When I took over the Lima Senior boys soccer program I knew there were things that needed to change if we were to advance to the next level. As is the case when change is encountered I also knew there would be resistance to the changes I wanted to bring to the program. I anticipated there would be excitement for a new approach and new direction and there was. These are all accepted dynamics that will be present anytime a new coach takes over.
All in all, the first season went about as expected. That is, we were able to begin the process of redefining the program. That process met with resistance from some. Some embraced the new approach and were eager to pursue a new direction. We had the best season in perhaps 12-15 years and some said ever although I think that might be a bit ambitious.
(Hit the jump for the rest of the article)
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Showing posts with label attitude of gratitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attitude of gratitude. Show all posts
Monday
Thursday
Poor Attitude
A poor attitude is like a flat tire,
You can't go anywhere until you change it.
As I watched a player commit the same decision-making error he has been making for years I was reminded of this saying. This kid thinks he knows it all to the point of being damn near un-coachable. I know, I had tried. There exists a thin line between being determined and being stupid. And it's not just players who suffer this malady for I have seen coaches flirt with this line as well. The worse of the lot confess they have much to learn and then continue to do as they have always done.
I recently sat a young man down in the figurative sense and explained to him that knowledge is not going to find him. Rather, he is going to have to seek knowledge out. He has to be willing to learn, but that is only the first step. Acquiring knowledge does you little good if you do not apply it correctly. The king consideration is a practical and useful application of knowledge.
The coaching sphere might provide the best demonstration of what we are discussing here. It is a well known fact that great players do not always make great coaches. By extension, some who never played the game turn out to quite successful coaches. The important difference between the two is not in how they acquired knowledge, but in how they apply and communicate the knowledge they do possess.
In the 30+ years I have in coaching various sports on a wide rage of levels I have witnessed humble players excel in the game only to turn into arrogant coaches who fail on the sidelines. It is a bitter transformation of attitude. It attests to the stark cold reality of change being constant in the world, but not always positive in nature. There is also a fine line that exists between a humble attitude and one of arrogance.
Failure on the pitch or on the sideline can be a humbling experience. It can make one bitter or make one better dependent on your approach to dealing with failure - your attitude. If bitterness is allowed to permeate your consideration of failure chances are your failure will perpetuate itself. If there is recognition and acceptance that you failed, then the possibility for improvement exists. It really is all about attitude, or how you handle adversity ... and prosperity... that determines your chances for success.
Wednesday
All great teams play for one another.
Each new season starts anew the process of becoming a team. A group of individuals gathers, some familiar and others new, to share a path for awhile. Will they travel that path as individuals, in small groups or cliques, or will they learn to travel the path together as a band of brothers?
Some of my earliest memories of participating in sports revolve around the idea of "team". In fact my first two experiences in sports were defining moments for me. One was a basketball team and the other a baseball team. The basketball team was ultra successful. I suppose we had the best talent, but what I remember most about that group was how we all got along. It showed in how we played the game. In contrast, that baseball team was not very good and to be quite truthful although we were in elementary school, we just didn't like one another. Teamwork was always secondary to personal agenda. In elementary school?
Yes.
Now, the personal agendas on that baseball team were fostered by the coaches who were fathers of players on the team. Their kids played the "key positions" and batted lead off or cleanup whether deserving of doing so or not. And trust me, even at a young age players detect favoritism.
The basketball team was coached by a former major college player who enjoyed working with kids. He did not have a son on the team. Everyone earned their spot and had to work to keep it. Certainly a pecking order was established in terms of best to worst players, but also a recognition that each player was important to the team in their own right.
I grew to love basketball and became largely disinterested in baseball.
As a 10 year old I did not appreciate these things even though I did recognize on a certain level what was happening. It really wasn't until my family moved to a new location that some of these lessons began to be driven home to me. At the new school I had a terrible experience with basketball. Despite being a talented group, wins were few and far between. This became the norm for my experiences with team sports throughout my school years. Talented individuals, but poor teams.
