A Missing Link in Player Development: A Position Idea

        It's been said that "player development is the new Moneyball."  More and more teams are investing increasing amounts of resources in the area.  Soon to be behind us are the "sink or swim" days of players either making it or not.  While there is still much to be said for talent acquisition, teams are using resources to help with talent development as well.  Those resources are seen in areas like strength and conditioning, mental skills and mental health, nutrition, analytics, and technology.  They're being implemented from the Major League level all the way down to the Dominican Academy level.  Some organizations even work to create individualized plans for player development based on current skills and needs.  It is an exciting time for the sport.  With that, I think a majority of teams are overlooking a missing link in player development investment.  It is a facet of development that has been around since the beginning of sports and, although ever-evolving, will be involved in sports for as long as they're being played.  The missing link is coaching, specifically here coaching development.  Coaches are the ones who, beyond the players themselves, have the greatest potential impact in the organization on a daily basis.  Who is helping them to develop?  That's where the position idea of Coaching and Learning Development Coordinator comes in.

        The role of the Coaching and Learning Development Coordinator would be implemented to help coaches to grow.  In my opinion, you can split coaches into three general categories.  There is a small group in one category.  They are stuck in their ways and largely do things because "That's the way I did it when I played," or, "That's the way I was taught, and I turned out just fine."  These coaches do not do much of anything to continue to grow their knowledge.  With a largely fixed mindset, they see their role as imparting what they know.  While they certainly can have value, it's limited by their unwillingness to adapt to sports and people who are ever-evolving.  There is a small group in a second category as well.  These coaches are self-motivated and very good at directing their own learning.  They tend to be self-aware and attack areas for improvement.  Coaches in this level are good at not just learning but implementing what they learn in their work with players.  They know what they want to learn, know where to learn about it, and know how to use what they learn.  Finally, there is a third category I'd argue is the largest.  This third group wants to learn and get better for players, but they may struggle with how.  They would benefit from help focusing on what to improve, where to find resources to help them, and/or how to know if they are actually improving.  That's where the Coaching and Learning Development Coordinator comes in.  The Coordinator would not be there to tell coaches how to coach but to guide the coaches along the path to their own personal development.  In reality, all coaches would benefit regardless of what category they may fall into.  We all could use support in our learning.  Quality learning organizations in other fields from business to education are implementing these positions already.  There are sports and teams around the world with similar roles as well.  Baseball should be next.

        While I don't feel comfortable sharing all of the details for the position on a public blog post, it's something I've marinated on for almost a year.  The Coaching and Learning Development Coordinator would work with coaches on a group and individual level to help provide the support for their development.  If you develop the developers, you're going to have a better chance of then helping to maximize the growth of players as well.  Better teachers lead to better students.  From what I have heard, there are a handful of teams or so doing something.  There are seminars.  Good start, but a seminar once a year is going to be limited in impact.  There are mental skills coaches helping coaches.  Love it, but this spreads the people in these positions pretty thin.  Time spent with coaches comes with a trade-off of less time with players.  There are opportunities to attend conferences and learn from training facilities.  Again, good stuff but impact will be limited.  All of these initiatives are commendable, but a full time investment in the support of the develop of coaches with continual, individualized support would take learning to another level.  You don't have players attend a hitting camp and think that will suffice for all of their work for the year.  You help them take what is learned and apply on a daily basis.  Learning would take place from coach to coach and would take advantage of the variety of knowledge and experience within an organization.  A culture of growth would be enhanced.

        For now, it's pipe dream, but it's one I think is worthy.   We all could benefit from focused support with our learning.  Hopefully there comes a day where it's not a question of whether an organization has a Coaching Development Coordinator but how many.

