© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

“Enter-Training”: “Entertained, not just trained”

Coaching in this century is more about entertainment and enjoyment than just education and athletic excellence.

Coaches, teachers and instructors around the World are experiencing frustrating times coming to terms with the rapid changes in society and the impact these changes are having on the learning behaviors of kids.

This is a world wide problem. On a recent visit to the USA, coaches in five states identified their biggest coaching challenge as working with athletes in rapidly changing times.

Coaching colleagues in the UK, New Zealand and South Africa have also reported similar challenges in their coaching careers.

Look at the average ten year old today.

He watches television. Turns it off. Turns on his Nintendo DS. Flicks off the DS and turns on his computer. Gets bored after ten minutes, turns on the television again and watches a video or DVD while listening to a CD.

Kids in this century are living in a world of constant stimulation. Life offers more entertainment options than ever and access to entertainment has never been easier.

How does this relate to the sports training environment?

Electronic games and computer toys may provide the stimulus to refine reaction times, improve timing and problem solving abilities but can these skills be transferred to the sports skill development process?

Most sports teach basic skills – simple movements that represent the basic movements of the sport. One traditional method of teaching simple skills has been to introduce the athletes to the skill by demonstration or description from the coach and then have the athletes attempt the skill, repeating the movement several times until mastered.

In the past, young athletes have been encouraged to work patiently through a standardized, “technically correct” learning process and repeat the basic skill several times until the movement is learnt.

Our ten year old – the one with all the electronics – may approach the skills learning process somewhat differently.

After one try at the new skill he is still interested. After two attempts, mildly amused. After three tries, he is bored. After four goes he is looking for ways to make it more entertaining. After eight to ten attempts he is looking for ways to get out of the practice altogether and may attempt to be disruptive, look for a toilet break, disturb team mates and so on.

And that is the challenge for the coach. How to maintain an effective coaching environment (i.e. get the job done) and yet make the environment entertaining and stimulating enough to maintain the athletes’ interest and commitment to the task?

The “Game Sense” concept is possibly an excellent way of dealing with this issue. The “Game Sense” approach encourages skills development and learning through experimentation and personal trial. It encourages athletes to practice and learn through the stimulation of the practical application of skills and through their own interpretation of the skills learning process. The variety and mental stimulation that Game Sense offers may be one solution to coaching more effectively in the century of entertainment.

Society teaches short term, instant gratification, easy fix, automatic answer, limited effort solutions.

Kids are learning five basic approaches to life’s challenges:

• I must have it now.
• I must have it all.
• It must be fun.
• It must be easy.
• If it isn’t instant, fun and easy I don’t want it.

Talk to a parent of an average eight to twelve year old. Speak with a primary school teacher. Ask them how they believe kids have changed. You will find they are as frustrated as most coaches. Kids learn at an early age, through the media, through advertising and through the electronic “educators” (TV, video, computers, Internet) that entertainment and enjoyment are what life in this century is all about.

Sport on the other hand embodies concepts such as “long term commitment”, “dedication” “personal sacrifice” “work ethic” and “discipline”. These values are highly desirable personal characteristics. The plethora of business reading material available today strongly supports these core values as fundamental to personal and professional success.

The big challenge for coaches in all sports is how to accept that times have changed, without compromising the core values of the training program and the coaches personal philosophy.

It is delusional in the extreme to think that the attitudes embodied by participation in sport will change all of society – that society will change or regress to accommodate traditional sporting values.

It is more realistic to try and find innovative and creative ways of achieving sporting success within the changing framework of education and communication.

The successful coach of this century will need to be more innovative and creative than ever in an effort to maintain excellence in their program.

In a 1997 interview legendary swim coach Joe King, then in his 80′s was asked about coaching and kids today (i.e. in 1997).

Coach King replied, “Kids are smarter today. They are looking for more than just swimming laps. They want to be entertained not just trained. If I were starting coaching today the first thing I would do would be to put in place a social program. Keep kids happy first, then develop the training and competition program from there”.

Coach King recognized that in changing times, the successful coach will also need to change their approach to achievement and sporting excellence.

Some sports, aware of these changing trends in society, have developed marketable “versions” of their sport to increase participation (and revenue). Indoor cricket for example offers the players the opportunity to bat and bowl without the commitment of having to spend five days in the field.

These “fast food sports” are appealing to parents who can enjoy the excitement of being involved with their children’s sporting activities without the volunteering, amateur officiating, part time coaching and weekend long commitment required by the more traditional sports.

However, whilst the “instant – automatic” aspects of society are coaching challenges to overcome, they also offer an opportunity for sport in terms of marketing and promoting the unique benefits of involvement, participation and competition.

• Regular physical activity promotes health and well being. It develops cardiovascular fitness and helps control weight gain.
• Training for sports like swimming, cycling, rowing, track and field, gymnastics etc promotes time management, goal setting, commitment, self confidence.
• Training and competing for basketball, netball, soccer, football, cricket etc promotes teamwork, team building, interpersonal skills, communication abilities and self discipline.

In other words, it can be argued that participation, training and competition in sport gives kids a real advantage in this century. They are learning important life skills in sport that may not be available to them anywhere else through other institutions.

A young swimmer who has faced early morning training, long hard training sessions and grown up balancing sport and study commitments has little problem meeting the time management demands of secondary or tertiary study.

A young footballer who has worked with team mates, overcome the emotional issues of losing games and the pain of dealing with injury, faces no obstacles working in the corporate environment of team building and meeting monthly deadlines.

A young tennis player who has faced hundreds of opponents and traveled long distances to competitions can easily meet the challenges of overseas travel and working with people from other backgrounds.

Sport in many ways is providing an opportunity for kids to develop personal skills and attributes that non sporting activities do not. Sporting kids are to some degree advantaged in these times having developed important life skills along the way to sporting success.

