So let's start with one basic truth. In the big scheme of things, I am pretty much a nobody. As I progress through my early 50s, I have started to look back at my life, taking stock of the path I took, evaluating good and bad decisions, the road not traveled and all the decisions and situations that have led to to where I am today. Sometimes I do it with nostalgia and sometimes I do it with dread.
I like to write about how much time and effort I put into coaching, advocating for women's sports and women in sport, I enjoy coming up with topics to blog about then put together pieces that I can post on my blog, which gets a couple hundred visits a day when I post new material. Google my name in the right context and you might get a few hits about my coaching career, I've won a few coaching awards, been recognized for some of my efforts and coached hundreds of players over 27 years in coaching. However, when you measure up the essence of my life on the whole, I say again, I am pretty much a nobody who hasn't accomplished anything of any serious significance when compared against all the individuals out there who are truly make society better. Through high school, I was an above average student in terms of my marks but didn't really feel the need to push myself academically, I got to cegep and struggled to complete my degree and needed to take a year off before starting university. When I finally did get to university, I did ok, got through my degree requirements in two and half years by taking summer courses and graduated with a degree that left employment opportunities fairly open, but that also created a certain amount of confusion and uncertainty and school was now done and I had to figure out what I was going to do for the next 35 years or so as I truly started my adult life. My working career has been a bit a of crooked and ever changing life. In the 29 years since I finished high school, I have held 8 different jobs ( do the math and that comes to an average stay of about 3.5 year per job) and it is only in my current position which I have now held for a little over 9 years where I can truly say that I found where I belong work wise. I have a beautiful home, no kids, a small group of close friends ( although a very large network of acquaintances ), a cat which is the first pet I ever hard and surprisingly I actually like having a pet ( I won't psychoanalyze the why of that too much. Through the entirety of my adult life there have only been two constants, my wife and my coaching. I have been with my wife since we met in 1986, thirty-three years ago and this summer we will be celebrating 28 years of marriage. Her presence is also a major component or cause for my coaching as it was her team that was looking for new coaches, a friend of mine offered to be the coach and asked me to be the assistant. This is a story I have shared a few times in the past. When my friend decided to quit coaching on mid-season, I found myself as head coach and little could I imagine the role that coaching would take in my life. In broad strokes, coaching made me a little less of a nobody and gave me an opportunity to share in my passion for soccer and coaching soccer specifically, served as an avenue for me to develop my leadership style and even a part of my personality and finally coaching gave me the platform to develop a set of beliefs and the voice to express them. For 27 years, I spent many months of the year working full time AND working in roles that might equate to anywhere from 50% to 75% time work in terms of comparable hours. There were periods in my life where I had to work 60+ hours a week for my full time job and then rush off to coaching. I couldn’t possibly take two hours out of my extremely busy day to attend a coaching session or leave work early to travel 3 hours to an away game, coach in the game ( sometimes stick around while our men's team played) and travel 3 hours back. It could involve as much as 12 hours of my day for a 90 minute game. I was busy. Couldn’t people see that? And with the arrival of smart phones and increased connectivity, I was bound to get at least 20 emails while I was sitting there passing along technical instruction and preparing the game plan for the next match. It was one thing when I was on the training ground for practices or on the bench during game, but what about travel and prep time, recruiting discussions, department or league meetings, all the other activities associated with coaching. That was time I’d never get back. And really, what was the point? Really, what I needed was five more hours in every day and a magic wand to solve some issues both in the work place and on my team. Plus a helicopter to make sure I didn’t get stuck in traffic. If you are involved in fairly competitive coaching and it isn't your primary career then that train of irritated thought probably sounds familiar to you and trust me you’re not alone. I think coaching can get a bad rap sometimes, the long hours with ungrateful athletes, the politics, the relatively low compensation. Being told it isn't a job but a passion so you're not giving up all the free time for the sake of extra income. Yeah right ! However, it’s no exaggeration to say that my years in coaching changed the way I think about my life and my career. And like most life-changing activities, it wasn’t easy and it came with a side order of painful reflection. A good coach makes athletes thing about the issues they may be facing, how to improve technical ability, understanding tactics, and even something like getting sufficiently fit, not to mention challenges the athletes to do the hard thinking about potential solutions. Coaches should never sit back without really getting to understand the different strengths and weaknesses of their athletes and simply give or impose all the answers. Good coaches work in conjunction with their athletes to work through finding the solutions not to mention make sure not to give athletes a pass if they feel like being lazy. Coaching allowed to me live some incredible experiences, meet great people and be actively involved in my passion. Beyond the wins and losses, coaching provided me with the chance to develop myself as a person, as a manager and maybe as a somewhat less then nobody. One foundation of my coaching philosophy was that it was always about the athletes, that everything I did was for their benefit, however truth be told, tangibly, coach did a