Who was the worst player you have ever coached?

I was recently asked to describe the worst player I have ever coached.

Context told me this had absolutely nothing to do with skill set or ability to play the game, per se. The questioner did not wish for me to divulge a name.  This was more a quest for anecdotal identification of what makes a poor teammate.  Two players immediately came to mind. One of each gender. I will be using initials to describe these individuals in this writing. They are not the individuals true initials and were indeed selected totally at random. In fact, I might even obfuscate gender or mix and max a bit to protect identies.

GM was an average talent on the pitch who had an alpha personality.  Not being”the” star was a problem resolved by attaching himself to the star player.  The star player was not a leader, but as is often the case with a star player was looked upon as a leader.  So GM led through the star player.  It was a selfish, self-promoting style of leadership that ultimately cost the team a chance to play for a championship. GM didn’t care about that or much of anything else that did not benefit or promote himself directly.  Not only was GM selfish, he was also a bully and capable of being quite mean to any who dared challenge his self-perceived authority or place on the team.

GD was the most narcissistic person, let alone player, I have ever encountered.  No sense of team except in the sense of what the team could provide her.  Did not care about winning as long as she got her stats. GD’s damage was not limited to a season or even seasons. No, GD almost completely destroyed an entire program. There was real question as to whether the program would survive to field future teams. Her selfishness rose to a level of running off potential players who could have served the team well, but conflicted with her personnel mission. I’ve never had a player more disliked by he own teammates than GD was.  And GD was completely and totally oblivious to this ... or just didn’t care.

Why is this important?

Why rehash bad memories?

I tried to cut both GM and GD from their respect teams and programs, but was not allowed to do so for different reasons.  One cost their team a chance to compete for a championship and the other almost destroyed a program. Both of these individuals were leaders on their teams. NEGATIVE leaders who proved destructive to their teams missions and goals.

That’s part of the reason I am sharing his with you.  Rarely does a team rise above the level of its leaders.  If, on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the best leader possible and one being the worst leader imaginable, your leader is a 6, then your team will never be anything more than slightly above average. If your leader is below average, say, a four, then that is also the ceiling, the cap, the lid for your team.

Another reason I am sharing this with you is my observations regarding GM and GD’s teammates. Most curiously from my perspective is how so many good players and potentially solid leaders on both teams allowed GM and GD to assume control of their teams culture and programs destiny. Good, truly good, people allowed something really awful to happen to themselves without putting up a strong enough fight to win the day.  I shouldn’t be surprised since history is littered with examples of good people led astray by dubious leadership. I suppose I am more disappointed than surprised.

Both teams underachieved for the simple reason their culture was dominated by negative leadership.

I am eternally grateful to both GM and GD for from failure we learn. They were such colossal
failures as leaders that they provided magnificent learning opportunities.  For one, I used to loathe cutting players, but now when I identify another potential GM or GD I do not hesitate in purging
them from the team and program. I have also learned to be far more aware and selective of the environment I coach in: if I cannot rid a team and or program of poor leaders and poor teammates,  then I now fully realize the limits this places on the team being competitive to the full measure of potential ... and the frustration that will inevitably be present in such an environment.

There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Just after the first of the year I was hospitalized for an infection in my thumb. My stay lasted a week and involved multiple antibiotics, a lancing and finally an operation to cut the infection out. A month and a half later I am still on antibiotics and still in recovery mode. I have yet to return to work.  I share this with you that you will understand I have had a lot of time on my hands. A fair share of that time has been devoted to evaluating the performance of last fall's high school team. It was my first losing season as a coach in a very long time.

To be fair, I began this evaluation process even as the fall season wound down. I knew the one problem area we never solved was leadership. I was disappointed and frustrated in player leadership almost from the start.

As I considered all that went wrong last fall I found myself narrowing focus to specific individuals whom I had identified as being so toxic that they were preventing their teammates from being successful. Some time ago I had come across the phrase "frustrated genius" to describe such a person. Being a typical coach, I appropriated this phrase for my own use. In short, a frustrated genius is a rogue element who makes excuses, assigns blame and rarely if ever accepts any responsibility for negative results. I had dealt with such before. Sometimes they see the error of their ways and make the 180 degree turn around to become productive members of winning teams and sometimes they must be culled from the herd before success for the team can manifest itself. Last fall neither occurred and there is only one person responsible for that, me.

I am to blame for last falls losing season.  It was a challenging situation but I failed to properly lead. I had become comfortable and complacent as a coach. I had my system that worked well season after season for years. I lost sight of the details of the process. I did not bring the energy to the team that it required.  As a leader goes, I failed miserably.  I let the players down.

