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Leadership Lessons from Real Life: “Hey, Coach!”
By admin | March 26, 2009
She said it in such a goofy, exaggerated way that at first I didn’t think she was serious. Then she said it again and I realized it was actually a term of genuine respect.
“Hey, Coach!”, she shouted from the other end of the hallway.
“Yo, Justice!”, I called back. “How YOU doin’?”
“Pretty good, Coach. I’m ready to go play some basketball!”
Justice was a tall-for-her-age 5th grader on my church league basketball team. She also had the distinct misfortune of catching me in my first attempt at being a “Head Coach.” I had been the assistant on my daughter’s team the year before and decided, after not a small amount of internal debate, that it was time to belly up to the bar and take a swing at the world of coaching. Poor Justice didn’t know quite what she was in for.
Neither did I.
I got my start in coaching with very little background in the sport of basketball. The extent of my knowledge of the game barely stretched beyond the few times that I announced games over the gym PA system in college. Oh, there was that one time when I did play-by-play for the college radio station when our team made it to the finals of the national championship in the NCCAA. (That’s the Christian college version of the NCAA, for those who want to know.) The comedy of hearing me, a radio geek with NO basketball knowledge, broadcast a live game can not be overstated.
But nuts-n-bolts basketball smarts? Let’s just say my sports DNA was always more aligned to the relatively genteel, slower-paced realm of baseball.
Stepping out as a “Head Coach,” whether church league or not, proved a new and entirely unnerving experience for me. Of course I couldn’t let the kids know just how frightened I was, but my stomach was in knots more times than I can remember the first time I took the helm of a real team. After all, parents were entrusting their “babies” to me, assuming I’d return them at the end of the season better equipped to play the game on the court and play the game of life.
Off the top of my head I can’t remember all the girls’ names as I write this, but I do remember their faces. Of course it’s easy to remember my daughter Emily and my niece Shayna, the speedster and the shooter. Then there was the one I dubbed “the gazelle,” Janine. That girl could FLY down the court on the fast break! (I have no idea what the Wissahickon school district was thinking by not putting her on their team.) She played amazing defense and even took a pretty hard whack to the face going for a rebound during one game. What a competitor!
And then there was Justice.
What I didn’t know – mercifully – was that Justice was born with a basketball pedigree. Justice was modest enough to not fill in that little blank for me until I asked her about her background later in the season. It turned out Justice’s mother had played in college and her father had played in Europe in the CBA.
With NBA player Dirk Nowitsky, no less.
Justice’s parents had entrusted their dear, talented daughter into the capable hands of a rank amateur, a coach who didn’t know the difference between a driving layup and pull-up jumper.
There she was, calling ME, “Coach.”
It would be something of an understatement to say that I felt inferior to the task of giving Justice the kind of coaching she really deserved.
It would be an even bigger understatement to say that I felt inferior to the task of giving ALL the girls on that team the coaching they really deserved.
The way our league works, every player comes in to run through some skill drills so they can be scored according to overall ability. It’s designed to insure that teams are balanced without succumbing to the inherent biases of a draft process. (I said it was a church-based league, didn’t I?) Theoretically speaking, every team is assigned enough players of varying ability to balance out the overall playing field.
Emphasis on the word, “theoretically.”
The day Justice took her test she must have arrived in a leg cast with one arm tied behind her back. As I would learn later, her score simply didn’t reflect her real ability. In fact her ranking was fairly average.
So when I got my roster – never having seen the girls before – and started thinking about how the lineup would look once I set it in stone for the season, Justice figured to be about 4th, possibly 5th, on the depth chart.
When I saw all the girls for the first time at our first practice, I realized something was amiss in the rankings. For on thing, Justice stood taller than any other girl on the team. For another, when I had the team run some basic footwork drills I could see that Justice was as fast, if not faster, than anyone except for my own daughter. When we started shooting drills I saw natural form in her shot that, while a little rough around the edges, was smooth and natural nonetheless.
When Justice one day instructed me on the fine art of shooting the ball I figured she’d had some training somewhere along the way.
To the rookie coach the thought hadn’t yet crossed the transom that Justice might have been a bit of a ringer.
As practices progressed throughout the pre-season, it became self-evident that Justice indeed had the potential to be a big-time player. Not perfect, mind you, but very solid. If anything, the issue she probably struggled with most was not a lack of raw ability. As I learned over time, Justice’s labor consisted of carrying the weight of that pedigree on her shoulders.
I could see at times that Justice beat herself up over blowing up on routine ball handling or missing an easy layup. Her mother, also a coach in the league, was often sitting right there within the sight line at the end of the court, no doubt adding a little psychological pressure to the equation. I could see the look on her mother’s face as Justice would flub a dribble or “brick” a simple shot. Justice could, too.
The first time I saw Justice beat herself up during a game I suddenly found my footing as a coach. Though the raw mechanics of the game were still an ellusive target, at least the people-skills came naturally to me.
We were in a tight game with a great team and Justice had just launched a ball into the cheap seats. The resulting ricochet as the ball careened off her knee at the end of a fast break could have been lethal if the spectators hadn’t been paying attention.