Practical Coaching Tips

• All athletes love training camps. Training camps offer variety, change and different approaches to athletic preparation. The challenge is to maintain the enjoyment and enthusiasm generated at a training camp in the day to day training program. Aim to make every week a training camp, i.e. 52 “training camps” per year by coaching with variation, creativity, innovation and imagination.
• Look to add variety to old sessions, old routines and old drills. Change the way the drills are instructed, add elements of timing and competition to skills training, introduce new equipment and new situations for athletes to learn and master new skills.
• Have coaches from other sports (similar in nature to your sport) come to your sessions and give feedback on your coaching. They can offer variations on old techniques and drills that will bring innovation and creativity to training sessions. For example, if coaching basketball, have a netball coach teach the netball perspective of passing and catching. If working with running athletes in football, have a track and field coach help with their speed development training.
• Invite and accept input from athletes on training program ideas and directions. Give them the feeling of ownership of the program. Great coaches learn from the input of athletes.
• Encourage and develop a club and athlete social program where athletes learn to develop social skills as part of their overall development program.
• Encourage the development of the person not just the performance. Teach life skills and personal development skills in addition to sporting skills.
• Try to incorporate Game Sense approaches to old skill-learning routines. Give athletes the opportunity to learn through experimentation and personal discovery.
• Change the training environment to stimulate an environment of learning and stimulation. Modify training venues. Use a variety of training equipment. Change training times. Look for variations in fitness activities. Start training from different places within the training venue. Find ways to make it fun and interesting.
• Look for innovative and creative ways to take advantage of the new skills and abilities “computer kids” are developing. If this generation of athletes is developing a set of skills that are technology generated and respond to electronic stimuli, develop coaching tools that work well within this environment.
• “Sell” parents and athletes on the positive aspects of personal development that sport offers. The development of key values such as time management, self confidence, self esteem, self discipline, the ability to overcome adversity, the ability to work effectively in a team environment etc are important life skills that can be fostered through participation in sports. These life skills become elements of the sport that can be marketed and promoted to potential players and their families.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

By Wayne Goldsmith

In business and in elite sport there are three basic types of people.

Those who are innovative, creative, rule breakers, risk takers – leaders: people who have a vision of what’s possible and make the future theirs.

Those who watch the leaders and innovators and copy them.

Those who don’t care about the future – they just keep repeating what they do now over and over and over and over and over…

Which one are you?

You see these three same types of people in competition at the Olympic Games as:

The Gold Medalists- the ones who lead the sport to new heights – break records – do the impossible. They saw the future as a vision – saw it clearly and made it happen.

The Finalists- the ones who did ok but lacked the vision, energy, innovation and originality to be the best of the best.

The Turn Ups- the ones who were just happy being there. They usually watch what everyone else does, copy it and that way at the next Olympics they are still four years behind the field!

The same types of people turn up in every football Club in the world – Leaders, Copiers and “Just happy to be heres”.

The future is like a voyage of discovery – it belongs to whoever gets there first. And the people who get there first are not afraid to travel into uncharted waters or journey to places not on the map: they seek the unknown and undiscovered.

Everyone who has excelled – in any walk of life – is different! They are a-typical. They are unique. The think and act differently, they try new ideas and occasionally, they come up with new directions and change the world. They are not “normal” – they are special.

And usually standing in their way are people who believe that it is important to be “normal”, to not be different, to do things the “right” way, to keep doing things “the way they have always been done”.

The rate of success in most organisations usually depends on who is winning the battle between these two groups: the people driving the change process and the people trying to stop it.

Which group are you a member of?

So, some more lessons for coaches:

There are no rules. Teach people to be different, to challenge ideas, to be innovative and creative.

Throw away your coaching text books and “Ten Ways to be Successful” guide books – there are no rules in being successful. Don’t teach people what to think – teach them how to think.

Inspire people to dream. Encourage people to think differently. Then coach them on how to turn their dreams and thoughts into reality.

Fight hard- Everyone who is different and who challenges the way things are done now experiences resistance. Some of the greatest thinkers and philosophers and artists of all time have written about their fights with people of limited imagination and no vision. Keep fighting hard for the future you believe is possible.

Resist the temptation to copy successful people. It is often not what they do that made them successful but their uniqueness as people that got them to the top. By all means observe them, learn from them, listen to their ideas but…….improve on them and do it your way.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

Having visited more than 30 countries in four continents in the past few years and spent time with sports leaders, coaches, athletes, sponsors, sports scientists, sports academics, sports medicine practitioners, sports administrators, government funding agencies and other sports professionals in many of the world’s leading sports systems, five world wide trends in society
(and by extension in sport) have become very clear and are screaming so loud that they can no longer be ignored.

Ignore them at your peril.

Getting Sport into Perspective:

First of all you have to get sport into perspective.

Imagine the world and everything in it was a bucket of sand: that’s all the people, the money, the institutions, governments, buildings, resources….everything.

Sport is roughly a teaspoon of sand in the bucket.

And we know, that if you look at sport as a whole across the entire world, the vast majority - over 80% - of that teaspoon is related to football (soccer).

And the other 20% of our single teaspoon of sand from our bucket is motor sport, basketball, the Olympic Games, golf, tennis, swimming, ice hockey, baseball, the NFL, the AFL, the NBL, the NHL, rugby, rugby league, cricket, netball, shooting, billiards, snooker………..everything else in the world of sport lives in that 20% of that teaspoon from our bucket.

So ignoring what’s happening in broader society is insanity. Making strategic decisions about your team, your sport, your national sports program without first taking into consideration the broader international social, political, economic, geographic and population trends is like wanting to go swimming but not wanting to get wet.

It’s different here:

Now quite often I will do a strategic planning presentation about this topic – about where sport actually fits in the world and how it is totally connected to and subject to all the broader social trends happening across the planet and there is always someone in the audience who will say, “That’s great Wayne, but you don’t understand it here. Our sport is different. Those things don’t apply to our sport. Our culture is unique“.

That’s like saying, “Look the rest of world might need oxygen to survive but we don’t – we don’t really live on this planet”.

