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.

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.

So much of the world’s high performance sports dollars (or Yens or Yuans or Euros or Pounds or Pesos or Rands depending on where you come from), time, energy, focus and attention is spent on three things:

1. Talent identification;
2. Talent recruitment;
3. Talent development.

Or if you like, find them, sign them, refine them.

And most of the world has still got it wrong. There is a better way.

First item on the Talent Identification agenda…can we please change the name!!!

Let’s all agree to call it the ”Talent Management” Program or the ”Targeting Success” Program or something catchy like T.O.P. (Talent Optimization Program) but the term T.I.D. should be killed off, given a nice funeral and buried by the world’s sporting community once and for all.

Calling the overall process of finding, recruiting and optimising the performance potential of athletes “talent identification” is like calling a game of football “the kick off”. Finding talent is just the first step in a long, long process to turn potential into performance.

Number 2: Adopt an integrated approach. There is too much focus on physical talent and physiological factors in all T.O.P.s all over the world. Success in high performance sport comes about from the integration and blending of physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural / family and genetic factors or…my “big six”:

Number 3: Invest ten times more money on talent optimisation and talent development than talent I.D because Real talent is harder to hide than it is to find: Finding talent is not hard. Open your eyes! It is not hard to find kids who are bigger, stronger, faster or more skillful than their peers. Finding them is not the challenge – it’s what to do once you have found them that is the tricky part. The protocols used to screen athletes for “talent” have been around for over 60 years – test protocols are not the problem. It’s creating an optimal, integrated talent development pathway to turn potential into performance that’s the problem.

Numer 4: Make your objective measurements of talent more subjective and your subjective measurements of talent more objective: This the real trick in all applied sports science. There are no totally objective, research proven, evidence based methods of testing which can measure the “talent” and potential of an athlete and guarantee their elite level competition performance success. And similarly, the old days of just looking at an athlete and using some mystical “eye” or instinct to accurately predict their elite level competition performance success are over. It’s the blending of the objective with the subjective that gives the best results in any T.O.P. process.

Number 5: Any investment in a T.O.P. for athletes must be matched by a T.O.P. for coaches: Governments and sporting organisations will spend millions on mass T.I.D. screening programs and implementing T.I.D. testing protocols then allocate pittance to educating and developing the people charged with developing that talent to its full potential: i.e. coaches. That just does not make any sense.

Number 6: Educate parents and the talented athlete’s immediate cultural influences: You play like your place! Athletes – no matter how talented – need people and places around them which nurture them, support them, nourish them and love them. It is critical to influence, support, educate and help the parents, partners and peers of talented athletes so that they can better create an environment which enriches the athlete’s real performance potential.

Number 7: Stop beating around the bush with genetic testing- just get on with it: We all know its coming – let’s face it – it is already here and the whole industry of Sport Genetics is an unstoppable force. Once we get around the ethical, religious and philosophical zealotry surrounding the genetic testing of athletes, everyone will be doing it. My advice – do it now. Just get on with it or risk being left behind by your competition.

Number 8: You need to learn to recognise genius, uniqueness and difference: Sport is about health, fitness and lifestyle. It’s about providing opportunities for people to play sport through the implementation of standardised systems, structures and programs. High performance is completely different! High performance is about providing unique opportunities for unique individuals to realise their full potential. Too many T.O.P.s fail because they fail to recognise genius. They spend millions finding and recruiting talented athletes, then force them into standard programs to fit a funding model or some mythical all encompassing athlete development system. High performance means being different, being unique, being an individual and thinking, talking and acting outside the box.

Number 9: It has to be a “non-system” system: As per number 8 – there is no system you can create which will guarantee the success of your team, your sport, your club or your nation in high performance sport. That’s because greatness and uniqueness are intimately entwined and uniqueness does not flourish in a system. That’s why the best win – they do it their way, they do it uniquely, they do it differently to the rest….and any high performance sport system which discourages difference will fail.

Number 10: There has to be multiple entry (and exit) points: Too many teams,  sports and even nations miss talent because of stringent rules about T.T.T. – Talent Testing Timing. Some of the biggest mistakes here include:

• Setting an age range – i.e. “we test kids aged 12-15″ years;
• Creating elite junior development pathways which are rigid and inflexible (i.e. “you are either in or out”);
• Testing for now and not for the future – i.e. looking for talent and potential to sustain the team’s current style or system of play without thought of evolving it over time;
• Relying on historical data to provide a framework for the future, i.e. using test data from talented athletes from the past to evaluate the performance potential of athletes to be successful in the future.

