Leadership 101

This is not the first time I have set about teaching leadership to high school aged student athletes. Even with past experience, this is not an easy task. The teenage years are often more about fitting in than standing out, more about following than leading. And leaders, be they good or bad, positive or negative, tend to stand out. It takes a certain level of confidence to lead and developing confidence through the teenage years can be a gradual, even slow, process. Often times, in the mind of a typical student athlete, the rewards of being a leader are outweighed by the perceived risks of being a leader. How we learn to develop and teach the confidence necessary to overcome powerful emotions such as doubt, fear, trepidation and uncertainty that will determine their effectiveness and success as leaders is a process that all too often gets short shrift.  

Team sports are a natural environment for developing leadership skills. 

In having played,  coached and observed team sports over the years one thing stands out about successful teams - that being the quality of leadership. It stands to reason then a primary responsibility for a coach should be on developing quality leaders.

I think it fair to say a majority of coaches appoint team captains based on some type of arbitrary criteria grounded in both how much control they wish to relinquish to the players and the role they wish for their leaders to fill. Seniority and popularity are often determining factors when appointing captains. It is as though being a captain is about winning a popularity contest or a senior year entitlement. In truth, being a leader can place the student athlete in unpopular positions and is most definitely not an entitlement.

I recently wrote of the difference between Champions and Championships.

A similar distinction must be drawn between Leaders and Leadership.

Champions / Leaders are people and Championships / Leadership are processes.

Leaders need Leadership Opportunities from which to learn and develop leadership skills. I would suggest, if you find yourself yearning for better player leadership you should evaluate the process for developing leaders that you have in place. 

Player leadership begins with the coach. 

There are innumerable opportunities in team sports for developing leadership qualities in student athletes. The most difficult step a for coach in the process of developing leaders might well be consciously deciding to alter their coaching style to allow for student athletes to experience these opportunities. How does one learn about leading if the opportunities to lead are not adequate to provide experience in leading?

I would also suggest the quality of opportunities provided for developing leadership skills is of utmost importance. Leadership opportunities exist in any team environment. If your team is plagued by toxic or negative leadership it might be opportunities for toxic leadership have been present and seized upon.  This is where the quality of coach / player relationships comes into play.

A key aspect of leading is the ability to establish, develop and maintain relationships. This has been a primary focus in our Leadership Class sessions to date. I have asked our student athletes to summon up 20 seconds of courage when tasked with completing the interview sections in each chapter. I have asked them to step outside their comfort zones, introduce themselves to new people and conduct short interviews with these people.  We have gone from blowing off these assignments entirely to interviewing parents to interviewing people in our extended families and finally tp interviewing people who are relative if not actual strangers before the interviews begin. The confidence being gained through this process, through these opportunities is palpable. So too is the transition from leading by example to being vocal leaders. Classroom participation has steadily improved. We have even had players volunteer to LEAD classroom sessions! Progress in the Process.  

Progress or Regress?

Like so many of the articles I write the impetus for this one was a conversation with a coaching colleague. When Barry called the frustration was clear in his voice. He was struggling with what he interpreted as a lack of progress with his team. I think it a generally accepted idea that all teams progress through the course of a season. Some to a higher degree than others, but does any team actually regress? I suppose one devastated by injury or suspensions might? Even then the players who remain will continue to progress won't they?

Barry ended up sending me 3 video clips of his high school team for me to review. I have done this and somewhat to my dismay ended up agreeing with Barry. His teams first game was their best game and its been a backslide ever since.  Now, quality of opponents might factor into things, but from what I could discern that isn't the case here.

I have access to a few different teams Hudl accounts so I have gone back to take a look at segments of an early season and mid-season match for a few of these teams.  I discovered that Barry's team is not the only team who it could be said has regressed from their early season play. I do not believe this depicts a complete picture of what is happening though.

A few thoughts ran through my mind as I considered this idea that a team might actually regress instead of progress as a season proceeds.

1) Because many high school teams will see stretches of playing 3 games in a week, practice time is at a premium. Recovery becomes the primary focus with maintaining skill and tactical awareness a secondary consideration.  Many teams will do nothing more than stretch on the day after a match. Perhaps get a few touches on the ball.

2) The mental grind of playing 3 matches in a span of 6 days is grueling.  How many teams allow for mental recovery between matches?  And how do they manage mental recovery?  I actually think wears on young teams more so than older experienced teams, but it is a consideration for any team.

3) Do teams peak too early?  I can remember certain teams at Shawnee where I was an assistant coach that certainly did. One team in particular comes to mind. They secured the teams first ever league title and that was it. The last 3 weeks of the season were terrible. 

4) So, setting goals might be a consideration. Set them too high and have them realistically out of reach due to a couple early season losses might see a drop off in quality of play. Or setting them too low and meeting the goals too early in the season might leave a team without a clear path to move forward on.

5) Team chemistry or lack thereof might be a consideration. Maybe to start the season everyone buys in, but as the season progresses and adversity is encountered that togetherness falters.  It might be friction between players. It might be a loss of confidence in the coach. It could be any number of things that cries out for something to reunite the team.

I imagine there are other reasons as well. As I stated earlier, these are thoughts that quickly came to mind. And frankly, reviewing film in the wee hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping doesn't lend itself to completely cognizant or cohesive trains of thought.

Today I have reviewed segments of game film from the matches of my son's team. Yeah, they looked really good that first match. Decent in their second match against a very good opponent. Then there has been some slippage in their play. Missing starters in one game was certainly a factor. Their most recent game... maybe it was just a bad game. Those do happen from time to time.