The “Big Five”:

The following Five World Wide trends in sport apply to all sports, all athletes, all coaches, all sports managers, all government sporting bodies, all National Federations, all international Federations and every person who has any interest in any aspect of sport in any country in the world:

1. The demise of volunteerism.Volunteerism is dead. Stop throwing money at namby pamby programs to increase volunteerism. It is over. It is full time. Elvis has left the building. People in this century barely have enough time, money and energy to do the fundamentals of their own lives without giving up a lot of it to amateur sport for nothing. The extension of this is that many of the amateur sporting clubs around the world will collapse and fold within the next twenty years leaving many sports with a network of larger more professional and semi professional clubs to work with – i.e. the “Super Club” concept. Start planning for this fundamental change in the sporting landscape now!;
2. The “more with less” attitude of society. Think about this for a moment. Look at your own sport. Do you honestly believe that in the future athletes and parents will actually commit more time, money and energy to your sport? We can barely keep them engaged with the amount of training, preparation and competition we are demanding now. Where in society do you see people prepared to work harder for the same return? Not on this planet! Demanding more from athletes to achieve more will not work. And demanding more from athletes to sustain current levels of performance will not work. We will all have to find ways to enhance performance, improve athletes and teams but do it in less available time – we have to figure out how to achieve more with less;
3. The changing world of communication, connectivity and collaboration. Anyone on the planet can connect with anyone else on the planet and can learn anything, anytime, anywhere and for free. This means that your sport must be committed to open, honest, transparent, ethical standards and to the paradigms of integration, co-operation, communication, collaboration and partnerships. The old days of secrecy in sport are gone. The sports who will grow and flourish in the future will adopt an attitude of “we” and “us” and reject the ancient sporting philosophies of “me” and “I”;
4. The revolution/s in coaching. Coaching is one of most rapidly changing industries on the planet. The old ways of training coaches by forcing them to complete boring courses and workshops heavy with inappropriate content are over. So too are the old autocratic “do it my way or take the highway” methods of coaching. Coaching is about collaborating, partnering and  building sustainable, dynamic sporting environments with coaches, athletes and parents / partners working together as a team to achieve peak performance potential. The world is desperate for coaches who can thrive in this century and who are prepared to work with – as opposed to coaching at – athletes;
5. The changing demands on the sports marketplace from families and athletes. Families have no spare time: that’s a fact. So to say to a family, “If you want to play our sport, you must totally commit to 10 training sessions a week and give up 6-10 weekends a year for competition (and pay for the privilege of coaching and competition)” and expect them to buy in is lunacy. Within a few short years sports like swimming, gymnastics, diving, rowing and others with huge training and competition demands will either be forced to radically change the way they do things or they will perish.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Where will you sport be in 20 years? In 30? In 50?

And, more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

Without a genuine and urgent commitment to intelligent, strategic change many sports will not survive the next 20 years, let alone the next 90….your sport could be one of them.

You could go from making history to just being another part of it, lost in the trillions of pages of on line resource materials to be searched for and studied by your great great grandchild in 2110 to pass their school project on “ancient sports”.

Too often people yell and scream and demand that national governing bodies, international federations and governments take the lead in these broader issues: stop yelling, stop screaming and start acting.

You can’t change THE world but you can change YOUR world: start today with the “man (or woman) in the mirror”.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

Every time a professional player or elite athlete tests positive to drugs or is caught abusing alcohol, you can guarantee three things will happen:

1. Newspapers and other media will over react and claim an isolated incident is evidence of an inherent drug and alcohol abuse culture in the club or sport (or all of sport);
2. The club or sport will over react and ensure a drugs and alcohol education program is put in place as soon as possible;
3. Everyone associated with the incident will over react, deny responsibility and blame someone else.

 What’s the reality?

• Some athletes take drugs. Some drink alcohol. It’s a fact.
• Some will take performance enhancing drugs – and get away with it. Sad, but true.
• Some will abuse alcohol and binge regularly. Again, sad but reality.
• Some will abuse social drugs and because of clearance times and the sport’s testing policy effectively be “addicts” but still be able to compete at the highest level. Tragic – but true too.
• So what’s the best way of dealing with these problems?

Usually clubs / sports have tried one of four methods of controlling the drug and alcohol abuse problems:

1. Prohibition - Prohibition has not worked anywhere in the world, at any time in the history of mankind. Why people still believe it will work in a football club or sports team is insanity.
2. Legislated control – Putting in place formal team rules, policies etc which specifically cover drugs and alcohol abuse.
3. Peer control - Having informal rules and expectations which are driven by and managed by players and athletes.
4. Relying on self responsibility – in a perfect world – the way to go; in reality it does not work because people (and the world) are not perfect.

The catch cry of all organisations is EDUCATION - ”if we educate players and athletes on the dangers of drugs and alcohol then all the problems will be solved”.

That’s partially true – but only if the education program is the right one. Just holding a once a year “Drugs in Sport” lecture as part of a player induction program is a waste of time; it requires a more systematic, holistic approach.

 An effective drugs and alcohol education program consists of:

• REAL LIFE EDUCATION – WADA, ASADA education programs have their place but their messages are technically focused and frankly a little dull. The more effective education program includes people with “street credibility” - e.g. police from major crime squad and drug enforcement units, and former players who have experienced the challenges of being a professional player / elite athlete who can relate to the players / athletes. 
• EARLY EDUCATION – the education program must commence early in the elite athlete development pathway. It is useless trying to educate a group of highly paid professional players in their mid to late 20′s on the dangers of drugs and alcohol – too little / too late.
• PEER SUPPORTED / PEER DRIVEN EDUCATION – the education program must be supported by, complimented by and supplemented by the peer group. All players / athletes must support each other – particularly during high risk times, e.g. post game drinks, day off drinks, end of season celebrations.
• WHOLE OF LIFE / WHOLE OF PLAYER APPROACH – the education program needs to focus on a life long approach to the drugs and alcohol issue and approach it from a whole of player perspective, not just a football or swimming or basketball perspective – but from the entirety of the player’s life. Drugs and alcohol of often the symptom – not the “disease” and drug and alcohol abuse may be the result of personality problems, psychological and emotional issues not related to sports performance.

