Every Coach Needs A Coach

“All of your problems in your business can be solved if you’d only set and manage expectations” - Jerry Durham  Jerry is a business coach for physical therapist, who specifically works with the front desk staff offices. He specializes in helping people reduce cancels and no-shows by setting the expectation on that first phone call of the patients responsibilities, and of the facilities responsibilities.  He walks the front desk staff through everything from ‘Our location is in X building. When you park, go through the front entrance, up the elevator 2 flights and make a right. We’re the second office on the left”, followed by ‘Your initial evaluation is typically 45-60 minutes with your physical therapist. You’ll leave with a thorough understanding of your condition and a plan to begin treating it” Jerry specializes in this and he's really good at it. I've learned a lot of lessons from him.  Imagine a time where you got upset about something. Maybe it was something that happened earlier today.  . I bet it was because you expected one thing, and a different thing happened.  Now think about a time that your expectations were met. Now think about the time that you were not upset about something, maybe the weather cooperated or you pulled off a surprise party. I bet you your expectations were met. In order to set those expectations, we need to be really good communicators. We need to speak concisely, we need to reinforce what we've said through text and follow ups, and we need to have principles that we stand by so that our responses are predictable and repeatable.  When our players expect us to remain calm in the face of adversity, and we lose it, they may get upset. Conversely, if they expect us to get mad at everything they do, and then we don't, they know something is up.  I have found it really helpful to set my players, my parents, and my coaches expectations early in the season. That way I have something to fall back on, my "North star" like we talked about in decision making.  If I expect my coaches to be respectful, that covers everything from their interactions with parents and officials, to how they handle a conflict with a player, or someone on the coaching staff. We are going to address one another appropriately. We are going to solve conflicts together, and we are going to show up on time, and respect each other's time.

Expectations

“Expect” definition: to consider probable or certain/ assurance

If we can set and manage expectations of ourselves, our players, and our parents, we can establish a foundation for common ground. I have found in my life a lot of disputes and arguments stem from a basis of misunderstood expectations. Everything from, “You didn’t take the garbage out” to “your homework is due today” to “why aren’t we married yet?” revolves around a conversation of expectations.

“I expected you to take the garbage out because my understanding was that we established that that was your chore for the month”

“I expected you to know your homework is due today because it’s always due on Fridays”

“I expected you would have proposed by now because I want to marry you and we’ve been dating for years!”

“I’m upset about my playing time. I’m on the team, so I expected to play meaningful minutes in games”

“I’m upset with you because you’re late, and I expect you to be here on time”

It takes some planning, some courage, and some integrity to set your expectations and stand by them, and hold your organization accountable to those expectations.

This week we’ll talk about setting and managing expectations in sports and in life, and how teaching your players to understand expectations can help them get jobs, earn more money, and have healthier relationships.

In a small Italian town, hundreds of years ago, a small business owner owed a large sum of money to a loan-shark. The loan-shark was a very old, unattractive looking guy that just so happened to fancy the business owner’s daughter. He decided to offer the businessman a deal that would completely wipe out the debt he owed him. However, the catch was that we would only wipe out the debt if he could marry the businessman’s daughter. Needless to say, this proposal was met with a look of disgust. The loan-shark said that he would place two pebbles into a bag, one white and one black. The daughter would then have to reach into the bag and pick out a pebble. If it was black, the debt would be wiped, but the loan-shark would then marry her. If it was white, the debt would also be wiped, but the daughter wouldn’t have to marry the loan-shark. Standing on a pebble-strewn path in the businessman’s garden, the loan-shark bent over and picked up two pebbles. Whilst he was picking them up, the daughter noticed that he’d picked up two black pebbles and placed them both into the bag. He then asked the daughter to reach into the bag and pick one. The daughter naturally had three choices as to what she could have done: Refuse to pick a pebble from the bag. Take both pebbles out of the bag and expose the loan-shark for cheating. Pick a pebble from the bag fully well knowing it was black and sacrifice herself for her father’s freedom. She drew out a pebble from the bag, and before looking at it ‘accidentally’ dropped it into the midst of the other pebbles. She said to the loan-shark “Oh, how clumsy of me. Never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked.”  The pebble left in the bag is obviously black, and seeing as the loan-shark didn’t want to be exposed, he had to play along as if the pebble the daughter dropped was white, and clear her father’s debt. It’s always possible to overcome a tough situation through of the box thinking, and not give in to the only options you think you have to pick from. Like we talked about yesterday, that girl’s north star was her love for her dad and respect for herself. They helped her see an option that not everyone would see, and her care for him and herself gave her the courage to accidentally drop the pebble and solve her problems.  Caring takes courage, north stars help guide our decisions even if it seems like we have no other options.   story taken from: https://wealthygorilla.com/10-most-inspirational-short-stories/