- Ben

A New 26: G is for Growth Mindset Coaching

G is for Growth Mindset.  Growth mindset has grown (I couldn't resist) into a pretty popular topic in education and sports over the past several years.  I've written about it before, but the basic concept behind it is there are two ways of looking at talents and intelligence.  A fixed mindset view sees talent and intelligence as completely natural.  Either you have it or you don't.  A growth mindset view takes the perspective that talent and intelligence can be developed with effort over time.  I see more and more coaches posting about having a growth mindset because they're reading a book or going to a conference.  That is great.  I love it that they're willing to learn, and that is certainly a growth mindset behavior.  At the same time, it's important to realize there is a little more to having a growth mindset.  Specifically, there is a lot more to coaching with a growth mindset.  Here are just a couple ideas to expand your way of thinking about coaching with a growth mindset:

*Giving process driven feedback.  We want athletes to move beyond the idea that, "I did well because I'm good," and the inevitable, "I played bad because I suck," that comes along with it.  This is a fixed mindset roller coaster of self-efficacy that can be really difficult to deal with.  Coaches can help by giving process driven feedback and getting to the root behavior that led to the outcome of the performance.  "You grounded out to third because you expanded the zone there."  "You took that shot contested by two defenders which tells you there was an open teammate somewhere."  Even better would be being able to talk players through what happened.  Helping them to give themselves the process driven feedback.  "Okay, you struck out.  Why?  What happened?  What can you learn from it?"  "Well, I was pretty indecisive in my plan.  I wanted to attack fastballs but then took a breaking ball right down the middle and got mad about it.  Then, I started to doubt my plan and took a fastball right down the middle.  Then, I was completely out of it and just swung at the next pitch no matter what.  Next time, I need to stick with my plan."  Asking quality questions, without judgement, allows the player to drive the discussion and find the answer.  When the light bulb clicks and an athlete realizes they can find the answers, it can be incredibly powerful for them moving forward.

*Have a growth mindset view of ability as a coach.  We all have coaches we admire.  There's something in them we like.  Maybe it's their ability to stay cool under pressure.  Maybe it's how they always seem to be prepared for the game's strategic back and forth.  Maybe it's their championships won (Let's be real.  Results matter.).  Regardless, those traits and accomplishments don't just happen.  Coaching isn't, "Either you have it or you don't."  Similarly to the talent of a player, viewing talent of ourselves as a coach can be a roller coaster too.  Any criticism of you as a coach becomes an attack of "not having it."  Every time you speak would be an opportunity to really show them you do know what we're talking about.  If it doesn't go how you wanted, it's because maybe you don't.  That can be a really difficult way to coach and one many of us can probably relate to at one time or another.  We're basically putting ourselves one word or action away from the amygdala triggering a threat!  More importantly, it makes you really difficult to play for.  If players are not able to speak openly and honestly, that's a major culture issue.  If I have a growth mindset view of coaching, I realize I can learn to stay cool under pressure.  I can help to make myself and the team prepared for every game.  Criticism, while tough to hear, is a chance for me to grow.  I really need to consider why the player, parent, etc. feels that way.  This speaking opportunity was a way for me to help the players.  It may not have gone exactly how I wanted, but let's figure out why and what I can do about it moving forward.

Modeling the growth mindset is going to be way more powerful than talking about it.  If you do that, you create the environment that encourages athletes to do the same.  Growth leads to more growth.  Those are just a couple of ways to be more of a growth mindset coach.  There are many more.  Dig and grow.

- Coach Ehrlich

A New 26: F is for Failure

          F is for Failure.  For this entry I decided to try something different.  Instead of a typical, couple of paragraphs long entry, here are a few thoughts on failure.  They mix experience and research with philosophy.  Take them for what they are:

*Failing doesn't make you a failure.  It just means you failed.  Similarly, losing doesn't make you a loser.  It just means you lost.  On the flip side, winning something doesn't suddenly mean you're a winner.  It just means you won.  Being able to detach your value as a human from the result of an experience is important.  It also can be really difficult.