Drugs are here to stay. So is alcohol. That does not mean we have to like it or stand by while young athletes destroy their careers and potentially even their lives.

However, what we are currently doing is not working. Conducting 30 ASADA education sessions a year is not the answer. Neither is prohibition. Neither are lifetime bans.

What is needed is a whole of life / whole of player approach where coaches, administrators, players, athletes, managers, families, the media and even fans work together consistently, rigorously and diligently to create and sustain a culture which:

a. rejects drug and alcohol abuse;

b. embraces effective life long / total player education;

c. provides appropriate support if and when needed. 

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

Whilst all great coaches are unique and very special individuals, there are some common factors – some common championship coaching characteristics that they all share:

1. A commitment to continuous improvement.
2. A belief that anything is possible.
3. An understanding of where your sport has been (history of the sport), where it is now and most importantly a vision for where it is going.
4. The confidence to be yourself – to be unique.
5. The energy to work hard consistently.
6. The strength and courage to not compromise.
7. Outstanding communication abilities.
8. An understanding of who you are, what you value and what motivates you.
9. A passion for winning – a desire to be the best.
10. The capacity to persevere and persist and continue to fight hard no matter what obstacles you face.

• A commitment to continuous improvement.

Success is a moving target: winning this year is no guarantee of success next year. Great coaches continue to pursue excellence and relentlessly chase personal and professional improvement. They understand that the time to make the most significant and effective changes to their coaching is when they are successful – i.e. they reject the notion that winning means they have all the answers. They may be number one but they think, act and strive to win like they are number two. They are allergic to complacency and they reject routine, habit and sameness. They know that they must accelerate their learning and their rate of change to win and to stay ahead of their competition. They are not afraid to ask hard questions of themselves or to invite honest, hard, direct and uncompromising criticism from colleagues and competitors. They know that if they are not honest with themselves and if they fail to strive to identify and overcome their weaknesses, their competitors will find them and exploit them at the next competition.

• A belief that anything is possible.

Belief has to come before excellence is possible. Great coaches believe in themselves and back themselves. They understand that belief is the foundation of success. They possess a belief which is able to withstand negatives and setbacks and obstacles and failures.

The belief that drives a great coach is like the flow of a great river – it is unstoppable and it sweeps aside all resistance in its path. Real progress is only possible when fuelled by real belief. Great coaches have a sense of self belief that says to their competition “I am here to win – and to beat me you will need to be at your best”. Their belief gives them confidence. Their belief provides them with composure. Their belief keeps them calm in the face of any competitive storm. Their belief gives them clarity. And the only thing greater than their self belief is the belief they have in their athletes. 

• An understanding of where your sport has been (history of the sport), where it is now and most importantly a vision for where it is going.

Great coaches are students of their sport. They have insight and understanding about the physical, mental, technical, tactical, strategic and cultural aspects of their sport that is second to none. But more importantly they have a clear vision for where the sport is going and strive every day to get there first. They do not follow. They lead the direction of the sport through their creativity, their innovations and their intuition. They lead – and force their opposition to follow – to have to chase them. They set the standard and challenge everyone else to try and match it.  They change the direction of their sport – they determine the future of their profession and they become the benchmark for future generations.

• The confidence to be yourself – to be unique.

The essence of greatness is uniqueness. It is uniqueness and daring to be different that sets the great coaches apart from the rest. It is their courage in being innovative, their courage in being creative and the capacity to be futurist in their thinking that helps them achieve special things – and importantly to achieve them before their competitors. Being the same – copying / replicating / duplicating: these things do not create greatness. Think of all the great people you know or know of. What makes them great? Difference, individuality, uniqueness. Great coaches do it their way. They learn from the great coaches of the past and the present only to improve on them in the future. They know that being the best means doing it differently. It means having the faith and courage in yourself to keep being different when everyone around you is telling you that difference is wrong.

• The energy to work hard consistently.

Greatness is not free. Excellence is not easy. World class coaches have an energy and an enthusiasm which is infectious. They are often the first ones to arrive at the training environment and the last to leave. Their attention to detail and level of understanding about the sport, the team, each individual player and staff member comes from spending more time working on being the best of the best. They leave nothing to chance – they do not assume or presume – they just get on and do it day after day after day. They inspire not with words, but with actions and the consistency and passion and professionalism they demonstrate in all that they do. They do not ask for respect: they earn it as a consequence of living the highest possible standards – consistently, when fatigued and under pressure, every day of their lives. They expect and insist on quality, detail and intensity in preparation and understand that success comes from ensuring training is consistently more challenging and demanding than any competition environment ever could be.

• The strength and courage to not compromise on the important things.

Compromise kills performance. It is a disease which rots the performance potential of athletes, teams and organisations from the inside. Great coaches know this – and know that the team who compromises the least over the season wins the premiership. All teams begin the season talking about attitude, professionalism, team work and standards. And most teams accept small compromises in their attitudes, professionalism, team work and standards before the ink is dry on their Season Trademark / Season Mission Statement documents. Great coaches create systems, structures, processes and people who do not compromise on the things that matter. They know that when it comes to winning and small things, that there are no small things. They are uncompromising when it comes to honesty and seek out athletes, coaches and staff who similarly embrace honesty as a core value.

• Outstanding communication abilities.

Coaching is communicating. And not just yelling and shouting or screaming instructions from the sidelines. Coaching is understanding – communication and all its subtleties. It’s being able to sit quietly with a player, talk with them about what’s important and change his / her life. It’s about understanding how to communicate with individuals through understanding who they are, what they value and what motivates them. It’s about understanding how to communicate with Generation X, Generation Y, Generation I and every Generation because you take an interest in everything about every person you coach. It’s about listening. It’s about teaching when you need to and learning more from the people you coach than they learn from you. Great coaches understand that the best communication is delivering the right message at the right time in the right way – and to do this means knowing when each person is ready to listen.