Once upon a time there was an old king. He was loved by everyone in his kingdom, he clearly cared for them, making sure they had safety, clean food and water, and an environment that they could thrive in. But sadly, the king's time had come to an end, and he knew that his grandson would be his successor.   His grandson wanted to lead the kingdom just like his grandfather did, and carry on his legacy. He took his grandfather to lunch one day, and they laughed, and talked, and appreciated their time together. After things settled down, the grandson asked his grandfather the king how he built his reputation, and raised the kingdom to what it was. The grandfather sighed and told his grandson he would have to wait until nighttime to get his answer. As darkness fell over the kingdom the King stood outside on the balcony with his grandson and he pointed to the brightest star in the sky.   The star happened to be the north store. The grandson was confused, as they stood there silently for what seemed like an hour, his grandfather just staring at it and silence. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him. Grandpa, what is the North Star have to do with your legacy?  The grandfather sighed, and didn't take his eyes off of the star as he started to speak. "When I became a king, I had a similar conversation with my father that you're having with me now. Whenever he had to make a hard decision, or decide what was best for his kingdom, he would come out here at night and stare at the North Star.  You see, our kingdom is guided by that star. Not the star itself, but what it stands for. Whenever I look at it, I remember what my grandfather told me, and what my father told him. Love is what guides our kingdom. If there is a decision that I have to make, Love is my North Star. I try to imagine what kingdom would look like if they had a king who really loved them. I always let love guide that decision. If I act out of love, and pure, genuine intentions to do what's best for my people, I knew I could never go wrong. Love is my Northstar, that helps me guide and make decisions that has given me the legacy I have”  What is your north star? What are the principles you live by that guide the decisions you make? Do you have any at all?   I have found it helps so much to have those principles in place, because they can guide your decisions and make hard choices seem easy and simple. They can be boiled down and repeated over time.

In his book Win The Crowd, Steven Cohen talks about decisiveness and moving with a definitive purpose. He asks the reader to do this experiment: With your right hand pick up a pencil on the right side of your desk. Now reach across your body to your left side and place the pen down on your desk somewhere off to the left. It doesn't matter where. Just place it somewhere on the left side of the desk and leave it there.    In trial 2, repeat the action as in trial 1, but this time, decide exactly where you will place the pen on the left side of your desk before you begin. Remember: don't make a move until you've already decided where the final destination will be. Put the pen down directly in that spot.   Did you feel a difference? In trial 1 you had to make a decision as your hand was in transit.  “Where should I put the pen down? Over here? or perhaps over there? Sure, it is a quick decision but it required thought nonetheless. Trial 2, you knew exactly where the start and finish points were and you moved  more efficiently.  Strive to make all of your actions decisive. Think before you move.   Whether you're handing a pen  to a colleague for their signature or flipping pages in a sales brochure for a client, make your actions precise. Visualize the action and then carry it out.  Lack of precision invites doubt to one’s abilities.   Win The Crowd, page 29  To be this precise requires planning and thoughtfulness. Planning and thoughtfulness take time. We have a definitive amount of time in a day, so I would make the argument that the preparation you do, ultimately saves you time, and buys you more of it.  Prepare ahead of time the questions you ask your team during practice. That way you can ask them definitively. Prepare your team for an upcoming opponent by scaring them, and telling your team precisely how you can execute against them.   The preparation takes some time, and it’s time well spent if it translates to acting definitively.

decisions are made based on perception and information  for players - looking at a painting and tracking eye movements. what we see gives us cues. when people were asked to guess the subject’s in a painting’s age, they scrutinized their faces. When asked to scrutinize the subject’s wealth, they looked at their clothes, subjects’ eyes moved in different patterns depending on what they nedded to know. the brain knew to do this based on experience. the tacit knowledge implicit in looking in the righ tplace comes from ten thousand iterations of discerning people’s ages from their faces or wealth from their clothes. our player’s knowledge and experiences shape where they look on the field as well.   Joan VIckers, a cognitive scientist at the university of Calgary notes that the gaze of a novice is different from taht of an expert.  if we want better decisions, the place to start is with the eyes, to train them to see the most salient detials of a situation.   This is helpful in helping our players make decisions, I would be curious to understand what Greg Popovich's eyes look at during a basketball game, or we are Messi's eyes focus when he's beating a defender.  If we can start paying attention to important details, as players and as coaches, and learn to focus on what actually matters as far as information and perception go, we can hone our skill, improve dramatically.   On a personal note, through my time as a coach, there are times when I noticed an outside defender is really tired, or maybe the point guard just got a talking to from their coach or mom and dad in the stands, and I know that player's going to come out with a little fire under their butt. I will then cue my kids to attack that outside defender or pay closer attention to the kid who just got a talking to. The only reason I do that is because I’ve seen other coaches do it, I’ve had hundreds of reps in seeing it, and experience has taught me where to look.