*Failure is an opportunity to learn... but so is success.  I don't love the concept of, "I win or I learn."  Although I understand it and know it's not the intended purpose, I think way too often people wait for failure to reflect on process and search for answers.  The search and reflection process should be continual instead of a trigger when things go poorly.

*Failure, like success, is up to you to define.  You're the only one who can decide whether something was a failure or success.  I can't give you a list of 10 things to do if you don't want to fail.  For one, I don't know what your definition is.  Cue the Benjamin Franklin quote about there being no absolutes except death and taxes.

*We can change the perception of failure as a 4-letter-word.  "Failure isn't in my vocabulary."  Cool, but it can be.  "Failure isn't an option."  Alright, but it is a possibility.  Failure isn't some scary thing to run from.  It's a part of the journey.  At our school some teachers did a 5 Days of Failure twitter challenge back in the fall.  We didn't change the world, but it was fun to learn with each other and share our thoughts with students.

*Along those lines, those you lead look to you for how you talk about failure.  What we say matters.  So does how, when, when, and where.  Something I've been marinating on more and more though is the importance of the example we set through our actions.  I'd argue that our behavior is often a greater driver of learning for young people.  Do I say that I want students to go for it and take risks but then penalize them too harshly when it doesn't work out?  What do I do when things don't go my way?  Do I pout or look for more effective ways to respond? 

Those are just a few thoughts I have on failure.  Hopefully they challenge you to think about your own approach to failure.  Ultimately that's more important than whether we agree or disagree.  Challenging our thinking allows for growth.  Coupled with action it allows for greater potential impact for those we teach and coach.

- Coach Ehrlich

A New 26: E is for Everyone

          A real light bulb moment came for me a couple of years ago.  Our athletic director and I were brainstorming ways to make expanding sport psychology happen at our school.  At that time I'd taught four total sections of the class (two each semester) and worked with a handful of teams after throwing out the idea at a beginning of the year coaches meeting.  Anyone with experience in public schools knows funding can be a real challenge so we were somewhere between a lemonade stand and raffling off a kidney when it struck us.  I'd always go on about, "Sport psychology is really performance psychology, and we're all performers.  It's for everyone."  Why are we only thinking of athletes?  With that came a pitch to an assistant principal and then principal about the idea of expanding mental performance coaching to classes and other groups as well.  I sent out a feeler via schoolwide email (maybe my first ever) asking if teachers would be interested in this the following year.  The response was very positive, and one AP Literature teacher even said she didn't want to wait until next year.  So we didn't.   We did a series of sessions leading up to her students' AP test.  I wasn't sure how the students would respond or how I'd enjoy working in the academic setting.  It ended up being a blast, and her students were engaged and did really well with our sessions.  I'll forever be grateful to that teacher for giving up time in class to allow me to share.  It helped things springboard into the next year.
        Since then, our mental performance program, thanks to a lot of help from countless people, has evolved into truly being for everyone.  I've had the opportunity to do sessions with theater, choir, dance, and student activities.  I've been a guest in classrooms ranging from self-contained all the way to AP and in a variety of core classes.  We've done something called High Performance Teachers where 15-20 of our teachers came to sessions on subjects related to them individually.  We also started a Captain Class leadership group for a group of our student activities and fine arts student-leaders.  A Sleep Study Focus Group launched this year where about thirty of our faculty and staff have been educating ourselves on the importance of sleep with hopes for helping students and staff improving theirs.  With the expansions have come hard lessons on the effects of doing too much which has led to a scale back this year, but I hope to strike more of a balance in 2019-2020.  Sport psych may be for everyone, but it can't be delivered to everyone all the time.  That's a great challenge to have though and one I wouldn't have seen coming three years ago.


