Junior Footy
Like me, my 5 years younger brother Mitch, has been coaching all his career.
He gives a lot to his community and with two tween-age boys, he’s also co-coaching one of their football teams with another Dad. Didn’t set out to be the one of the coaches, but in the end they had no one else to do it, and his extensive skills made him a prime candidate. Leadership is like that.
They have pretty good numbers, often with 5 on the bench, which isn’t ideal from a maximise-game-time-perspective, but good for coverage when people are away, sick or have other family commitments. With Covid this year adding to the normal inconsistent attendance and tricky management of kids sport, they instituted a rule. To play that weekend, you must come to at least one of the two trainings per week, regardless of why you missed.
They wanted to encourage a degree of commitment. Obviously a good quality to develop, even for 13 year old boys.
The Scenario
While Mitch was telling me about this, he mentioned one player had missed a week and a half of training due to illness, but the player and parents had said he was right to go for the game. His parents had been great communicating what was going on (the accompanying rule for absentees). Obviously If you’re coaching sports team you need to know what numbers you’re dealing with for planning of training and games. Mitch also said this player was actually very committed all year, and he also happened to be one of the better players 🙂 I admit, that triggered a bias in my listening for a small period of time. Mitch then followed it up by saying if the kid came straight back in, due to circumstances, he wouldn’t actually be taking anyone else’s place in the team that week.
So on one hand the rule is you have to be at training in the week you want to play.
On the other hand this kid was was always at both trainings every week, and all games, all season.
Over To Me
He asked me what I’d do.
Firstly, I didn’t take a coaching approach to help him arrive at his own clarity and conviction:) It wasn’t the right situation of course.
I did have two elements in my mind, vying for representation though. 1. My brother has a bias towards peroformance. He wants to do things well and get the result. Always. 2 He’d already shown his hand a bit when he said the player in question was one of their best. A bias had been trigger in me – just little bit 🙂
I said I’d stick to the rule because the walking the talk (working to principles) for any group, especially young kids, was more valuable than winning the game. Any sporting coach worth following, is not only developing sporting ability but also character. I also backed it up, saying I’d done that very thing years ago when I coached under 18’s baseball. We had stuck to our rotation policy of all players going through the bench (half games for those starting on the bench) right through the season and in the grand final.
Mitch then added some other stuff. Not only was the player one of their better ones and had been extremely committed all year (as had most of the team since instituting the rule), they wanted to win the game to make it into the finals.
The Turning Point
You might be able to see where this is going.
We uncovered that “the rule” was only a means to an end. To encourage commitment.
This kid had personified it all year.
I felt we pretty much had resolution. Plus we had the script to satisfy the probing journos in the press conference (ie. if a parent queried or complained about unfair treatment etc) and to use proactively with the players, if he chose to do so.
Mitch and I had an in-principle agreement.
Applying It Further
It can be the same when targetting goals.
We must know why we want the goal.
What is the quality or value we are looking to experience by reaching the goal? Identify that, and we can live that value instantly in other forms, along the way to the chosen goal, rather than having to wait on something that isn’t guaranteed.
Have you ever set a goal, explicit or a subtle intention, only to not reach it, through no fault of your own, and experience disappointment? Have you ever set a goal, only to reach it, and experience disappointment because it wasn’t what you thought it was going to be?
Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle said: “… there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.“
The underlying value is what’s really important.
It also highlights the distinction between Being and Doing.
What we want to Have and Do, and Who and How we want to be.
What do we want to do? Play good football, win games, make the finals, maximise performance.
Who do we want to be? A team that walks it’s talk, gives everyone opportunity to play and grow, and maintains it’s integrity in the face of other benefits.
It’s easy to see these two aspects as a yin yan duality. Competing against each other. But more significant meaning and fulfilment comes when all are incorporated into the the team approach.
Who are we? Who do we want to be? And then, with that in place and knowing we are so much more than any achievement, what do we want to do?
What call would you have made?