It was not until the first scrimmage that I had a full team together. Even then we were missing a player who was on extended summer vacation.  We only had 14 players in the program at that point. I feared not having enough to field a team were I to enforce my usual standard of zero tolerance when  it came to unexcused absences.  This was my first and worst failure of the season.  I set a standard and then by not enforcing the standard lowered said standard to such a degree that we could not be successful.

Captains are a coach's sub-leaders. I placed the onus on the captains to enforce the attendance standard. Two of the players most often absent from training were captains.  I focused early efforts on turning around these frustrated geniuses and eventually just gave up on them.  I failed. I should have removed them as captains upon their first unexcused miss from training.  Because I failed, the team failed. The blame for that is on no one but me.  Period.

There are other sub-leaders on a successful soccer team.  Each line must have one of these.  The GK, must be a sub-leader. The back line, midfield and forwards must all have sub-leaders to help coordinate and execute the game plan.  These leaders did not emerge to anywhere near the extent we needed them to and I am to blame for this. It was a trickle down effect stemming from my failure to hold two captains accountable to the attendance standard.  The chain of command was faulty and this was my fault.

And I can trace each failure within the team back to standards. The source of the team's poor performance was not the standards that were set, but the standards that were accepted. Standards are empty when not enforced. Ours were and I am to blame for that.

A renewed energy is beginning to boil within me.  The program I was put in charge of deserves better than last seasons poor performance. I have set my aim on bringing a winning performance to next falls team.  I'm not necessarily speaking of a winning season, but a winning performance. I need to get this thumb healed up so I can return to work and begin the process that will bring this about.Lots of work to be done and it's time to get started.

High Character. Leadership. Standards.

In the context of team sports, I believe the word leadership refers primarily to high character. That is, the people who are positive leaders think of and act intentionally on behalf of the team.  They commit to using their leadership abilities to engage in the call to progress in the process. This is accomplished by building up and strengthening the quality of relationships between teammates which in turn strengthens the quality of teamwork through the development of trust among team membership.

There is no such thing as a team not having leadership.  Every team has leadership. It is only the quality of leadership that can be called into question.  In the absence of strong high character leadership, self-serving negative leadership will be the standard.

Leaders set the standards by which the team will be judged. If the leadership will not adhere to the higher standards set for the team, there can be no expectation for the team membership to adhere to even the lowest of team's standards.  The higher the standards team leadership holds itself to the higher the standards they can reasonably expect to hold their teammates to.

The question then becomes, what are the standards your leadership will set for their team?

Always something new to learn.

I'm well into my 50's at this stage of my life. My goal each and every day remains to learn something new each and every day. Athletics and soccer in particular these last 25 years have been the impetus of this process. I have learned much. Lately I have been reminded there is still much to learn.

Over the years I have developed something of a reputation for turning programs around in short order.  Be it a high school program like LCC or a club team with Grand Lake United I have enjoyed great success in short order. As I find myself in the second year at Lima Senior I am being humbled by the slow progress of turning this program into the powerhouse I believe it should be. The talent is present, but the culture is not present.  My previously successful "formula" for quick turnarounds is not working as well as it did in the past.

As I have been analyzing the current state of the program after our first year I have been giving considerable thought to what has worked in the past. I have also given serious consideration to what is different this time as I formulate the plan leading into next season. I feel things are beginning to fall into place and progress is being made.  Writing of the process always seem to help me draw things into focus. You are privileged (or cursed, as the case may be)  today to get a glimpse into this process.

Trusted Agents.

When taking over a program and changing the status quo it is always good to have Trusted Agents or players who support your efforts. These are usually found in those who are juniors during the first year of your directing the program. Or at least I have been blessed to have found them in the junior class at past stops.

At LCC, we had a senior Megan who was on-board from the start. She took the brunt of resistance to change that first year becoming a lightning rod for any type of conflict that arose. She was strong and focused.  Our junior was Shayna who bought in and shared the vision from the start. She not only understood what the process was but also helped define how the process would be achieved. Plus, she was strong enough to stand up to the negativity always associated with change and the negative leadership that sometimes emerges in the face of change.  God Bless Shayna. Shayna was, at times, as good a player leader as any I have had the pleasure of working with.

With Grand Lake United it was my son Lance and his teammates Tanner and Adam who set the tone. Their expectations were high and became the standards the team held itself to.  Adding Alex to that mix solidified our vision, our process and how we went about achieving in the process. We weeded out a lot of the resistance to change and negativity over a 2 year period. Alex handled any residual negativity with unbelievable diplomacy and firmness.

I take little credit as a coach for what these young people achieved.  My biggest contribution was identifying the right people to lead the turnaround.  Megan, Shayna, Lance, Tanner, Adam and Alex were easy choices as determined through both their words and their actions.