• An understanding of who you are, what you value and what motivates you.

To coach someone to achieve their best requires you to know as much as you can about them: who they are, what they value and what motivates them. And you can’t coach anyone else unless you understand yourself, what you really value and what motivates you. Great coaching comes with great personal understanding. It comes from being able to be more honest with yourself than anyone ever has or ever could be. Great coaches have a great sense of self – they know who they are and why they are coaching. They know their strengths and they understand their weaknesses and strategies for managing both. They do not need to be loved or popular or win friends or be invited to parties. They do not need the approval of other people to make them happy – their happiness comes from creating a winning environment and from the satisfaction of knowing their coaching was the difference between winning and losing.  

• A passion for winning – a desire to be the best.

A lot is written about balance. The great coaches have none. Balance is only for those who do not live excellence or who find the challenge of competition stressful and difficult. To the great coaches there is winning or there is nothing. Great coaches thrive in competition. They seek opportunities to test themselves against the best. They pursue opportunities to challenge themselves in the toughest and most demanding situations. To them, the harder the competition, the greater the challenge and the more difficult the environment, the more they love the contest. Nothing excites them more than the competitive environment: the grand final, the Olympic Games, the world titles….they live for the contest.

They do not experience competition anxiety – only impatience for the opportunity to test themselves again. They only play golf or jog or go to the gym or go to the movies to give themselves more time to think about coaching. They do not switch off – they are only coaching or sleeping and even then most of them will dream about coaching.

• The capacity to persevere and persist and continue to fight hard no matter what obstacles you face.

Great coaches are fighters. Their commitment, their desire, their passion and their self belief fuels their capacity to fight for what they believe in. They know that no one will make their life easy or their path to greatness simple. They revel in politics. They thrive in conflict. They enjoy passionate argument. They invite intelligent objection knowing that in professional coaching nothing provides the opportunity for growth like conflict. They know that nothing worth having comes easy and that real friendships and enduring relationships grow from adversity. They can say “no” – and in doing so provide opportunity for learning. They can say “no” and stand by their decisions in the face of overwhelming obstacles and political pressures.

Many coaches believe that being world class means another accreditation. Or another award. Or one more degree.

Some believe being the best of the best means having the best sports science, the most equipment, the best facilities and the most talented staff.

Others believe it is simply a matter of good luck, good timing and being able to buy the best athletes.

For the great ones, coaching is who they are – not what they do. It is their personality, their character, their ambition, their drive, their passion, their values and their soul. It is the air they breathe and it is every beat of their heart.

Summary:

World class coaching: Do you have what it takes?

• Continuous improvement
• Self belief
• Vision
• Uniqueness
• Energy and consistency
• No compromises
• Communication
• Self knowledge / self understanding
• Passion / desire
• Perseverance and Persistence

Wayne Goldsmith.

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

Time to be honest about this whole Leadership concept in high performance sport – it is not working.

And why?

It’s not working because of the Accountability Myth: The Accountability Myth is the reason why the current Leadership models in High Performance Sport are failing (badly).

Every professional sporting team in the world has some sort of leadership plan, leadership program, leadership group, leadership team, leadership system and leadership structure.

And yet, every day, the back pages of the world’s sporting press and the on line sporting web sites, blogs, wikis and news services are littered with stories about what’s wrong with sport:  more about trouble than triumphs, more about violence than victory, more about scandals than scoring.

So, the message is simple and very very clear:the current leadership models in high performance sport are failing and failing badly.

And why? The current trend in most professional teams is to create leadership groups and give players the opportunity to collaborate with the coaching team by accepting some ownership for the team’s preparation and performance. How can involving and engaging players in the decision making of a professional team not work?

The reason…the accountability myth.

Accountability is like being pregnant: you either are or you are not.

If you accept a leadership role in a professional team then you are accountable: not half accountable, semi-accountable or fractionally accountable. There is no part-time accountability, no nine day fortnight of accountability with the tenth day off to not be accountable: if you willingly accept a role which includes accountability – then you are accountable.

But, a new accountability has emerged in high performance sport - it’s called Convenient Accountability or Conveccountability for short.

This new accountability – conveccoutability – is the accountability you have when you are not really accountable. It is being accountable only up until when things get a bit ugly, a bit serious (and a bit public), then it becomes an S.E.P. (to quote the late, great Douglas Addams) – a Someone Else’s Problem.

Why don’t the current leadership models work in high performance sport? Because real accountability is a myth- it does not really exist. It lives in a bag somewhere in another world with Unicorns, the Dodo, Honest Politicians and really lovable mother in laws…but it does not live in the real world of high performance sport.

And for that reason, the current leadership models fail over and over and over again.

Players are happy to accept the tag of “team leader”.

They are happy to be seen as one of the “leadership group”.

They are happy to take on an important role in team strategies, tactics and even selection decisions.

They are happy to sit on discipline committees and fine players for arriving to training late wearing odd socks.

But when things go really wrong (and by really wrong read “publicly” wrong), no one is happy to put their hand on their heart and take full responsibility and accountability for the problem.

Let’s look at some examples.

A professional football team – which has a leadership group - wins the title. The following year – not so good. The next year even worse. The year after that their winning record is under 10%. The predictable happens…the head coach gets sacked.

Why? Because the coach is accountable. Says so in his contract.

But, the coach was not alone in his accountability. A review two years before the team’s title victory, recommeded the team create a leadership group so that the players could have more input into the decision making process and thereby have more ownership of the team’s preparation and performance.

Upon hearing of the coach’s sacking, did the players from the leadership group accept accountability and either resign or accept a significant pay cut? No.

They are only accountable when it suits them to be: convenient accountability.

In the defence of players, most of the time, real accountability is taken out of their hands. The Board or Management Team or Media Spin Manager decides that having the players publicly accept full accountability will damage the one thing more important than the team’s performance…..the organisation’s Brand…you know, that thing the organisation sells to sponsors, the fans, the television audiences – you know…the Brand.