Two different other teams from my teenage years really standout in my memories. One was a basketball team that to this day was as talented a group of individuals as I have ever seen at the high school level. They had good skill sets and the physical attributes required for success, yet they struggled to reach a .500 record. Height, size, speed, athleticism... they had it all in abundance. Ball handling, shooting, passing, game intelligence... it was all present. They could never move past their disdain for and jealousy of one another. Instead of competing against other teams that were constantly in competition with one another. To say they underachieved would be an understatement and I really struggled with this.
The other team was a men's softball team. Now, softball was huge in the area during those years. I began playing with a church team in an church league. We won and won a lot. We moved on from church competition to playing any and all comers... and still we won, a lot. We did not even have all the best softball players from the congregation playing on this team. Some played for their work based teams or on teams with friends they socialized with. What was the key to our success? We liked playing the game together.
That is far different from liking one another.
In all honesty, there were some people on that team that forced me to struggle upholding my Christian beliefs at times. I just did not care for them as individuals, but I certainly appreciated their abilities as ball players. As individual players some of us were quite talented and others not so much, but everyone was valued as equals for what they brought to the team. Appreciation of and for one another was our most valuable trait.
Now some 30+ years later as I coach teams I find myself putting a lot of effort into recreating the team atmosphere of those successful teams from my youth. There is an understanding of team building being a process and team bonding a critical part of that process.
It's been a few years now that I have participated in email groups with other coaches. A couple of these groups have had profound impact on how I approach team bonding. I found that some coaches have made a science of team bonding. They have studied it, defined it and developed methodology to develop and nurture it. I have learned from them.
I am not about to tell you that I can take any group and mold them into a successful team. No, that remains largely dependent on the players that comprise the team. What a coach can do is make the individual players and collective group aware of the necessity of sacrificing individual agendas for the common good of the collective team.
"Buy in" is the term I hear used often these days. Coaches speak to the importance of players buying into the philosophy or system. Just another way of stating the need to put personal agendas aside for the good of the team. I refer to this as the need to play for one another. In soccer, we ask players to make a run for a teammate. I implore ball carriers to pass the ball to the second runner - the first runner manipulates defenders away from an area allowing a teammate to run into the space just vacated to receive the pass. That's an example of playing for one another.
It goes beyond simply making runs for one another. Another aspect of becoming a team is the defining and accepting of roles on a team. Coaches often speak of starting the 11 best instead of the best 11. This is an acknowledgement that the 11 most talented are not always the 11 who work best together. Sometimes a more talented player is passed over for a player who recognizes, accepts and fills a role on the team. This might be a player who sacrifices his favored position to play where needed. Sometimes the motivation to do so may well be selfish in the sense the individual just wants to play, but the sacrifice is still very real and tangible to and appreciated by teammates.
It's the attitude of gratitude.
Whether consciously recognized or not players on great teams consistently ask of themselves "what can I do for my team?" instead of approaching things with an attitude of "what can this team do for me?"
In this sense, the decision to be a great team is a choice made by each of its individual players. Buy in or team chemistry is a product of those choices, those decisions. In you are not for your team, for your teammates, then you are surely against them. Even one dissenter can hold a team back from achieving to its full potential. So, what is your decision? Are you for yourself or are you for your team?
Some of my earliest memories of participating in sports revolve around the idea of "team". In fact my first two experiences in sports were defining moments for me. One was a basketball team and the other a baseball team. The basketball team was ultra successful. I suppose we had the best talent, but what I remember most about that group was how we all got along. It showed in how we played the game. In contrast, that baseball team was not very good and to be quite truthful although we were in elementary school, we just didn't like one another. Teamwork was always secondary to personal agenda. In elementary school?
Yes.
Now, the personal agendas on that baseball team were fostered by the coaches who were fathers of players on the team. Their kids played the "key positions" and batted lead off or cleanup whether deserving of doing so or not. And trust me, even at a young age players detect favoritism.