6) And I think that has to be a consideration here.  We are talking about 14-19 year old young men.  Consistency is something they strive for, but in truth performance actually often more closely resembles a roller coaster ride.  Nothing new or startling to see here. This is a teenagers life. Sometimes they are 16 years old going on 26 and other times they are 16 years old going on 6.  It's who they are ... and what they do.

7) This is why consistency in the coach is so very important. If the coach is prone to inconsistency - in his practice planning, game management, player relationships - he really cannot expect consistency from the players, can he?

This was the foundation of my advice to Barry - Be consistent with your team. Be consistent in planning practices. Do not stray from your season plan.  Be consistent with players.  Be consistent in your game management. Be that beacon your players can look for in troubled waters.

That's not to say you should not make necessary adjustments. No, what I caution against is making unnecessary adjustments. Do not panic for if you do your team will follow your lead. Trust yourself. Trust your plan.  Believe... in yourself and your team.

I have written before about the necessity of a coach to give his players his confidence. If a player knows you believe in him, he is much more likely to believe in himself.  When a player senses a coach's frustration or comes to believe the coach no longer trusts him to play, that players performance will reflect this.

Bad games... like mistakes... are opportunities to learn, to grow, to improve and become better.  Do this and then put the poor performance behind you moving forward with confidence to the next match. 

Patience and Attitude

I was talking with a colleague late last night about what it takes to build a program. He commented to me about not knowing if he had the patience to build the program he took over a couple years back. Keith called because he knows I have had some success in building teams and turning around programs. He said he wanted to pick my mind about the course to set for his team.

A couple of things instantly sprang to mind. First, was Keith's mention of patience and secondly that Keith knows the path to follow in building a program.  That meant to me that Keith was looking for support more than knowledge. It also meant his patience needed a booster shot.  I understand this.

Building or re-building a program is not for everyone.  It can be a grind and progress can come painstakingly slow. Instead of winning games your goals might include tasks such as stringing two consecutive passes together with proper technique and intelligent thought. Or perhaps teaching the proper angle of approach for a defender, the bounce step and cues for when to tackle the ball. When you are coaching a high school program, these are the last things you want to be spending a lot of teaching time on, but with the status of youth soccer in many areas of our country this is the stark reality of where the game stands.

In a different conversation last night I referred to having to spend high school practice time teaching basic fundamentals as being boring.  This conversation was with Marc, a veteran coach and my partner in crime this past spring.  We were blessed with athletes who were skilled and knew the game. Even so, we still did a lot of teaching, but it was with more tactical emphasis than technical emphasis. Marc's current high school program is a small one and co-ed competing against boys teams.  It's a challenge and one that will require patience.  It is not a new program and the previous coaches have laid some solid groundwork, but there is still work to be done. First and foremost might be with the youth feeder system.

I think it important not to equate patience with making excuses for the status of a teams play. There is a difference. Patience implies that time is a factor. With time, addressing the fundamentals of technical and tactical play will pay off. Success is not measured in wins and losses, per se, but by progress made in developing players. Progress is a positive measuring stick.

Making excuses is a negative and one cannot build positively on negatives.  There is an immediate need to break the chain of negativity. This is where attitude comes in, a point I reiterated with Keith last night. It is so important to celebrate success.  It does not matter if that success is trivial in comparison to other teams or other programs. The important thing to remember, to strive for, is daily improvement. When the team and its individual members walk off the pitch at the end of training or the end of a game, have they improved from when they stepped onto the pitch that day?

The coach must maintain a positive attitude.  This includes an air of confidence that he can give or share with the members of the team. It is  important that the effort of the players is recognized and critical that intelligent effort is acknowledged. This is the heart of coaching.  If a coach does not feel good about the progress of his team, he will be hard pressed to convey a believable positive attitude to his team. This is the lesson of intelligent effort from the coaching perspective.

Earlier I referenced having to work on basic fundamentals with high school players as being boring.  As a high school coach there is some measure of truth in this. We would much rather spend time more time on tactics than fundamental techniques that should have been learned before they come to the high school team.   In truth, teaching fundamentals is only boring in the context of having to do so with older age groups when there should be a greater emphasis on tactics for winning soccer.  Even then, teaching technique can be a very rewarding experience.

The last two camps I conducted this summer were spent teaching basic fundamentals to older age groups.  Sequence of touches, breaking lines, the two line game - these were all necessities for these camps before we could move into tactical aspects of play.  It is actually quite fun to see players improve their games right before your eyes. In a camp setting where there is no pressure to win this is easy to accomplish. Once the need to win is factored in, an urgency becomes attached to teaching fundamentals causing the process to become both stressful and, yes, boring. At least in the sense that this is something we would rather not have to devote precious training time to. How the coach handles having to spend an inordinate amount of time on fundamentals, his attitude towards it, will impact the process.

Now, if we examine the last paragraph a little closer there is a lesson to be learned. It is such a fundamental lesson, but one the US soccer culture has failed to learn. The consequences of this failure can be seen in our national teams level of play in comparison to those of the international community. We emphasize winning over development in our training.

Let's repeat that - We emphasize winning over development in our training.

I propose that if we train to develop, winning will take care of itself. This is the attitude I bring both to the camps I conduct and to the teams I coach. I do not talking about winning... or losing ... games with my teams. I do address improving and improvement on a constant basis. I design training sessions around taking another step forward in improving our play. I take the same approach to conducting camp.  I want to be able to identify noticeable and tangible improvement each day from the time we step onto the field to the time we step off the field.  As long as this is occurring, then being patient and maintaining a positive attitude with the process is easy. It's only when we prioritize winning over development that we become impatient and our attitudes suffer.