavior, not an outcome. It is doing the little things correctly, moment to moment, day after day. But how do we do this in our teams?

By John O’Sullivan, founder of Change the Game Project.

Last week I received the following email (edited for anonymity). We get calls and emails like this quite often from amazing, passionate coaches who are trying to make a difference. Take a read:

Dear John,

I’m currently a head football coach…I took over the program last January after being on staff for the previous 10 years. We had a great offseason and a solid summer. We started the season off with a come from behind victory. Everything was going well. However, these past 10 days have made me question everything. We had a below average week of practice last week and got crushed by our arch rival. Our best player got ejected for fighting and…his brother also received a personal foul and cursed me on the sideline when I tried to reason with him. We have had an equally poor week of practice this week.

Since I took over, my main concern has been trying to change the culture here. I am at a low socioeconomic urban school. Many of my players have no father figure in their life. Many of them are poor. Many of them don’t eat lunch. Many of them aren’t disciplined at home because their single mothers are just trying to survive. I knew all this coming in, so my main goal has been trying to get them to be better humans.

I have seen several of our kids grow on and off the field but I feel like we’re starting to slip back into the abyss. Our practices have been flat. The kids are starting to seem uninterested. They are so used to being the ugly duckling of our district and the perennial loser that I don’t think they know any better. It’s like they are okay with it because that’s the way it’s always been. What can I do to turn this around?”

Sincerely, Coach B

Wouldn’t you want a coach this dedicated to your kids to be their coach? I know I would. Coach B cares about the person, not the athlete. He sees sport as a vehicle that will give them the life skills to better their life situation. For him, it is not about the wins and losses, but the willingness to compete the right way. This is a great coach. So how can we help?

Recently I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, “The Talent Equation” with Stuart Armstrong. Stuart’s guest was his coaching mentor, Mark Bennett, M.B.E. Mark is the founder of Performance Development Systems Coaching, and a mentor to high-performance and professional coaches across the globe. Mark is a former British Commandos trainer and originally developed his PDS system as a way to shape the behavior of elite soldiers. Since then he has worked with professional coaching staffs from the NBA, professional rugby, golf, and elite NCAA teams, shaping coaches so they can shape their athletes.

His wise words during the podcast were the exact advice I needed to pass onto Coach B:

Performance is a behavior, NOT an outcome.

We get so focused on scoreboards and standings that we lose sight of the foundational element of coaching: shaping behavior. When we get the behavior right, when we get our athletes to take ownership of the standards for each and every little thing they do, the magic happens.

Athletes rise to the standard.

They hold each other accountable.

They define what are acceptable levels of focus, effort, and execution.

They train more effectively.

Great results follow.

When you get the behavior right, the scoreboard starts to take care of itself. Athletes control the controllables, make more effective plays, and those small plays add up to big wins.

Coaches, first and foremost, we are shapers of behavior. When we get the behavior to the required and agreed upon standard, results start taking care of themselves. This is my advice to Coach B: focus on behavior first.

This seems simple, but in reality, most coaches do it backward. They focus first on the outcome and hope that the behavior will follow. They install new defenses and trick offensive plays, they teach tactics and technique, they up the fitness expectations, and then come game time, they roam the sidelines yelling “But we went over this in practice!”

They have no idea if learning took place. Just because we taught it, doesn’t mean they learned it. The coaches have no idea if the athletes were listening. And often, when the game gets tight and the pressure ramps up, their teams crumble under the stress of focusing on the scoreboard. They revert to the old norm. Players fight the opponent. They yell at officials. They argue with each other. They stop controlling the controllables, and eventually they lose regardless of talent.

Great coaches and elite athletes understand that performance is a behavior, not an outcome. It is doing the little things correctly, moment to moment, day after day. But how do we do this in our teams?

First, you must clearly define your core values, your standards, the list of “this is how we do things here.” In conjunction with your athletes (as we have written about here), you take the time and define the standards of effort, focus, execution, respect, humility, selflessness, and more. You allow your athletes to define who they want to be and how they want to do it. You get them to sign their names and commit to being the type of teammate described by those values. I recently did this work with a team I am coaching, here are our values:

Next, before every practice, you must get your athletes to own the level of performance – the behaviors – for the day. Mark Bennett recommends that his coaches have the athletes define what acceptable, unacceptable, and exceptional looks like for the chosen activity. This includes not only values based things such as effort and communication, but tactical and technical elements such as spacing, movement, speed of play, and whatever else you are trying to teach. The athletes define and own what is good enough, what is great, and most importantly, what is not good enough and warrants a stoppage of play and a reset.

Bennett challenges them by asking “how long can we sustain acceptable and exceptional,” thus giving the athletes a goal to shoot for. The activity starts and continues as long as the behavior level is acceptable or exceptional, and stops when the level becomes unacceptable. Usually, your players will overestimate how long is sustainable, but over time, with consistent reinforcement, their behavior – and thus their performance – starts to change. Most importantly,  the athletes own this process. They define the standards, they define acceptable behaviors, and when it all clicks, they identify unacceptable, call each other out on it, and hit the reset button and do it right.

Within your culture, you may have individuals that still do not buy into the behavior, even as the team as a whole progresses. This is the situation with the coach I wrote about above. In this case individual intervention is warranted. Sit the athlete down and follow these three steps:

1. Have the athlete define the team values, and identify which one he or she is not adhering to. Many coaches do this in front of the team for the benefit of 1 or 2 kids. Do it individually so that the specific kids know you are speaking to them, and their teammates don’t think they are being called out for the actions of a few.
2. Help the athlete see their behavior through other people’s’ eyes. “How do you think it makes your teammates feel when they are giving maximum effort and you are going through the motions?” “How do you think it makes your coaches feel when we rely on you as a leader and you disrespect your teammates?” Most kids never think of this.
3. Help your athlete change by asking “Is that who you want to be?” If the answer is no (which it is 99% of the time) ask them “how can I help you change?” When you see their new behaviors, catch them being good. If you want the good behavior to continue, you have to acknowledge and reward it.

Sadly, you will from time to time have individuals that will not get on the bus, and you have to make a decision whether it is time to let them off and move on without them, regardless of talent. You must understand culture trumps talent in any environment, and even the most talented players will slowly destroy an entire culture if they are not a good fit and they are behaving counterintuitively to the cultural standards.

Finally, shaping behavior is not a sometime thing; it is an all time thing. As Bennett says “Changing behavior takes time, and the quickest way to change behavior and make progress is to do it every time you step on the field, not just once in awhile.” It is confusing for kids when failure to meet the standards is ignored by coaches time after time and then when coach is having a bad day, he loses it and yells at everyone for the same behavior that was OK the previous week. If it is not OK, we must say so. If we let it go today, we are saying that it is not really a standard. You condone what you do not confront. You must intentionally cultivate the right behaviors and you must intentionally confront the wrong ones.

Coaches, our team’s performance is a behavior, not an outcome. This is my advice to the coach who wrote us last week. How we play is shaped by our standards and our accountability. Identify your standards, agree upon them and define them with your team, and agree upon what happens when we fall below the standard. Hold everyone accountable, and get them to hold each other accountable. Identify the individuals that still don’t get it, and either get them to change their behavior or get them off the bus.

When do you do this?

Every. Single. Day.

When you realize that performance is a behavior, the result takes care of itself.

Good luck Coach B, and to all of you as well.

 

Changing the Game Project was founded John O’Sullivan. Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.