- Coach Ehrlich

A New 26: D is for Debrief

          Activities are a big part of what I do in working with classes and teams.  Very few young people, after sitting and listening to adults talk for the majority of the last eight hours, are interested in a 30 minute lecture when it's time to be out on the field/court/etc.  With most sessions I try to balance activity and discussion.  This is something I learned through teaching and relearned as a mental coach during a summer with IMG Academy.  Most of the time I use the activity to start the session.  This has proven futile at times.  There are some groups who once we go to a high energy activity have no chance of settling down for a discussion (maybe an impromptu lesson on energy management).  Overall, I find activities to be really valuable.  They can be at least.  Experiential learning is more enjoyable and more effective than just listening to someone talk.  Few activities can stand on their own though.  It's not enough to do an activity just for doing an activity's sake.  The activity needs purpose, and a good debrief can be a great collaborator in driving home that purpose.
          Not all debriefs are created equally.  I've found there to be two very different types that have each brought about really cool lessons learned and helped with the idea of the students/athletes/performers driving the learning experience.  The first is very purposeful.  This is when I've taken the time to think through what I'm hoping they will get from an activity and guide them to those answers with the questions asked.  For example, today we did a team building activity with the cheer team that involved using each other's names.  I asked them after the activity how many of them where confident they knew all of their teammates names.  Not everyone raised their hand.  This led to a good discussion, driven by other questions, on the power of really knowing each other as people and why it's important to know and use peoples' names.  The second type of debrief is one I'll leave very open-ended.  We play some different sports in class.  Many students don't actually play a sport, and all will play a sport within the class that they don't play.  I really want them thinking about how they can use the concepts from class beyond our 45 minutes together and may simply ask, "What'd you learn that you can apply to what you do?" This has led to some really cool thoughts.  It's amazing what young people will say when we stop talking every now and again and just listen.  In reality, both purposeful and open-ended debriefs end up changing as we go because I really challenge myself to listen and trust myself to go where the discussion leads.  This is something that has come with experience and reflection.  When I started with teams I'd feel so often like I left some really cool questions and answers on the table.  While it still happens, I find it happening less as I obsess less with, "Did I get my point across?" and go more with "Did we get a point across?"  That's the fun of mixing science with art.  That's the fun of coaching.

- Coach Ehrlich

A New 26: C is for Confidence

       An estimated 50% of what I do as a high school mental performance coach is deprogramming bad information young people have been hearing for years.  You know, the kind of stuff that gets 100s of RT on Twitter but is ill-informed, at best.  Here's an example:

"If you don't feel confident, you might as well not even show up."

If people followed this advice, there'd be a whole hell of a lot of absences in sports.  There'd be automatic outs in baseball.  Penalty kicks skipped in soccer.  Teams playing with 3 players against 5 in basketball.  It'd be a game changer for sure.  Many people think of confidence as a feeling.  While feelings of confidence are real, and we'd all love to feel confident all of the time, the reality is we aren't going to.  And that's okay.  The legendary Ken Ravizza used to say something to the effect of, "Are you so bad you have to have your A game in order to compete?"  What I think he was saying is it's less about how we feel and more about who and what we are.  Who and what we are build over time.  Through repeated efforts, the testing of those efforts, and adjusting accordingly.  We're built through experience, both successes and failures, and how we respond to that experience.
     
        When we don't give our efforts and experiences enough credit we do ourselves a great disservice.  That big time power you have?  It's because you've taken countless swings and lifted weights.  It  doesn't disappear when you strike out one time.  Your pull up jumper?  You don't lose the ability to take and make it based on one possession or a rough game.  Your ability to outrun defenders isn't gone because of that sarcastic comment your coach made when a slower player caught you.  What I'm getting at is you've likely earned more confidence than you give yourself credit for.  All of what you've done, both on and off the field, are contributors in building your confidence.  Now, there's a flip side to that too.  Want to get more confident?  You're going to have to earn it.  It's not done through moving your hands back a little bit and then hammering a line drive.  It's not going to come through one really good touch and cross to a teammate for a goal.  Those experiences count and may unlock the realization you can do something, but you're going to need to do it over and over to build who and what you are.  To build real confidence.  PUT HERE

        There's a graphic I love from a book I love called The Confidence Gap.  I've included it below.  It's how you build confidence.  I hope you find it useful.  You've probably earned more than you realize.  The good news is you can act even if you don't feel like you have, and the way to build that confidence is through the action.  Keep acting.  Keep earning.  Keep being... You.