I have admittedly struggled to find the same type of player leadership in my current position. This past season's seniors never did buy into the vision. They were never able to define the process and so we meandered through the season. Now, it is true TEAM 29 at Lima Senior put together the best season in recent program history. I received lots of congratulatory remarks about having won 10 games in my first season at Lima Senior. It is also true, TEAM 29 never overcame the past culture of the program. I firmly believe TEAM 29 should have had 14 or even 15 wins by the time our season ended in the tournament. Culture eats talent and strategy for breakfast. I was reminded of this on more than one occasion this past season.

Whereas in past coaching stops I had always been able to identify junior leadership to drive the team forward, that was not the case at Lima Senior.  For the first time in my coaching career I will endure two straight classes with below average leadership. And it might well be more than two years.  Our current sophomore class some has possibilities for positive, process driven leaders,  None are a sure thing.  Cole, I force fed into a leadership role too early. He has many of the qualities I am looking for, but the circumstances were not right. Can he rebound? Can I help put him back on track? Micah is not (yet?) strong enough to stand up to negativity as Shayna did for her team. Sam is home schooled and therefore not with his teammates every day. He does possess nearly everything else I am looking for in a player leader.  I have yet to identify the quality of leadership I seek in the freshman class either.  Now, the current 8th graders?  They have several quality leaders among them.  They are probably 3 years away from having the type of significant impact on our culture that is required to move the program forward to where it realistically should be.

Trusted Agents II

Be it in club soccer or in high school soccer, parents play a significant role in your program. As a coach I interact with the student / athletes approximately 2-3 hours a day in season. Parents, naturally interact with their children a whole lot more. Hopefully.  At every coaching stop some of the strongest resistance to change I encounter is from parents.  It certainly was at LCC where the parents of the "star" were adverse to her having to share the glory (scoring goals) in the balanced system of play I brought to the program. I was also not allowed to cut two players (and their parents) from the program who made it their announced aim to subvert everything I did.

Parental resistance was also a major push back at Grand Lake United until I did cut players / parents from the "A" team and regulated them to the "B" team or cut them from the program entirely. Much easier to do so when the coach is in charge and the club administration doesn't want to deal with drama.

And once again, at Lima Senior there is strong resistance from a small group of parents seemingly intent on feeding the "me" in their child instead of the "we" in our program, our team.

I included this Trusted Agents II section only because as I look to identify leadership, define the process and formulate how we will navigate the process it has occurred to me I could move the process forward by cutting resistance from the program and advancing the soon-to-be freshman class into key roles earlier than I would normally like to. Sacrifice the team for the program.

The Past

To be perfectly honest, it is usually the past that motivates the change of culture and buy-in necessary to accomplish it.  At LCC, the program had never had a winning season. They were hungry for a change. The biggest obstacle proved to be changing a few from "Me" people to "We" people.  With Grand Lake United we had players passionate about soccer and tired of getting their butts kicked by the "big clubs" so they too were hungry, eager and receptive to change,  At Lima Senior the upperclassmen are invested in and tied to their past by a recreational league state championship they won when they were in middle school.  I sometimes feel as though they view that youth league championship as the apex of their soccer careers instead of a building block.  There is seemingly little desire to strive for, let alone replicate, that championship success at the high school level.

In my coaching career, I  have rarely been so filled with emotion as the day I overheard some of our varsity players say,

"What does it matter? 

We're going to get our asses kicked anyway."    

This off-season a parent sent me an email regarding scheduling schools of our own size / classification that stated, in part, and I quote,

"I don't feel you have the talent to compete with some of the teams you are going to be playing nor will lima (sic) senior ever have that talent and I am not concerned about seasons to come I am only concerned about this season."

Yes, the son will be a senior next fall.  Yes, he is apparently worried about his son's senior season.  Did he bother to look at our schedule for next season? Apparently not. Yes, we have shed a lot of the small schools / easy wins from our schedule. Yes, we have replaced then with big schools who are comparable with Lima Senior in terms of their soccer programs. Yes, we have scheduled a tougher team or two. Should we still compete for double digit wins? Definitely.  

Change.

Some people embrace change  

Some people resist change

Sooner or later everyone accepts change or gets left behind

There is a certain comfortableness in the current program. For some, it's as if they "know who they are" and that's good enough for them.  They beat up on small schools in the area, Are capable of competing with mid-sized schools and similarly talented large schools. And expect to get their asses kicked by traditional big school powers.  It is the classic "big frog in a little pond" syndrome.  At the very mention of moving to the big pond to prove their mettle they revert to living in the little pond where they feel safe. This is the challenge I face.  Overcoming their fear of stepping outside their comfort zones to discover that is where life and their game begins, not ends.  