She immediately wore her frustration on her face and projected it in her voice. As she turned and came back up the court on defense her head was down and she was clearly upset. No doubt the legacy of her family was on her mind, wondering whether Mom or Dad would be disappointed at such a fundamental error.
I caught Justice’s eyes just long enough to get my message across. “It’s okay. You’ll have another chance. Just stay in the game and we’ll be fine.” Justice kept her head in the game, but by half time I could tell she was still kicking herself for sloppy play in the first half.
As we left the room at half-time I pulled Justice aside for a quick one-on-one pep talk.
“Listen,” I said. “You’re doing fine. So you lost the ball. It’s going to happen. Don’t sweat it.” For the next line, I made certain she looked me square in the eye. “You just keep giving me your best and that’s all I’m going to ask of you. If you know you’re not doing your best, then pick it up a notch. But if you know in your heart that you’re giving me your best that’s all I ask. More than anything, though… HAVE FUN! You’re going to play better when you just have FUN!”
“Okay, Coach” was her response.
In that fleeting moment I saw the hint of a smile come back to her face and caught a glint of new life in her eyes.
In the second half of the game Justice turned in an amazing performance. She rang up 8 quick points and overcame her first half ball control problems.
As the season wore on I started to realize that Justice could play better than she initially let on. Yes, she could be inconsistent. But the raw skill she possessed was unmistakeable. I started to realize she could shoulder a bigger load of leadership on the court.
It was time to see just how she would respond to a coach who directed her to play out of her comfort zone.
I pulled Justice aside before one of our last games of the season and gave her what probably sounded like a very strange set of instructions.
“Justice, the truth is you can ring up the score pretty much whenever you want to. But that’s not what I want you to do today. Today I want you to take every rebound you get and make sure the rest of the team is getting a chance to score. Look for the girls who don’t score much and help them get a shot.”
Justice didn’t take a single shot in the first half of the game. After every rebound Justice dutifully made her teammates look like stars by spotting them, passing out to them, and giving them a chance to score points.
The look on the girls faces was priceless. They all got chances to shoot and, win or lose, they felt like winners. We were losing as we approached half time, but Justice had done exactly what I asked. I couldn’t ask for more.
And then I did.
At halftime I pulled Justice aside again and gave her a second set of instructions. “The shackles are off. Shoot at will.”
Justice quickly rattled off 8 points and put us right back into the hunt.
When Justice first dropped the, “Hey Coach!” line on me I got a big chuckle. When I saw how she responded to my coaching, even though I clearly knew less about the fundamentals of the game than she did, I knew that there was some real respect behind that goofy shout-out.
Justice probably doesn’t know it, but her trust in me, even though she clearly knew more about the game than the guy she called, “Coach,” made me a better leader.
Learning to “coach” more effectively has also made me a better leader. Not perfect, mind you. Just “better.” Coaching is about taking a bunch of individual players and getting them to genuinely care about the success of the others on their team. Coaching is about taking a vision and crafting the steps it will take for that bunch of individuals to work together effectively and achieve the goal, namely “winning the BIG game.”
Perfection in leadership is a distant spec on the horizon though I think I know more today about what that might look like than I did 10, or even 5, years ago. Learning to coach, though, has made me a more connected, compassionate leader and I know my family, work, and community service lives have benefited as a result. It has helped me connect more with the people I lead and put myself more in their shoes. Directives are no longer born out of a sense of, “I need to prove I’m the smartest guy in the room” than they are, “How do I help individually brilliant team members gel into a truly brilliant team.”
We only won 3 games out of 8 my first year as a “Coach.”
The second year we only won 2 games out of 8.
This year we won 7 out of 8. Now, to be honest, the luck of the draw had something to do with that record. God gifted me with the infamous “Z” twins and their equally amazing cousin to anchor the area under the basket. The only game we lost all season was the game they missed.
Nevertheless, we went into half-time of most of our games this year in the negative column of the ledger sheet. This was the year that I finally saw how effective “coaching” can turn the tide on a team that feels like it’s losing the game. It was the first time that I really saw my coaching during those critical few minutes of half-time bear fruit in the second half.
Last year, in what would have been Justice’s second year in the league, we only saw her when she came out to cheer on her little brother.
When we did meet up, though, I heard her long before I saw her.
“Hey Coach!”, she shouted down the hallway. I knew her voice the second I heard it. I popped my head around and returned the greeting. “Yo, Justice!”
That kid sure knows how to put a smile on my face!
I always thought I knew a few things about what constituted effective “leadership.” After all, I have been studying leadership theory for decades. I have studied good and bad leaders closely through more than 24 years as a professional manager and now business owner.
Hearing my past and present players call me “Coach” has given me a whole new appreciation for the impact that good “coaching” can have on a person’s life. Justice isn’t the only girl on my teams, both past and present, who has let me know that I have had a positive impact on their lives.
Now comes the hard part… Now it’s time to transform those coaching experiences on the basketball court into practical leadership applications for everyday life. I think I’m up to the challenge. I know it’s definitely easier than if I hadn’t had the coaching experience at all.
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