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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


The Power of Knowing the Future

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As a Peak Performance Coach, I help athletes to identify and resolve blocks that affect performance. One of the most significant of these blocks is a coach with a negative coaching style. Generally, coaches have no idea how being tense, angry, threatening or abusive affects their athletes. Even a slouching coach has a negative effect. The coach's attitude quite literally trumps all attitudes. However, one of my coaches, Peter, challenged me on this and said that I was being a little tough on coaches. His argument was that all coaches have to be dictators by design and even good coaches may not be liked. 

 

Peter coaches high school level players for the two years before they graduate. But he thinks in four year blocks, and works with the junior varsity coaches to groom the players for the varsity team. He argues that few athletes can understand that kind of time-frame, nor understand the probability of being bumped from the lineup by a graduating junior. He says that these are dictatorial decisions that are way above the athletes' comprehension. His inference: athletes have to learn to be satisfied with their coach, even those that make no sense. 

 

Since no team can be run as a democracy, we're talking dictator coaches all the way here. Yet, even as dictators, coaches need to develop their athletes so they feel empowered and can enjoy the game. If they don't, and playing for a coach is an emotional chore and potentially humiliating, the athlete will simply take away all the coach's power by letting him down in the big game. So, within the bounds of being a dictator, how do coaches like Peter use their absolute power to make the athlete's experience an empowering and successful one? 

 

I'm going to suggest that it is easy to do, and to do it, coaches have to learn to predict the future. Yes, coaches must know what is going to happen, clearly and positively. This is crucial and you do it by creating goals that when imagined seem like DEJA VU. These deja vu-type goals create an OUTCOME that the coach can believe in, strive for and feel. It is a coach's perception (vision) of the athlete at a future date - the end point. When, for example, a coach perceives an athlete as clumsy and a disaster waiting to happen THAT is the OUTCOME and THAT is possibly as good as the athlete is ever going to get. By generating a positive OUTCOME, you prevent the starting point from influencing or prejudicing the whole of the season. 

 

The coach needs to be able to see what the athlete WILL become. He needs to know how proficient, how skillful and how much more game-savvy the athlete will be by the end of the football season. When the coach makes these predictions (and feels them), the athlete - at an unconscious level - feels good about that confidence and desires to live up to it. Even when the athlete makes a mistake on the field, the coach (by trusting and believing in the OUTCOME) will act like nothing has happened. The athlete's typical reaction is disbelief. What? No anger? No demoralizing guilt? No castigation? No making me feel bad for the whole next quarter so I end up being careful and make more mistakes? 

 

In the game of football, there is no time for letting up and getting angry about or commiserating about mistakes. Reworking game flaws is for practice. Since all sports are a series of mistakes and turnovers, a great coach's team never makes mistakes, never gives up the ball, even when the other team takes possession. To look at the coach after a turnover or a mistake is to see the attitude, "It is STILL our ball and you'll wish you never had possession of it." The emotional impact of this on the coach's players and the opposing players is monumental.  

 

Here is an easy visualization exercise for setting these kinds of positive OUTCOMES. –

 

1. Close your eyes and imagine that you are in a theatre. One at a time, place the key athletes of your team on the stage where you can see their attributes. Assess each for his strengths and weaknesses. Be honest - if the athlete exhibits behaviors such as being unconfident, lazy, careless, clumsy, not motivated, etc., describe him as such. Then, set an OUTCOME that is the opposite. For example, if the athlete is lazy, you may want him to be empowered and energized. 

 

2.  Now imagine someone who looks like YOU on the other side of the stage.  Take a good look at YOU. Is he motivational or has the athlete got him frustrated? What will he need to look like in order to demonstrate empowerment and energy to that athlete? What does he have to do to take back the leadership of the relationship? 

 

3.  In your mind's eye, walk up to the YOU on stage and make him look like the kind of coach who can get the job done. See him with the strategies of a great college or NFL coach you admire. Make him look tall and confident. Remove all frustration, anger, or lethargy. As it is only a visualization, you can create whatever image you want. 

 

4.  Once you see the YOU on stage as empowered, "step" into that YOU. Feel the empowerment. Then look over to the other side of the stage at the athlete. Does he look any more capable now? If yes, move on to another athlete. If no, re-do the exercise and make more changes to the one who looks like you. Take leadership of the situation. 

 

5.  Monitor the athlete over time and act on any FEEDBACK you get. Repeat this exercise until you get your OUTCOME. Sometimes change is incremental with this leadership approach; more often it's amazingly fast. Once you get your OUTCOME, keep upping the ante with that athlete and set new OUTCOMES. 

 

When you put OUTCOMES like this in place for an athlete, everything you do as a coach is designed to work toward that OUTCOME. Every story you tell, every bit of praise you give, every conversation you direct at them, every expression of anger you display and every extra push-up you assign - everything is designed to get you your prediction of the future. 

 

The setting of OUTCOMES is what makes the difference between successful coaches and unsuccessful coaches. OUTCOMES that value skill development, emotional self-control, teamwork, personal self-worth, commitment, mistakes as learning experiences, etc., are a huge shift for athletes who are used to being beaten up, punished and mocked for mistakes. The only item of value appears to be the win.  Successful coaches avoid OUTCOMES specifically aimed at winning, because they know that winning is inevitable when all the other OUTCOMES come together. 

 

When athletes are lead by coaches who can see a positive future, they feel empowered, even in a dictatorship. They will play at the level the coach expects them to, and, even if they get cut from the team, they will find some way of learning their spot back just to play for that coach. Peter had it right that athletes have to accept the dictatorial nature of coaching, but they can still enjoy and feel empowered by it.

 

Bob Palmer is President of SPORTEXCEL consulting. He has provided peak performance training for business and sports for more than two decades. He can be reached at his web site – www.sportexcel.ca – or his email: bpalmer@sportexcel.ca. 

 

 

 







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