The basketball team was coached by a former major college player who enjoyed working with kids. He did not have a son on the team. Everyone earned their spot and had to work to keep it. Certainly a pecking order was established in terms of best to worst players, but also a recognition that each player was important to the team in their own right.
I grew to love basketball and became largely disinterested in baseball.
As a 10 year old I did not appreciate these things even though I did recognize on a certain level what was happening. It really wasn't until my family moved to a new location that some of these lessons began to be driven home to me. At the new school I had a terrible experience with basketball. Despite being a talented group, wins were few and far between. This became the norm for my experiences with team sports throughout my school years. Talented individuals, but poor teams.
Two different other teams from my teenage years really standout in my memories. One was a basketball team that to this day was as talented a group of individuals as I have ever seen at the high school level. They had good skill sets and the physical attributes required for success, yet they struggled to reach a .500 record. Height, size, speed, athleticism... they had it all in abundance. Ball handling, shooting, passing, game intelligence... it was all present. They could never move past their disdain for and jealousy of one another. Instead of competing against other teams that were constantly in competition with one another. To say they underachieved would be an understatement and I really struggled with this.
The other team was a men's softball team. Now, softball was huge in the area during those years. I began playing with a church team in an church league. We won and won a lot. We moved on from church competition to playing any and all comers... and still we won, a lot. We did not even have all the best softball players from the congregation playing on this team. Some played for their work based teams or on teams with friends they socialized with. What was the key to our success? We liked playing the game together.
That is far different from liking one another.
In all honesty, there were some people on that team that forced me to struggle upholding my Christian beliefs at times. I just did not care for them as individuals, but I certainly appreciated their abilities as ball players. As individual players some of us were quite talented and others not so much, but everyone was valued as equals for what they brought to the team. Appreciation of and for one another was our most valuable trait.
Now some 30+ years later as I coach teams I find myself putting a lot of effort into recreating the team atmosphere of those successful teams from my youth. There is an understanding of team building being a process and team bonding a critical part of that process.
It's been a few years now that I have participated in email groups with other coaches. A couple of these groups have had profound impact on how I approach team bonding. I found that some coaches have made a science of team bonding. They have studied it, defined it and developed methodology to develop and nurture it. I have learned from them.
I am not about to tell you that I can take any group and mold them into a successful team. No, that remains largely dependent on the players that comprise the team. What a coach can do is make the individual players and collective group aware of the necessity of sacrificing individual agendas for the common good of the collective team.
"Buy in" is the term I hear used often these days. Coaches speak to the importance of players buying into the philosophy or system. Just another way of stating the need to put personal agendas aside for the good of the team. I refer to this as the need to play for one another. In soccer, we ask players to make a run for a teammate. I implore ball carriers to pass the ball to the second runner - the first runner manipulates defenders away from an area allowing a teammate to run into the space just vacated to receive the pass. That's an example of playing for one another.
It goes beyond simply making runs for one another. Another aspect of becoming a team is the defining and accepting of roles on a team. Coaches often speak of starting the 11 best instead of the best 11. This is an acknowledgement that the 11 most talented are not always the 11 who work best together. Sometimes a more talented player is passed over for a player who recognizes, accepts and fills a role on the team. This might be a player who sacrifices his favored position to play where needed. Sometimes the motivation to do so may well be selfish in the sense the individual just wants to play, but the sacrifice is still very real and tangible to and appreciated by teammates.
It's the attitude of gratitude.
Whether consciously recognized or not players on great teams consistently ask of themselves "what can I do for my team?" instead of approaching things with an attitude of "what can this team do for me?"
In this sense, the decision to be a great team is a choice made by each of its individual players. Buy in or team chemistry is a product of those choices, those decisions. In you are not for your team, for your teammates, then you are surely against them. Even one dissenter can hold a team back from achieving to its full potential. So, what is your decision? Are you for yourself or are you for your team?
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