There is no doubt that an effective T.O.P. is important for the success of every sporting team, organisation and nation. However, the way it has been done to date lacks real sophistication, practicality and effectiveness and it is time the whole concept of T.I.D. was revisited, revamped and re-developed. 

There’s my Top Ten Talent I.D. Tips for High Performance Sp0rt – the T.O.P. Approach….what’s yours?

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.

Leadership?

Lots of people talk about where leadership in sport is now.

But where did our current thinking on leadership come from? How did leadership in professional sport evolve?

And more importantly, where is leadership in professional sport going?

In the old days, there were no leadership teams or player groups or team representative groups or senior player groups or unity councils…….

In the old days you spelt leadership C.O.A.C.H. The head coach made the decisions, took responsibility for them and that’s where leadership began and ended in professional sporting teams.

Then along came the concept of captaincy and team leadership became shared – to some degree – between coach and captain.

As the demands on team leadership expanded in the professional era and the captain’s role grew to include media management, public appearances and sponsor servicing (as well as on and off field leadership) we started to see the emergence of vice captains and even co-captains to share the leadership load.

Over time, the philosophy of leadership in professional sporting teams evolved into the current popular model of leadership teams.

The leadership team has played an important role in professional sport providing players the opportunity to be more engaged with preparation and performance and to have some real input into the standards, values and practices of the team.

But now we a face a new leadership challenge in sport – it is the era of coaching by collaboration. It is the time where everyone associated with the team – players, coaches, staff and management – everyone – must take full responsibility for every aspect of their own preparation and performance.

Ask yourself, “What’s the long term – what’s the ultimate in leadership in professional sporting teams? Where is all this heading?”

Think about it for a moment and the answer is obvious….it’s leading by not leading.

It is the era where each player has to learn to lead themselves - to train, prepare and compete to their full potential by consistently taking full responsibility and accountability for their own standards, behaviours and performance – on and off field.

In the past, players could be professional during games but then rely on others to set and enforce standards of professionalism in other areas. Players could have some weaknesses in different areas and rely on others in the team to take up the slack….but no more! It is the era of individualised peak performance – there can be no weak links in professional sporting teams.

It is time for everyone involved in the team to ensure that everything they do: on field training, off field training (e.g. gym), social situations, recovery, nutrition, time management, values, sponsor commitments, public appearances and media management is as professional as their actual playing.

Successful professional teams demand the total commitment of individuals, each working to their own optimal individual performance levels to ensure that the team as a whole performs to it’s peak performance potential.

So, as is my custom to ask – what choice will you make?

Will you take a risk, embrace the collaborative coaching – “leading without leading” model and become an innovator in the evolution of leadership in professional sport or will you wait for someone else to do it, copy them and always be behind the cutting edge?

Take a risk – do it now – change the future!

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.

I will be in South Africa from November 15th – November 29th 2010.

Hope to catch up with all my friends, colleagues and Sports Coaching Brain fans while I am there.

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.

Now you can access all your favourite Sports Coaching Brain articles from your Smartphone using our new Mobile Theme.

Try it now from your I-phone, Blackberry or Android phone.

The Sports Coaching Brain – anytime, anywhere and for anyone who is interested in sport, coaching, high performance and being the best.

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.

Spring is the season of re-newal, re-birth and re-generation.

And for many Australian sports – AFL, Rugby League, Netball and Rugby – spring is also the season of the Performance Re-view.

That time when players, coaches, management and staff sit down together and try to work out what went wrong, what went right and how to do it better next time around.

How do you make certain your end of season Performance Review makes  real difference to next season and is not a waste of time, energy and money?