Sometimes as a coach we have to admit and come to terms with the fact we cannot positively impact players as much as we would like to.  Cases in point; 1) This past season I dismissed a player from the program after having invested a lot of effort and time in him. He possesses some real potential as a player. He's his own worst enemy. He simply cannot overcome poor decision making on or off the pitch and seeks to lay the responsibility for his poor decisions at someone else's feet. It's a shame. He's slipping through the cracks and will in all likelihood become societies problem in his future. No emotion other than defiance about being dismissed.   2) I had to dismiss a second player from our team. He made a poor decision, admitted it, but due to the nature of the violation of team rules I still had no choice,  He was visibly broken up over the consequences of his decision. 

Notice: I dismissed the first player from the program and the second player from the team.  The player in the second example is back training with the team this off-season. Lesson learned. He and we are moving on.  This is how we want all situations to turn out.

Conclusions?

We, the program, will continue advancing toward the vision I have for the program.  Team 30 may or may not take a step forward from Team 29. That will be up to them as a team and perhaps specifically to the leadership that emerges.  The players of Team 30 will have a mixed lot of individual success and satisfaction derived from their participation on Team 30.

And in the end, that is what we as coaches must always remember - One gets out of something what one puts into it.

I will put my all into this program.  The program will continue to steadily advance to where I believe it can and should be.

Team 30 will get out of it's season exactly what they put into it. Judging by off-season participation rates, that will be something similar to Team 29 before them.  Meh, by my standards.

Individual players will get out of this season exactly what they invest into it. Soccer is a team sport comprised of individual players. Some of our players are putting in the effort and time to better themselves. Others, not so much. 

The more one is invested in a process, 

the more difficult it is for them 
to give up or quit. 

When the 2017 season concludes we will look back on the progress of the program, the accomplishments of the team and the progress of the individuals.  Will we be satisfied?

Culture can win OR lose games.

I have not written much these past few months as I have returned to coaching high school.  I find it difficult to write in-season for a couple of reasons. One, I just don't have a lot of free time. Coaching high school soccer is a full time job in and of itself.  Secondly, most of what I would write about would be about the team I am coaching and because there would exist a need to be critical I do not believe it would be productive to do so.  Today I am going to tackle the broad subject of culture. And, yes, I will be using my current team to illustrate some of the points made.  I will also be using former teams to tell this story.

Some years ago I became a member of an email group of coaches from around the country. This group has been a wonderful resource for me. They have been mentors to me and perhaps I to them as well.  Upon joining the group one of the first things that struck me was how much of the discussion was devoted to team culture.  I will admit I found this a bit of a turnoff at first as I was looking for tidbits on technical and tactical issues. As I read through the discussions on culture I began to understand the importance of team culture and the reason this group of successful coaches devoted so much time to it. I have since become a student of team culture and advocate of working to develop a strong positive one in the teams I coach.

It doesn't happen overnight.

I took over a club team a few years ago. They had not had much success in terms of won / loss record and were looked upon as a team whose players could not make the team of the best club in the area. That first season we went .500 and most were ecstatic with having achieved that.  The parents attributed it to my coaching. While grateful of their acknowledgement of my contributions I knew I had made some difference but not enough. And so the transformation of that teams culture begun.

I knew from past experiences in college, club and even high school that when a coach recruits players to the team it can be difficult to find the right mix for team chemistry.  Most coaches select team members on talent alone and give little consideration to how team members interact with one another, with coaches, with referees and others in general. This is the lesson I was learning through interaction with the email group of coaches.

The second year with that club team saw about a 30% turnover in players. We held "tryouts" and found a few players who were both more talented than the ones they replaced and were better fits to the team culture I was striving to develop.  The team improved their on-field results that year actually winning a league title.  It was a lower level league, but a title nonetheless.

This is where things began to get very interesting.

It was apparent to me our culture needed strengthening.  We would need to lose some players who did not fit with what we were building. I put it to the team to recruit teammates they thought could raise the team to another level. A very interesting thing happened.  The players recruited some of the very best players from the region. They also refused to recruit some of the very best players from the region.  They were very discerning about who they wanted to join the team. Even beyond that, they recruited players to certain and specific positions with the intent of replacing soon to be former teammates who were not interested in buying in to the rapidly developing team culture.

The result of their efforts was a group of 40 players trying out for one team.  We quickly made a decision to form two teams - an "A" team and a "B" team.  After some realized they would no longer be a member of "the" team they had been playing on, they sought greener pastures elsewhere.  Not surprisingly these were the players who were disruptive to the team culture being established.  They were offered spots on the second team but declined because they viewed themselves as better than that.  Within a years time most either sought to rejoin our program or had given up the sport of soccer,

This brings us to present day.