- Coach Ehrlich


One of my favorite moments to see (I know, I know.  I've got lots of favorite moments.  Deal with it.) is when someone has a light bulb moment where they realize something that used to be a weakness for them is now a strength.  Recently a graduating senior who'd played soccer wrote a thank you note and included something about how she'd gained a lot of confidence over the last three of years.  Confidence used to be a weakness for her.  Gaining confidence in confidence?  My head almost exploded!  That is real confidence building at its finest and a tremendous credit to the young lady mentioned for all she put in to improving herself as a player and person throughout her experience.

A New 26: B is for Be You

        Longtime followers will recognize "Be You."  Be You is a concept that drives my philosophy as a mental performance coach.  For me, development and life is about the never ending process of exploring and being a better version of yourself.  Be You isn't an excuse but a driving factor in how you learn and what you do.  To be yourself, you first need to know yourself.  This means building self-awareness: knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, how you respond in different situations and why, etc.  I read a great Harvard Business Review article a few months ago that said, "although 95 % of people think they're self-aware, only 10 to 15% actually are.  I think we can raise that percentage by providing some help.
        At the high school level, there is a lot of temptation for comparison.  School academic rankings, siblings, star ratings for athletes, the list could go on for seemingly ever.  Add to that the pressures that come with the false portrayals of our lives on social media as perfect, post after post, and it can be challenging to be a kid today.  Oh yeah, I forgot.  High-school-aged students are also beginning the natural sociological phase of a search for self.  They aren't little kids anymore but are yet to become adults either.  Gone are the days of blindly believing in and doing whatever adults tell them.  What to do?  Much of what we do in the sport/performance psychology class I teach and work I do with groups and individuals is in an attempt to help young people discover and understand who they are and the why behind what they experience.  By recognizing strengths they're able to believe in themselves more.  With the awareness of weaknesses come opportunities to grow.  Building an understanding of why they get jittery and an elevated heart rate before a presentation allows the opportunity to then take control of themselves and their response.  What can you do about this as a coach?  Something I think can't be overvalued is starting the conversation.  Ask them what they think their strengths are, their weaknesses, what helps their performance, what hurts it, why they play, and so on.  Help the young people you work with to start recognizing and believing in who they are while also keeping an eye and building the road map for who they could be down the road.  They'll be better off for it, and we'll all be better off for raising that 10-15% discussed earlier.

- Coach Ehrlich
     

A New 26: The ABCs of High School Mental Performance Coaching

        Four years ago, which in some ways feels like only yesterday and in others like an eternity ago, I did a blog series called The ABCs of Sport Psychology  The series was twenty-six straight days of blogs on topics starting with letters A through Z.  The passing of four years has come with many new experiences and lessons learned.  Four years ago I was just wrapping up my first "real mental coaching" with a college baseball pitching staff.  Now I find myself approaching the end of year three as a high school mental performance coach.  It's a role, like any, that comes with great rewards and great challenges, and it's one I'd love to see spread to more high schools.  With that, I'm going to try for "A New 26."  The New 26 will be a mixture of concepts and lessons learned central to what I do at our school.  While they'll focus on the high school level, my hope is you'll be able to think about how they apply to you no matter what you do or what level you do it.