1. FEEDFORWARD – not FEEDBACK. Everyone talks about wanting feedback – but they are lying! No one really wants to be told what they did wrong in the past – what they want is feedforward - suggestions, ideas and direction on how to improve in the future. No one ever achieved success in the future by looking backwards. So don’t waste any time in your review by looking at the past season – it has gone!
2. BENCHMARK – only to establish a starting point - not to copy. If you have to benchmark, do it only to establish a starting point – to be certain where the current level of best practice is – but only so you can do it better, smarter and more consistently than your opposition. Copying = failure in high performance sport.  
3. The last game of this season (and the review process) is the first game of next season. Use the end of this season and the review process to set the standards and behaviours for next season. If you are already lagging behind the c0mpetition, the earlier you start the continuous improvement process the better.
4. Challenge without blame: engage without emotion. Performance reviews are often a waste of time because it becomes a game of blame and a commotion of emotion! No use crying over spilt milk or fighting over lost matches and missed opportunities. Seek the views, opinions and comments of everyone involved with the team without judgement, blame, emotion or finger pointing. Engage everyone in the review process but take the emotions, personality conflicts and pointless petty political conflicts out of the equation.
5. Attention to detail – get the facts – eliminate the fiction. Performance reviews should be about what actually happened and not what the media, a few fans and a Board member thinks happened. The first step in every Performance review process is a commitment to data collection and the establishing of facts, evidence and a detailed, systematic analysis process.
6. Be systematic – look at all the performance elements.  No one performance element can be totally responsible for the success or failure of the team. Look at coaches, players, facilities, management, sports science, sports medicine, rehab, resourcing and the other 2356 performance elements – in isolation and in combination.
7. Change something. Change something. Change something. In high performance sport, the dumbest attitude of all is the old “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. History proves again and again that this year’s winning team is often the least likely team to win again next year – due primarily to the “if it ain’t broke…” attitude. Every team is moving forward – the name of the game is learning faster and changing faster than the opposition.
8. Make decisions and communicate them clearly, concisely and immediately. Performance reviews are worrying times for all staff – particularly when they are accompanied by a major change, e.g. a new head coach, new CEO etc. All decisions and actions arising from the review process should be communicated quickly, clearly and appropriately to the people who are effected by them. Dismissals, retirements and retrenchments should be communicated in person, quietly, discretely, honestly, respectfully and with dignity.
9. Build quality control systems and structures to ensure the effects of the changes you make are measured and that people have clear accountabilities and responsibilities for ensuring the changes are successfully implemented, i.e. actually impact on the performance of the team.
10. Do what you say you are going to do. The purpose of doing a performance review is to accelerate the rate of change of the team and in doing so enhance the performance of the team next season. Talk is cheap – but winning comes from implementing consistent quality actions. Once you have gone through a detailed, thorough, professional review and made changes based on the findings – persist and persevere with them. Many teams will spend a fortune on their end of season review, make 1001 changes then go back to their old ways if they lose a few games early in the new season.

Performance Reviews: The Golden Rules:

• Thorough, detailed and professional and based on real, accurate information and analysis;
• Develop an intelligent, independent, review process – one which is systematic and methodical and devoid of personality and political influences;
• Inclusive- every one’s opinion listened to, respected and valued;
• Remove the emotion from the moment! – anger, blame and judgement do not lead to a quality review, good decision making or intelligent effective change management;
• Do it now! – next season has already started!
• Follow up – follow up – follow up:  Change is only as good as the commitment of people to implement the way it was intended.

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.

Apply the same standards and expectations to yourself as you expect from your athletes.

Apply the same standards and expectations to yourself as you expect from your athletes.

One more time, just in case you didn’t get it.

Apply the same standards and expectations to yourself as you expect from your athletes.

Think about it. How can you coach at your best and provide quality coaching services to talented athletes when your own standards and what you expect of yourself is LESS than what you expect of your athletes?

What are the top five expectations you have of your athletes?

1. To love what they do – to be passionate about their sport: training and competition.
2. To accelerate their rate of learning so they can learn as much as possible in the shortest possible time – they learn faster, they improve faster.
3. To look after themselves – physically, mentally and emotionally – to stay healthy.
4. To aim to do their best in everything they do – to strive for excellence – to always seek to improve.
5. To take time off to rest, recover and regenerate.

So, do you ask the same of yourself?

No? So what you are saying is: 

“I don’t need to be passionate, I don’t need to keep learning, I don’t need to stay healthy, I don’t need to seek continuous improvement, I don’t need time off BUT……..I can still coach better than anyone!”

Rubbish.

A fundamental rule of coaching – one that it is at the core of every great coach / athlete relationship is that it is a PARTNERSHIP. The athlete and the coach work together as a team to achieve common goals: to turn dreams into reality.

They strive together to find new and better ways to improve performance and accelerate progress.

And, like any partnership, if one partner is not contributing to the success of the team, or moving forward in the same direction and at the same rate, the partnership starts to break down.

The FORMULA ONE car analogy is done to death but in this instance it is highly relevant.

You can’t put a state of the art, latest technology engine in an F1 and expect a great performance from the car UNLESS you match the quality of the engine with the state of the art / latest technology gear box, suspension, brakes, tyres, fuel etc etc.