I am now coaching a high school team that has experienced some modicum of success in past high school season. One of the things that has blunted or perhaps even stagnated the changing of culture is the fact the seniors of this group won a recreational state championship when in middle school.  To call it a state championship is even a bit of a misnomer as only a portion of the state was represented at these championships. Nonetheless, this is what they have hung their hat on and have stubbornly refused to embrace advancement of culture that could take them to the next level.  As a high school team they are as physically gifted and technically talented as any I have been associated with. Tactically they still have proclivity to play as they did in 8th grade which consisted to being bigger faster stronger than other teams their age.  I know because I watched them play when they were in middle school.

While we have made some advancements in play this season their old comfort zone beckons frequently. Against a weaker team they will goal hunt reverting to playing dump and run with little to no regard to actually doing so in a constructive and productive manner.  Our center midfielders become forward as do our outside backs. Players almost completely and totally abandon positional responsibilities in search of goal scoring opportunities. As a result, we have struggled in games we should have dominated and had some unexpected, even unpleasant results.

One the other hand, we did find out early in the season that this team was capable of playing with some of the very best in the state. Although excited about this at the time I am now not sure this was such a good thing.  After playing with the eventual league champions for the entire game early in the season we took a huge step backwards against the other two perennial league powers getting blown out by both. All the brilliant play from early in the season completely disappeared in those two matches as players reverted to a previous comfort zone.

Team culture can win games for you.

Team culture can lose games for you.

Both of the above statements are abundantly true.  It was a three to four year process with club team to develop a strong culture of like-minded athletes capable to facing adversity, sticking together with one heartbeat and overcoming that adversity as a united team. My current high school team is not remotely close to having this type of string positive team culture.  Seeing this senior class graduate will be a good thing overall for our program.  That's not to say I dislike this class or any of its members.  They are good kids by and large.  I like each of them.  They have just been resistant to change. I consider them stuck in their ways with little interest in changing even if it were of benefit to them to do so.  I understand this.  This team's culture has cost them results this season. I'm not sure they realize this and if they do realize it, they don't seem to mind. They are comfortable with who they are and what their culture is.

The challenge from a program standpoint is to make incremental improvements in the programs culture moving forward. Can we develop a stronger positive team culture with next years team? This is the key to making progress in the process. Some refer to it as getting a program over the hump or taking a team to the next level. I am confident that with the right attitude, the right team culture, next seasons team will be better than this seasons team has been.  The 2017 team can achieve to greater heights than this years team dared to dream of provided the team culture makes advances,   If the team members are devoted to making team culture work for us instead of against us great things await.

Leadership

Vision          Communication         Character          Competence         

Courage          Commitment

First in.....             Last out.

This video was shared with me by friend and coaching colleague Paul Lee. 

Leadership

Bad Teams = No Leadership

Good Teams = Coaches  Lead

Great Teams = Players Lead

I recently saw the above quote on Twitter and liked it enough to share with the student / athletes in a leadership class I am conducting. It makes the point of the importance of player leadership I am attempting to drive home to the class.  The quote itself is a little too black and white or absolute to be 100% accurate though. Every team has leadership. 

It is the quality and sources 

of leadership 

that differentiates 

one team from another.

So your team is under-performing?

You have a talented team that shows glimpses of real potential, but is unable to sustain that level of play on a consistent basis. They are quality athletes in proper physical condition for soccer. Their skills vary from average to good to very good. It is a team that should win, yet they struggle to achieve to potential. Something is missing, but you cannot quite put your finger on what it is. You try everything you can think of in training to spark the team. You change lineups looking for a spark to ignite the team and your season. Sometimes you see a flicker, a glimmer of what you know they should be. but it quickly disappears. Seasons like the one being described here can be extremely frustrating for all involved.

What can be done to "fix" such a team?

The truth be told, there probably is not a miraculous cure to be had. I have often heard in posited that such a team "needs something to bring them together." In the movie Major League the Cleveland Indians baseball team is brought together by their dislike of the owner and a common goal of ruining her plans to sell and relocate the team.  This is their motivation and becomes the common goal that unites the team propelling them to success. That's what most people will take from the movie. There's something else that takes place to make this all happen and that is the key to the process.

Quite obviously the leadership on display from ownership is about as toxic as possibly can be. She doesn't want the team to succeed. It's a huge problem for the assemblage of misfits who are not supposed to win. Then two characters do the near impossible when they step forward with positive leadership to counteract the owners toxicity. The manager brings in a poster board of the owner with removable pieces of clothing. For each win a piece of clothing will be removed until a nude picture of the owner is revealed.  The catcher, begins holding every player accountable for their performance and his teammates respond.