lot for me. What does this mean concretely? That it’s ok and actually I would say that is it essential to be your authentic self at work and coach. When you take on a leadership role, you must bring the best of that authentic self to the table and make sure not to try and taking on personality traits as a coach or manager that are not consistent with who you are. If you know that one of your challenges is lack of patience, no-one should expect you to develop a Buddha-like calm overnight. That would be unrealistic and your athletes and employees would see through it BUT, you must develop strategies to be able to adapt to changing scenarios most effectively as a leader, so that successful outcomes can be reached. And that means using your personality strengths efficiently while recognizing when you need to adapt your style but without comprising the essence of who you are as a person. After years of being told I had to fundamentally change who I was to fit in at school, at work of with my friends, this was a revelation. I saw that it was ok to be myself, to stand up for what I truly believed in and not fit into what I believed were the perceptions or expectations of others. As the saying goes, as long as I could look in the mirror and now I had done my very best without comprising who I wanted to be, that sometimes that was as good as it could be and that I didn't always need to please everyone around me. Compromise isn’t a dirty word in business. For many years, I had a tendency to see the world as I wanted it to be. I could and still can be an idealist and that is a brilliant thing to bring into the workplace and in coaching, as it can motivate you and others to greater things. But it could also be a negative. When people are too set in their ways, it can deter from making decisions or at least taking smaller steps towards resolving a problem or situation due to the demands or circumstances of the specific situation at hand. Sometimes, compromise is just another word for “making something happen despite difficult circumstances” and I learned to try and frame it like that if I found myself getting frustrated. Complaining about a something that goes to crap right in front of you, is the first deterrent to not being able to finding a solution. In the words of the Matt Damon character from "The Martian" , “When I was up there, stranded by myself, did I think I was going to die? Yes. Absolutely, and that’s what you need to know going in because it’s going to happen to you. This is space. It does not cooperate. At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you’re going to say 'This is it. This is how I end.' Now you can either accept that or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and then the next and if you solve enough problems you get to come home.” So basically, instead of freaking out when things don't work out, focus on one thing at a time and take work on solving the problems one at a time. Each step of success is one step closer to solving the whole problem. Leadership takes many forms. It’s not always the job title, or the places at the top of the organizational hierarchy chart that marks out the true leaders. Informal authority and engagement can be extremely powerful tools for advocacy and improvement. True change comes from the members of a work group or team, not from the few in charge. When people are involved in the process and not imposed ways to proceed, they will apply themselves with enthusiasm and motivation. This was a helpful piece of insight that discovered as I entered into my 30s. and it helped me both in managing and coaching. I couldn't expect people to see me as a good leader just because I had the title of manager or coach but that I had to get them to follow me because I had earned their respect and proven that I could help them move forward and achieve their objectives. I was able to think more laterally about how I could tap informal sources of authority in order to develop my own leadership journey and practice. Earlier one, I really saw myself as a task oriented leader. I thought of myself as being personable and easy to get along with but not to generally have strong interpersonal skills. I focused on proving myself by trying to the person that found innovative and creative solutions to the toughest of problems. I got the reputation of being someone that could keep his cool when others around me might be freaking out. However as time based as started to realize that I was more of someone who enjoyed the role of mentor vs the role of task-master. And with time, I accept that it was ok. This was an interesting realization. I spent years as a manager ( and coach) wondering why I found it so stressful to be fairly accomplished at being able to solve problems, but seemingly worried about people " not liking me" It was only when I had some time and space to think through my approach to working with others, that I got the breakthrough I needed. My natural style is much more suited to coaching, to helping people on my team unblock and unlock things so they can move forward, than it is to micro-managing every piece of their working existence. Ironically, I spent many years earlier in my career micro-managing (sorry guys!) as I thought was the only way to achieve the standards I wanted for others. I would sometimes get impatient when others were unable to learn as quickly as I might, or could find solutions in the manner that I thought everyone should. But this was a form of control and was much more about what I wanted to achieve. By letting go and focusing on the bigger picture, it is much easier to achieve collective success. This approach is also helpful when considering taking on a broader role as a leader, as you cannot possibly have an iron-clad grasp on everything. But you can coach others to achieve their best in their area of expertise, so that successful outcomes are achieved. Coaching in soccer gave me confidence to voice my opinion, to take pride in my accomplishments without having the diminish those of others, and gave me a cause in which to believe in and advocate for. It gave me the voice to express myself, it gave me an anchor to define myself by and selfishly I might say, it gave me something unique to allow me to distinguish myself from others.... so maybe in essence, make me less of a nobody.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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