It is because protecting the Brand is more important than any player, any coach, any team, any result that full and total accountability is a myth and is why the current leadership models are failing. 

Consider another example. A player from the leadership group breaks a team rule or is involved in a scandal (drugs, alcohol, sexual harassment – take your pick).

Does the player immediately contact the media, organise a press conference and say, “Please forgive me. I did something wrong. It was my fault. I accept full responsibility and accountability for my actions and willingly accept any and all consequences as a result”. No.

No – the organisation convenes it’s Crisis Management Teamand they work around the clock to spin the story so the player not only appears innocent but he should actually be awarded for running naked through a neighbourhood shopping centre blind drunk yelling obscenities at children, spinning it as “Our player’s tireless contribution to the local community and commitment to communicating with the youth of our nation”.

The name of the game is not, “how do we grow a strong, sustainable, high performance culture where everyone accepts full accountability for their own decisions, standards, actions and inactions: the name of the game is protect the Brand at all costs: it’s about damage control.

Trouble in professional sport is like an iceberg – you only ever get to see a fraction of what’s really there. In many teams, accountability is only publicly accepted when the story has been broken in the media and public admissions seem like the only way to get out of jail with Brand more or less in tact.

There is an explanation for all this……money.

When it all comes down to it – professional football is a business, professional basketball is a corporate exercise, professional hockey a marketing vehicle: professional sport is about making money…and lots of it.

So what if we sack the head coach, who cares? People don’t pay to watch coaches coach: they pay to see players play and win. Coaches are expendable and replaceable: good players are rare and great ones even rarer. Sack the coach, protect the players, bury the truth, spin the story and move on quickly before someone notices.

Want real leadership? Real leadership which grows and sustains the success of the organisation (and the Brand) for the long term???

Then embrace real accountability: and not just for players and coaches: but for management, Board, office staff, sports scientists, medical team…everyone is accountable for their decisions, their actions, their inactions, their behaviours, their standards and their professionalism.

All change is personal: this comes down to personal leadership and to the decisions of individuals to embrace real accountability. This is the new leadership: the personal leadership of individuals.

And if someone stuffs up: Don’t spin it: chin it (as in take it on the chin). Stand up, look the team, the organisation, the fans, the sponsors, the media and the public in the eye (or the camera lens) and say with total humility, sincerity, integrity and honesty, “It was me – I did it – I am responsible and I am accountable”.

Only when professional teams and high performance sports , (and more importantly each individual who is part of the organisation) start openly and honestly embracing this total accountability environment will their leadership programs work effectively.

The time has come to change the culture of Spin and conveccountability to one of honesty, openness, integrity and real, genuine 100%, 24/7 accountability.

Reject the Spin, and Win!

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

World Cup Final Day.

The team gathers in the locker room.

This is an intense, high pressure environment that few experience and even fewer survive.

A former player – one of the nation’s greatest – walks into the change room. There is a respectful hush as he starts to speak.

He talks about pride.

He talks about spirit.

He talks about commitment – about attitude.

He talks about winning - the history of the nation at the world cup.

With tears in his eyes he begins to recite the names of the great players who have gone before.

He asks players to stand and link arms and to join him in the national anthem.

He has done a great motivational talk.

This is the perception many people have about the word motivation as it applies to high performance sport: a one off emotion charged lecture from a professional speaker or motivator or sports psychologist.

Effective motivation is not a one off talk by a high powered speaker.

It is not the promise of a present or gift or bag of money.

It is not a single temporary burst of emotion.

Effective Motivation is a lifestyle. Motivated people live a lifestyle where they are motivated to achieve excellence in everything they do. Every task, every activity, every challenge is an opportunity to set a goal, to try something new and to achieve.

Try this simple exercise.

Have several athletes sit together before their next training session. Ask them to perform a simple task – making a paper plane. Demonstrate how you would like them to make the plane.

Now give them three minutes to perform the task and observe the athletes performing their task.

Some athletes will fold the paper so that it looks roughly like the demonstration version. Others will fold and bend the paper so that it is identical in most ways to the demonstration version but with small variations in the shape and size of the folds here and there.

Perhaps one athlete will ensure that every fold is even and smooth. They will make certain that the left and right sides of the plane are balanced and symmetrical. They may even put in a couple of extra folds on the wing to try and make a more advanced design.

And that’s the attitude coaches and athletes should aim to foster – the attitude to do every task – regardless of its nature – to the best of their own ability.

Where the other athletes have asked of themselves “Can I do this” or “How can I do this”, one athlete has asked “How can I do this well and maybe even do it better than expected”. The athlete has challenged him/herself and been motivated to complete a relatively simple task to the best of his ability.

Consider the above example in terms of a training activity.

The coach asks the team to perform a drill – in this case dribbling a ball through a set of “cones”.

The coach demonstrates the skill, discusses the aim of the activity, asks for questions, demonstrates again and then steps back to allow the players to try the activity.

As with the paper plane, the coach observes a range of behaviours from his players as they try the drill several times.

Player one performs the drill correctly.

Player two also performs the drill correctly but adds an element of speed into the activity to test their skill level when moving faster.

Player three also performs the drill correctly. He also tries to perform the drill at speed but adds an element of practical and applied thinking by shooting at a nearby goal at the completion of the drill.

This is the challenge for coaches. There is nothing wrong with what Player one did. He followed the instructions of the coach and performed the activity as required. However, Player two and Player three challenged themselves to perform the task to a higher standard than what was required.

For some reason they were motivated to perform a simple task given to them by their coach to the best of their ability. They decided to set a more challenging goal and then worked to achieve it.

Player one was involved in the activity. Players two and three were committed to the activity. They approached a relatively simple task with the commitment to do it well.

How do coaches turn this involvement into commitment?

Much of the success of these motivated athletes comes from their ability to set challenging goals and to manage the process of achieving their goals.