The fictional portrayal of a team uniting to overcome toxic owner leadership makes for a good story and a cult classic of a movie.  The Longest Yard (both original and remake) is a similar movie about a prison pointy football team.  In both movies, overcoming adversity to achieve and perhaps overachieve is the theme. Can this happen in real life?

Identifying the problem is the first step in the process and is one of the focal point of my writing today. Too often when faced with an under-performing team coaches will look to shore up fundamentals, change lineups or artificially try to prop up a teams culture, its team chemistry.  I would suggest the real target of attention should be the teams leadership. Coaches and players alike might well benefit from leadership training. Make no mistake that while a coach and certain players exert more influence than other members, every member of a team contributes to the culture of the program, the team's chemistry.  Of course, if the key players are the source of toxicity the problem is exponentially compounded,

How do we know if leadership is being ineffective and holding a team back?

I believe there are ... symptoms ... that manifest themselves in the absence of strong positive leadership. These we will take a look at today.

1) Poor Body Language: Non-verbal communication is of extreme importance in leaders.  I preach this to my goalkeepers all the time. I use the term salesmanship to describe how I want goalkeepers to perform in their position. Every action must be strong and forceful giving the impression of being in complete control of the penalty area. I teach and coach this until the goalkeeper's authority goes unquestioned amongst his teammates knowing full well that if his teammates respond with belief and confidence in their goalkeeper's performance they opponents will take notice and respond accordingly as well.

Think of examples of poor body language when a player makes a mistake or the opponents present adversity. Open demonstrations expressing annoyance, disgust or frustration with others is non-verbal communication of a lack of confidence in the person that has committed the mistake. We might extend that train of thought to include similar displays of frustration directed at one's self when committing mistakes.  This type of communication coming from a teams key leaders following a mistake can result in making the offending teammate feel insecure about his role and unsure of themselves on the pitch leading to hesitancy which begets more mistakes.  It can be a vicious cycle of negativity and perpetuate poor team chemistry.

I teach and coach a philosophy of Next Play! which is simply to put the mistake behind you immediately. No "my bad" or any other recognition of the mistake having been made including non-verbal communication. The mistake cannot be changed and the game continues on. We need to stay in the present moment, not dwell in the past.

2) Gossip and Negative Talk: If poor body language is allowed to go unchecked gossip and negative talk will surely follow.  These things destroy confidence and undermine any efforts being made to build cohesiveness, togetherness and unity. Players gossiping about teammates play or talking negatively about the inevitable up's and down's that occur in any season are signs of toxic leadership. The same is true when the negative talk is directed towards the quality of coaching decisions. Those who talk divisively cannot be part of the solution for they are to busy being the problem.

When a problem exists strong positive and inclusive leadership is required to work through it to a positive solution. Coaches and captains must be involved. When it is a coach or a captain that is a source of drama there needs to be strong secondary leadership to call attention to this concern so it can be address appropriately. Difficult situations cannot be allowed to divide the team, destroy trust or erode team chemistry.

3) Negative Reaction to Adversity:  Every team will encounter adversity throughout a season. Every team will have a comfort zone for the level of adversity they are prepared to overcome. The measure of leadership is how a team responds when the adversity they face is more than they have overcome before.  How will the team respond? Let's be clear there is a decision to be made here.

Three common situations teams with toxic leadership encounter may help shed some light on what is being discussed here.

Your team may find itself losing to a clearly weaker opponent. The conscious decision to be made is whether to assign blame to someone (player / coach / referee) or accept responsibility and work cooperatively to improve the situation.

When your team faces an opponent whom they have a history of poor performances against. The first time something goes against your team the response is poor body language and negative talk. The choice to surrender to a familiar problem has already been made and a resignation to not finding a solution to this problem accepted.

A player who is subbed out reacts adversely to this coaching decision. He might verbally complain or non-verbally display his displeasure. The player has a choice to either sulk to the bench and project his selfish feelings to those around him or he can choose to redirect his frustration by staying involved in the game cheering on the efforts of his teammates and watching his particular position in preparation for returning to the game.

The point being made is simply this; whatever the reaction is, it will communicate a specific message to coaches, teammates, opponents and referees alike. Toxic people tend to be consumed with their own small situation within the greater whole of the team's predicament and are thus prone to negative reactions to adversity.  Positive people are more likely to ask a teammate to "pick me up," share information with a teammate that will aid the teammate's efforts in the match or find another way to contribute to the teams efforts in a positive manner. It is a choice, a conscious choice, to be made.