So it is with a talented athlete. The athlete is the “state of the art” and can take their sport to new levels of excellence. But if you are surrounding the state of the art athlete with old thinking, last year’s training programs, poor equipment and lazy coaching, neither the athlete (nor you) will achieve optimal performance potential.

So how do you turn this around?

COACHING LESSONS:

• When an athlete comes to you for coaching and has set their goals high, e.g. AFL professional player, Olympic gold medal, world record holder, represent Australia etc – SET YOUR OWN GOALS HIGHER!
• Aim to accelerate your own rate of progress and learning faster than the rate of change in the sport – i.e. stay ahead of the sport.
• Be a FUTURIST – think about where the sport is going. Visualise it clearly and see it accurately in your mind. Then work hard to get there first!

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 four years, us non football (soccer) people get excited, enthusiastic and ecstatic about the FIFA Football World Cup.

We get caught up by the nationalism, the marketing hype and the promises of the ”beautiful game” and being witness to the world’s biggest sporting event.

And, every four years, we walk away scratching our heads thinking “why haven’t they fixed the same problems they had four years earlier? ”

Like so many others, I want to believe. I really do. This is after all, the “World’s Game”. I love sport. I love competition. I really want to be a Football fan.

But first and foremost I am high performance sports professional and if I apply the same standards to Football that I do to other sports – particularly other professional sports - Football fails.

So, let’s go ahead a few days from this post.

Several predictable comments will come in from Football tragics:

“You don’t understand the game”.

“You don’t understand the culture of Football“.

And the inevitable, “You are an idiot. Who cares about your opinion anyway”.

Thanks for the thoughts but save yourself the time and energy: I have heard them all before.

The fact remains that at a time when the world is watching, Football has got it wrong.

Players and teams who give their lives to compete at the FIFA World Cup deserve the best support, best technology, best officiating and best sports science available: the best players and the best coaches with the best high performance environment. Hard to argue with.

So why when a range of technologies can accurately, simply and consistently improve the game, why does FIFA persist with doing things the way they did when Pele was in nappies?

Let’s look at some of the Horrible Highlights of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa:

• Goals that should have been goals but weren’t goals;
• Goals that were goals but shouldn’t have been goals;
• Players given a red card for not doing anything wrong;
• Players not given a red card in spite of committing illegal acts on the pitch;
• Players “diving” and “milking” penalties with such predigious acting talent they should hang up their boots and just accept the Academy Award for Best Actor next year.

Add in things like the allegations that the “freaky-football” was made available to a certain European team months before anyone else got their hands on it and the rumours about bribery and corruption in the host nation bid process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups and you are looking at a sporting organisation with no direction, no leadership and no hope of becoming all it could be.

And all this in the “beautiful game’s” showcase competition. (Makes you wonder what really happens in football around the globe in local and regional level games if this is what happens in the best football competition in the world). 

I want to be blown away by the FIFA Football World Cup.

I want to sit there with my mouth open thinking, “wow these guys are so professional, so innovative, so cutting edge in all aspects of high performance that the rest of the world will never catch up”.

I want to tell clients and colleagues in other sports that they should be flocking to the FIFA Football World Cup to watch football coaches, football sports scientists, football medical teams, football performance analysts and football teams in action to learn from the best of the best.

Instead we see a fantastic game ruined by conservative administrators, pedantic traditionalists and over zealous sports leaders who passionately believe in the most destructive seven words in high performance sport “that’s the way we do it here” . The only thing they ever want to see changed is their business class seats to first class for their families and 126 friends on their next junket to a would be World Cup host nation.

Don’t get me wrong – I want to believe. I want to become a Football Fanatic. I see the passion and enthusiasm of football fans on T.V. and I want to be part of it.

But I am also a high performance sports professional with 20 years experience working with the best of the best sports teams around the world: I know when something is not working and the FIFA Football World Cup just does not work. It is more of a terrible shame than the epitome of the beautiful game and, as always, the people who suffer the most are the players who just want a fair, consistent, honest, high quality high performance environment to play the game they love.

Expert commentators will explain this away with statements like “It’s just football” and “These things happen in football” - but why should it be?

Surely with the money and resources available, football can be - must be - the leader in all aspects of high performance sport: science, technology, coaching, officiating, sports medicine etc and be the benchmark of high performance sports environments in the world.

Football is the biggest sport in the world in terms of participants, television audiences and resourcing – why isn’t it also the undisputed leader in every aspect of high performance sport????

See you in 2014 – I will be saving this post so I can cut and paste it and use it again in four years as I suspect the same issues will be there next time the World meets on the football pitch.

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.