The great news is that goal setting and goal management is a simple concept for athletes to learn because that is the way we all work every day in everything we do.

For example.

Goal: I want a cup of tea.

Solution: I will make one.

Goal: I would like to earn some money.

Solution: I will apply for a job.

Our brains work in terms of setting goals and achieving them. Goal setting is a very natural process and humans are by nature very goal orientated.

In high performance sport, the challenge for coaches and athletes is to set high performance goals and to achieve them through high performance practices and attitudes.

It has been said that the key to success is to develop “the will to win”. However, the will to win is not worth anything without the daily commitment to do what it takes to prepare to win. It is common for athletes to want to win – but how many support this desire to win with focus and concentration and determination in everything they do?

There is a sign on the door of the United States Olympic Training Centre dining room. The same sign is on the gym doors and on the doors to other training venues in the Olympic Training Centre. It is all over the Centre so that athletes, coaches, sports scientists and administrators can see it and be reminded of it constantly. It says:

Not Every Four Years, Every Day

This simple sign reminds every individual involved in high performance sport that excellence comes from things practiced and mastered in every training session, every day: that Olympic success every four years comes from the little successes achieved every time an athlete runs, swims, lifts weights, stretches etc etc.

Group training activities by their nature often mean that individualised training is difficult for the coach to establish. Different levels of fitness, maybe different ages, different levels of ability and so on mean that often training activities can not be set precisely for each athlete.

Most commonly in these situations, the coach prescribes training activities at an “average level”. That is the training tasks are not too demanding for the players of lower ability nor are they too easy for the talented players.

However, it is not the task, but how the players attack the task that makes all the difference.

It is not what you do, but HOW you do it that matters.

Discussions on the topic of training programs, of variations in volume and intensity, of percentage of training done in the various training zones, of the types of exercises to do etc are important. Coaches, athletes and sports scientists regularly debate the positives and negatives of what to do.

However, it is the how they (the athletes) do it that is vital to the success of the training program.

Leading USA Swimming Coach Mark Schubert said recently, “A coach told me that he had a poor taper and subsequently his swimmers had performed poorly at their state championships. I replied, “You didn’t have a poor taper – you had a poor season of training”. “It’s the little things your athletes do everyday in training, their attitude to every training session and their commitment to every task they attempt in their program that determines how well they do in competition. A great taper will not save you from a poor training effort”.

Successful people (and athletes) rely heavily on setting and achieving goals – little targets to achieve in their daily lives that provide focus and motivation. The cumulative effect of setting and achieving these small daily goals can be enormous and lead to success at the highest levels.

For example in soccer drills:

Coaches instruction: Perform the drill correctly.

The players then interpret the coaches instructions in one of several different ways:

Player one – Goal: Perform the drill correctly.

Player two – Goal: Perform the drill correctly as fast as I can.

Player three – Goal: Perform the drill correctly as fast as I can without making any errors and shoot for goal at the end.

Each player has set a goal and aimed to achieve it. However, each player has set different goals based on their level of ability, confidence, past experience and other factors.

Make it Happen: Let it Happen

Many athletes suffer from “nerves” – being anxious and nervous on the day of competition.

This is because 90% of all STRESS comes from not doing things when they were supposed to be done!

One of the great challenges coaches and athletes face is allowing training to be completed at a standard lower than their expected competition performance.

Many athletes muddle through training doing the minimum standard of effort and application only to find that their competition performances are also lack lustre.

Why? In training they have let it happen – they have allowed training to become a place where sub standard skills and poor habits become acceptable practices. Then when they go to the competition and try to make it happen (i.e. force a successful performance to occur) they find they lack the skills, fitness and abilities to produce a winning effort.

Conversely, successful athletes have an attitude that makes it happen in training. They apply the same focus and intensity in training that they apply in competition. As a result, on competition day, they can relax knowing that they can let it happen – success is more likely to occur because of their attitude in training.

Leading Australian Coach Lawrie Lawrence once said of confidence in competition, “Nothing gives an athlete confidence like knowing they have done everything they possibly could have done to their best of their ability in training and preparation”.

The key to this approach is: Train as you would compete.

If athletes learn to commit to achieving excellence in everything they do in training and to apply the same focus and determination to training well as they do to competing, they create an environment of excellence in their club or training group. This attitude can make a significant difference to all the athletes in the group or squad.

As a wise coach once said, “Attitudes are contagious – is yours worth catching?”

Summary

Successful training programs help athletes develop a wide range of skills and abilities. Over a training season, athletes develop the characteristics they require to achieve their best in competition through a logical sequence of periodized training activities.

It would not make sense for a sprinter to wait until the morning of their first race of the season to start practicing speed development techniques.

It is not logical for a soccer player to start practicing kicking techniques on the morning of the first game of the year.

It therefore is not sensible to wait until the day of the big race or big game to try and develop mental skills. Mental skills need to be developed in every session, every day and in every training activity. By establishing and reaching training goals every day in practice, athletes develop the confidence and belief that anything is possible in competition.

If success in High Performance sport is as many people suggest, “99% mental”, then neglecting daily mental skills training is to neglect the key to competition success.

In many ways success is a choice – as it comes from the decisions and choices athletes make in every training and competition situation.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

This morning I received an email from a Rugby coach in New Zealand about the evolution of leadership and coaching in rugby. Thought it would be of interest to everyone who coaches any football code – or any team sport for that matter:

Email to www.sportscoachingbrain.com

Hi Wayne,
 
I coach a 1st XV rugby side in New Zealand that has a history of finishing at the top. However in recent years we have come up short when the pressure has taken it toll on the side and I have been trying to find the point of difference to change this.
 
Thanks for this piece. We are at play-off time now and this is a good refresher going into the business end of the season.
 
Ownership for one’s self in all that he or she does is vital for young athletes in 2010. That is my summary of your last piece.
 
Regards
 

www.sportscoachingbrain.com response to the Coach:
 
Thanks for the email.