4) Pouting: At first glance pouting may seem to fall under poor body language or negative reaction to adversity, but I believe it to be a more selfish negativity than either of those.  When a player is unable to enjoy team success due to his own lack of accomplishment in the contest this becomes an anchor to the team's enjoyment dragging it down when it should be soaring in celebration, The message being sent is of "MY" performance being more important than the "TEAM" performance.

The ability to celebrate others individual success is a sign of positive leadership. When the attitude is one of genuinely sharing in success ... and failure ... a bond of cohesiveness, together and unity is fostered that helps strength a teams spirit and steel its spine.

5) Martyr Syndrome: Advanced stages of toxicity in leadership sees the manifestation of what I refer to as the Martyr Syndrome. When poor body language, gossip, negative reactions to adversity and pouting are left to run amok and unchecked, martyr syndrome is sure to follow, When a perceived leader of the team begins to communicate their belief their (lack of) performance is due to any reason except their own accountability and responsibility real trouble has taken hold of the team's culture and chemistry. Everyone is to blame except the person most responsible for his own play, actions and reactions.  Coaches and the decisions they make are blamed. Or referees are blamed for bad calls. Incompetent teammates are blamed for hindering his own performance. Injury is used as an excuse for not performing to potential.  Anyone and everything is blamed, except the player himself.

When a leader / player begins to believe other people are the primary source of problems an environment of entitlement and laziness takes root. The surrender of control of their own destiny to the power they feel someone else exerts over their performance is an admittance of lacking self confidence. Rather than looking inwardly and fighting to find a solution martyrs look outwardly for someone else to blame. And a martyr is weak. They will not fight through adversity. They seek the path of least resistance and submit when confronted by obstacles posed by the game.

In conclusion, the training of proper leaders might well be one of the most overlooked aspects of coaching.  Leadership is contagious whether positive or negative. The quality of your team is dependent on the quality of leadership provided. Therefore, training of leadership should of at least equal importance to the training of technique, tactics, and physical fitness.

How good can we be if our best player is not our best teammate?

This might be the single most important question to be asked as it concerns teams that underachieve. When the person perceived to be the best player on a team is not a good teammate the team will often struggle to achieve to potential.  I have seen this time and again as I am fairly confident we all have.

This was the case on what was potentially the best high school team I ever coached. The player looked upon by her teammates as the best player was selfishly about herself  and this did the team in when it encountered obstacles that demanded a team first approach.  The truth be told, she was not the best player on the team at that point in time. She had earned the reputation as the teams best player by scoring a lot of goals as she came through the youth ranks.  The epitome of an athletic freak taking advantage of weaker competition to pad her stats.  When a team oriented attack was installed as the preferred system of play and the scoring load more evenly distributed our "best" player became a cancer as a teammate. 

Now, one might picture such a player as an overt trouble maker, but this is not always the case. And it is the covert trouble maker that is actually the worst type of teammate one can have. This is the type of player who pushes their own agenda behind the scenes. They recruit people to "their side" of what they perceive to be a "situation" thereby dividing the team. Predictably the team faltered long before it should have. Alas, this is the destructive power of negative leadership and a poor teammate perceived to be a teams best player.

There was another player who I coached in club soccer for a number of years. He always seemed to be on the outside looking in on very talented teams when it came to exerting leadership skills. Gifted athletically but not possessing great game IQ or vision. He was a hustler, a worker and perceived this to be his role on the team.  I had a hunch he had much more to offer. There came a time when I relegated him to our second team and something miraculous happened - he blossomed into a leader. Always a good teammate, but when placed in a position and situation that called for him to lead he did so with spectacular results. He was one of the best players on that second team and unquestionably its best teammate. The team overachieved on the season in no small part due to his being a great teammate which helped make him an effective leader.

How good can we be if our best player is not a good teammate? Unsatisfyingly underachieving and mediocre is the likely answer.

How good can we be if our best player is our best teammate?  This is the recipe for success. This is when a team can overachieve.  This is when good things happen for a team and its individual collective parts.

Passion for the Task

 

Just because you are a leader

 

in one aspect of your life

 

doesn't mean you are a leader

 

in every aspect of your life

 

Passion for the task

 

is a key ingredient of Leadership

 

I recall a high school soccer player who was among the very best team captains I have seen in nearly 4 decades of participation in team sports. Everyone assumed he was headed for greatness in life based on the leadership abilities he displayed in a soccer team environment. The age old saying "to assume makes an ass out of u and me" comes to mind. While the former player is making a positive impact on society it is not in the role of a soccer coach as many, myself included and perhaps especially so, anticipated it would be. He's dabbled a bit in coaching off and on for a few years, but always seemed (to me) reluctant to do so.  I suppose he caved to expectations for him to be a coach when the passion to be one wasn't present.  And that one word, passion, is what all great leaders in their field have. 