When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, I wrote down this quote immediately. I was probably 12 or 13 and that quote spoke to me because at that age, I was stuck somewhere in my thinking of what I was capable of as a student athlete.   I had 2 big brothers and a big sister who were competing for spots on high school sports teams (well, my sister ended up being valedictorian, she was competing in an academic realm vs. an athletic one) , and I knew that my brother was probably not as talented as the players around him, but he chose to pull me outside on hot summer and cold winter days to rebound for him so he could shoot.   I quickly learned that if the kids with greater abilities than my brother were not out there shooting every day like he was, he was quickly going to surpass their skill. More than that, he was showing the discipline that it took to put the hours in to get better. Those other kids didn’t need to show that discipline as they relied on their talent alone.   Our choices as coaches show who we truly are, far, far greater than our abilities to ‘naturally’ coach. Our choices on how we interact with our kids, the words we use, the drills we do, the qualities we emphasize as important to our program, those say so much more about us than our abilities or our former abilities as athletes.   My challenge to you is to look at the choices you’ve made this week as a coach. Did you choose to plan out practices? Did you choose to yell and scream at your kids? Did you choose to embarrass a kid on the field after he or she made a mistake? Did you choose to empower your kids to lead a drill or warm up? What choices did you make, why did you make them?   Each of us has the ability to become incredible at what we do. We need the right strategy, and we need the right coaching ourselves. More important than that, as Dumbledoor says, is our choices on what we want to become.

Where you are is a direct result of the decisions you have made up to this point in your life. - Anonymous  Whether we like it or not, the chair we’re sitting in, the computer or phone we’re on, the coffeeshop or house or school we’re sitting in is a choice we’ve made. Maybe we chose to work at this school 15 years ago and we’ve chosen to stay for this long. Maybe we decided to work at this company that gave us this phone that we’re using to read and work on.  If this morning you decided to sleep in, and now you’re scrambling to get to work on time, that decision was yours and yours alone. Maybe you have a baby, or had a family emergency you decided needed your attention in the middle of the night. Sometimes it may feel like ‘I have no choice’. The reality is, oh, yes you do. You’ve chosen to take care of that child, you decided to respond to your family emergency. You may not have thought much about them, but you certainly decided that you would respond.   As adults, we are responsible for ALL of our decisions. From breakfast, to the color of car we drive (if we’re going to drive a car at all), to our occupations, and who we date or marry, in most cases, no one has FORCED us into any of these situations.   If you are a coach, you DECIDED to be a coach. I’m pretty confident no one threatened  you or your family and said ‘if you don’t coach, something bad will happen to you or them’. You could fill in ‘coach’ with any profession. It’s likely that at some point, you chose what you’re doing and have since decided to stick with it.   As coaches, we don’t always get to decide the kids who will be in our programs or on our teams. We DO decide how we’re going to interact with our team though. We DO decide what we will hold our players accountable to and what we will tolerate as their coaches and mentors. We do decide how to condition our kids, how to reward or punish them, and how we’ll express our belief in them. We often brush over these decisions. We often coach how we were coached.   I challenge you to look at your next practice plan and write down next to each drill WHY you’re deciding to focus on that drill. Why you’re conditioning them the way you are. WHY you’ll let them pick their groups or if you’ll assign them.   If you are not happy with your team’s performance, roll back into the decisions you’ve made with them in the last year, month, week, and day. Are those decisions reflective of the environment you want to cultivate? If not, what would you do differently to get the results you wanted?

Decide:   The dictionary definition of decision. "A determination arrive that after consideration” Decide is defined as making a final choice or judgment about, or to select as a course of action  We make decisions every day, most of them subconsciously, based off of our habits. Some are easy, like deciding which way to take to work, others are more difficult by choosing a starting 11, or who to cut, or if you should quit your job and start your own business. We're gonna talk about decisions this week as coaches, and the decisions that our players make. A quick story that I tell you, is that and almost every practice with a phrase that always includes, "drink a lot of water, sleep a lot", followed by either, "eat good food “ or “make good decisions”  Most of our players are teenage kids, living in a world that's a lot different from when we were teenage kids. They decide things that we didn't even have to think about. Social media has changed everything. They also have access to technology regarding their sport, that allows them to see the game, wash their own games, and have access to YouTube, or they can watch the best players in the world over and over make decisions on the field or court.   This week will talk about how to make decisions, how to guide our players in making decisions, and I’ll share stories and examples of decisions I’ve made or been a part of or learned from other coaches about.

Once upon a time there was a new member of a company, and the boss wanted to help him feel included, so he decided to throw a pizza party on Friday afternoon. But the newcomer didn’t show up to it. So the boss, determined to make this guy feel included, decided that on Tuesday, the whole team would go to karaoke, but the newcomer didn’t go to that either.  Feeling a little discouraged, the boss decides that they’re going to do yoga on Friday, and invites the whole company to yoga. Again, the newcomer doesn’t join in.  Finally the boss storms over to the newcomer, visibly upset that he hasn’t joined the group despite his tedious efforts to include him. He is just about to lose it on the newcomer, when the new guy quietly whispers, “I’m lactose intolerant, I don’t enjoy singing, and yoga bothers my back, that’s why I didn’t show up to your invitations”. The boss was taken aback, feeling guilty that he hadn’t considered any of those things in planning the outings meant to help the new guy feel included. After thinking a minute, he looked up at the scared newcomer, and asked, ‘Well, what do YOU like to do?’  Turns out, the outcast loved rollerskating, but never had the time to do it. So the leader rented skates for the whole group the next week, and they bonded with their new member.   The point is, we could have great intentions. Our players, and the people we serve need to know where we're coming from, and we must be willing to have conversations to ensure that they feel included, cared about, and respected.