Basically in the old days we coached the whole team the same way.
Then we moved to coaching backs or forwards.
Then it became units - i.e. inside backs / outside backs, front three etc.
Then we moved to coaching each position – i.e. all wingers, all back rowers, all tight heads etc had their own program by position.
Now it is about the optimal preparation of each individual in the team and training each person to realise their own personal peak performance potential.
The evolution means that each individual player has to accept the responsibility for their own performance and be consistently as professional off field in all aspects of their life as they are when they train and play.
We don’t coach at players – we work with them collaboratively to achieve the possible and impossible.
 
Any rugby coach still coaching the whole team the same way with one big team program is 30 years behind the times and doomed to failure.

The future is about collaboration, sharing, growing, partnering and ensuring everyone in the organisation is working consistently to their full potential. Then…anything is possible.
 
Thanks,

WG

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

Leadership groups, leadership teams, player leadership teams, team councils………

What’s going on here? Players making decisions? Players leading? Players taking ownership of their training and playing programs?

• What’s all this empowerment stuff about?
• What does engagement mean? Is someone getting married?
• And what the hell is a leadership group?

I thought coaches coached, managers managed, fans cheered, doctors doctored and players played.

All of sudden every AFL, rugby, football, cricket, netball and rugby league team has embraced a player empowerment leadership model. Five years ago, most of us couldn’t even spell it.

Let’s have closer look at what’s going on.

Leadership groups have become very popular in sporting teams over the past few years. Even the press have now become comfortable using the term “leadership group” and respect it’s role in clubs and teams.

So why has it become fashionable to have a leadership group in sporting teams?

There are several reasons why this has happened:

• Society has changed. Authoritarian dictatorships do not work anywhere in the world. Society demands engagement and people want input into the direction of their lives and community. People no longer tolerate being ordered what to do – they demand consultation and communication. Governments and business have all been forced to shift to open, transparent and accountable ways of operating. Players have grown up in this society where authoritarian models do not work – their parents have changed, their teachers have changed…….so accordingly, their coaches must change.
• It makes sense. Players have to solve problems and make decisions on the field that determine the outcome of the game. Coaches can coach off field and at training but they have limited impact on the field in the heat of battle. Better problem solving and decision making occurs when people “own” their performance and have to take responsibility for the outcome.
• Players are smarter. One impact of the Internet and the electronic literacy of players is that they have access to ideas, techniques and skills that once were hidden away in coaching education texts. Professional players are comfortable using video analysis to evaluate their own performances. Players have views and opinions about their own performances that can add real value to their coaching program. 
• We understand leadership more. Leadership has been studied more in the last 20 years than the Swim Suit edition of Sports Illustrated. There are millions of books about leadership from every possible angle: business leadership, financial leadership, corporate leadership, political leadership, leadership biographies – lots of people are thinking about, talking about and writing about what leadership is and how to develop it.
• The nature of sport has changed. Team sports in general have become more dynamic, faster and entertaining. Most team sports have changed their laws and rules to facilitate more open, flowing, exciting competition. This means decisions need to be made quickly and players able to respond to rapidly changing playing situations. Teams with rigid, highly structured, inflexible playing systems do not do well in any code in this century. Winning is about making quality decisions quickly and responding to opportunities faster than the opposition.

What are the Ten key elements of a successful sports leadership team?

1. Learn to lead. I can call myself a Formula One Driver or the King of Persia but unless I have training and education how to drive fast or lead a nation, I will not do it very well. Leadership is the same. Just appointing or electing a group of players to a leadership role and expecting them to do it well is two steps short of insanity. You would not give them a ball and say “OK – now you’re a talented player” without coaching, education, teaching, training, practice, feedback and development. Great leadership groups have been trained and educated how to lead.
2. Real power! Some coaches “talk the talk” about empowerment and engagement and players owning decisions but when push comes to shove, they take the power off the leadership group. The essence of great leadership is taking responsibility for decisions and turning decisions into actions. By giving a leadership group limited power to make decisions and taking it off them as soon as the team is under pressure takes away any sense of responsibility:the group is a leadership group in name only.
3. Consistency. The same rules must apply to the Leadership group as apply to the rest of the team. People do not tolerate double standards or inequity in teams. Everyone plays by the same rules or there can be no trust – and without trust, teams do not succeed.
4. Real meaningful decisions. Some Clubs allow the Leadership group to make decisions about jersey colors, where the team will go at the end of season holiday, what food to eat at the Annual presentation dinner and not much else. Teach the leadership group to lead and trust them to make significant decisions, to own them and to implement them. And to be held accountable for them!
5. Responsibility and accountability. Responsibility and accountability. Responsibility and accountability. Are you getting the idea yet?
6. Honest, regular feedback. Athletes grow from receiving honest, regular feedback. Leaders grow the same way. Provide opportunity for leaders to give and receive honest feedback from their peers, their team mates, coaches, staff and management. And don’t be afraid of conflict. People who trust each other can give honest feedback and learn, grow and improve through vigorous (even heated) debate.
7. Flexibility. The old models of leadership were based on hierarchy and rigid vertical structures. Modern leadership is based on flexibility and dynamics which respond to changing needs and circumstances. The leadership group should be a dynamic, living group which is comfortable responding to whatever challenges it confronts.
8. Communication. Leaders must communicate but listen ten times more than they talk. Leaders who listen and respect and care about the views of the people they represent are the greatest of all leaders.
9. Start ‘em young. Just as you would not wait until a player was 25 to teach them how to kick, pass, run, jump etc, if you want leaders - train ‘em young. Ensure your elite junior player development program has a significant, well structured leadership development program as an integral aspect.
10. The Culture Virus – Culture changes and grows from the inside out. Provide systems, structures and opportunities for the leadership team to “infect” the rest of the team with a winning culture and positive attitudes.

 So enjoy the “new” leadership. Help players learn to lead, provide them with the environment and opportunity to evolve into quality leaders and your team, the players, the Club and the sport will all benefit.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.