 

I have seen this throughout the years in the context of captains for teams. Players with great passion for their sport and their team are often overlooked in favor of athletes who display leadership ability elsewhere in their lives. In recent years, I had a young man on our club soccer team who I suspected would make a good captain.  The trouble was, he was on a team comprised of players over half of whom were captains for their respective high school teams.  This particular player was among those who were not a captain for his high school team. Although he was largely overshadowed as a leader on the club team, his light did shine through on occasion. It took fielding two club teams last spring and placing him on the second squad for his leadership skills to come to the fore and really blossom.  As a senior, he should have been one of the three captains for his high school team.

 

That leads into the final point I wish to make today - A title does not make someone a leader.  The title of head coach did not make Ryan a good leader as a coach nor did the lack of a title prevent Matthew from being a leader on his high school team.  Leadership is an action word, but only when actions are passion driven can effective leadership be a positive difference maker for a team.  Ryan obviously had a passion for playing the game but this has yet to transform itself into a passion for coaching the game. In Matthew's case, he simply needed the correct environment to allow the embers of his passion to flame to life. 

As powerful an influence as leadership can be, ineffective leadership in any endeavor can actually be a hindrance to achieving to potential. So, select your captains carefully.  Select your assistant coach carefully. If you are an athletic director or club director of coaching, select the head coach carefully.  Select for any leadership position carefully with passion for the task being a primary consideration.

Soccer Coach Support Groups

I just completed an article titled The Circle of Soccer Life and it occurs to me the necessity of having coaching resources never diminishes until you stop coaching.  I have previously mentioned participating in a couple of coaching email lists with colleagues from all over the world.  The groups are comprised of high school, college and professional coaches. They have been a huge benefit to me. We share ideas, discuss various topics and exchange information. When I need a sounding board or simply to vent about soccer related matters, these are the people I turn to. If I get things right, they pat me on the back and maybe help me understand how I could have done it even better.  If I get it wrong, they set me straight, do so quickly and in a very direct manner!

The culture of a program is a consistently constant topic of discussion within one of these groups. There has been some truly fascinating insight shared over the years.  I have implemented many of the ideas shared with the teams I coach.  Last night one of the members of this list asked a couple questions of another list member that really struck a chord with me. I want to share those questions and some of my own observations with you today.

First, I want to acknowledge I have not formally made members of this email group aware of the CBA Soccer Blog.  I know some members are aware of it. I am not sure all are. No particular reason behind this.  I write as much for myself as I do for our many faithful readers from around the globe. It is both a cathartic and educational experience for me.

The Question:

How much bearing do you think the success of your program has on how your players react to leadership?

Paraphrasing the Follow Up Question:

If the current coaching staff leaves and is replaced by inexperienced coaches, would the leadership lessons the players learned under the tutelage of the former staff continue for any decent amount of time after their departure or is such a culture tied to the success the former staff brought to the program?

My mind immediately went to the local high school program that my son participates in.  A long tenured coach resigned last fall and a new staff consisting of former players of his were hired.  One would think the successful and winning cultures would remain fairly entrenched with former players from the program taking over as the new coaches.  My observations suggest that has not been the case.

The previous coach had accumulated 330 wins when he retired. The program had peaked in the early 2000's, but had been in steady decline over the last handful of seasons.  One could truthfully proclaim the energy had gone from the program. The new staff most definitely returned some of the missing energy, but the slippage in culture has continued.

Under the leadership of the former coach success on the field continued even as energy obviously ebbed from the program. If that coaching staff had remained, I believe this years team may have won 10 games with the aid of continued tradition and mystique. The actual on-field results this season saw a meager 4 victories and the change in leadership has undoubtedly been responsible to some degree.

We are talking about leadership backed by a proven track record versus leadership with no track record.  Trust is a word that comes to mind. Even with growing discontent, the former staff had the trust of enough players. The new staff has made and continues to make significant changes to formation and systems of play instead of maintaining a link through continuity to the previous coaching regime.  By doing so, they also made a clean break with the culture the former staff had built into the program. 

The questions posed to the coaches of the email list last night are essentially about how change might impact a program.  The thing about change is some people are resistant to it while others will openly embrace change. In the end change is accepted or you get left behind in a manner of speaking. The real significance found in these questions and in using our local program as an illustration is the importance of how change is managed.

Thanks once and-again to the invaluable resource of our coaching email lists.  I wouldn't be near the coach I am without them.  And I would never ascend to the coach I will yet become without their continued guidance and support.