         A is for Ask questions.  When I started as a mental coach, I found myself constantly seeking to prove.  I wanted to prove I knew what I was talking about.  Prove I could help.  Prove there was a better way of thinking about performance.  My intentions were there, but my methods were misguided.  With that "wanting to prove" attitude came a lot of talking and a lot of telling.  "You should do this."  "This is what elite performers do."  This was especially present in one-on-ones with athletes.  At the end of throwing so much at them, I'd no doubt overwhelmed instead of helping to find clarity.  As I've grown more as a mental performance coach, my methods have shifted.  I tell less and ask more.  Listen to listen instead of listening to respond.  Pick my spots only if an opportunity presents itself instead of forcing one that isn't there.  While there are many reasons for the shift, the main one is I want the athletes to feel responsible for their path to performance.  If they give me credit for their performance, I view that as a failure.  My hope is for performers to get to where they either have the answers they're looking for or have the ability to find them.  One of my favorite experiences to see is an athlete, at the end of a conversation, realizing they'd been the one who came up with the answers.  The last thing we want is an athlete feeling like they need us to perform.  We want to help them empower themselves to perform and understand their performance.
         How does this relate to you?  If you're a coach, challenge yourself to do less telling and more asking.  You want athletes to be able to react and adapt on the fly to new situations competition and life may throw at them.  They need to be empowered to do so.  That won't happen if we constantly spoon feed answers.  Beyond the playing field, the same concepts apply.  We want them to realize they have the skills to adapt and persist through whatever life throws as well.  At the high school level, sports are educational.  Asking questions is a great help in that process.

- Coach Ehrlich

Working with Young Leaders: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

       One of the parts of my job I love the most as a high school mental performance coach is getting to work with young leaders.  Their interest and efforts to grow in their roles can be inspiring.  A couple of years ago our athletic department started a student-athlete council as a way to teach a small group a bit about leadership and allow them to have a voice in their experiences.  That group has evolved, in both size and content, into what we now call The Captain Class.  The Captain Class name comes from a book by Sam Walker on the traits of the best captains in sports history.  What I love about the traits is they're based on Sam's years of research and devoid of the usual leadership fluff like, "Great leaders are always positive!"  Actually, no they aren't.  Nobody's always positive.  The traits also have a long list of potential connections with sport psychology.  Those are what spark our sessions together.  Our school's Captain Class is selected through nominations from each of our teams' head coaches.  For most teams, we try to select one senior who will be a captain and one underclassman who coaches think could develop into a captain.  We get together monthly at lunch with a mixture of lessons, pizza, and open forums.  We also visit local elementary schools.  Although technically our athletic director, assistant athletic director, and myself teach the sessions, our Captain Class members teach us probably more than we teach them.  It's that teaching that inspired me to get back to writing with this blog.  I want to share a few lessons I've learned in working with young leaders.  These lessons have been learned the hard way.  For the sake of time and not wanting to publicly share the stories accompanied by the lessons, I've chosen to keep the lessons short.  Here they are:

*The best kid you've ever taught/coached is still a kid and still human.  They're not going to be perfect, and we shouldn't expect them to be.  We also need to do more to help them realize they don't need to be.

*Shame on us if we purposely guilt a kid for having interest and/or responsibilities outside of whatever we're in charge of.  That's an us problem, not a them problem.

*Being a great kid doesn't automatically prepare you as a leader.  It's not enough to just throw kids into leadership roles.  We need to balance the throwing in with guidance that has substance.

*Along those lines, your best player or the person who's the best at whatever your group does shouldn't automatically be chosen for a major leadership role.  We've all seen the, "When your best player is your hardest worker," type of quotes, and that's special when you have it.  All too often, however, we overvalue the importance of on field role when choosing a leader and try to force fit the most talented into a leadership role.

*We need to provide opportunities for the "next tier" kid to grow as a leader and rise to the top.  It doesn't need to be such a select group.  If we think they can learn and improve, which is kind of the point of education, we need to help them see and rise to what they could be.

*When we do pick the same small group to do everything we don't just rob the next group.  We risk burning out that same small group.  They shouldn't be expected to do everything.  That expectation can have long lasting, negative impact.

*We need to pay attention beyond what they're saying.  They've been trained well and don't want to let you down.  "I'm fine" can be accompanied by behavior that screams, "I'm not fine!"

I say I've learned these lessons the hard way because each comes with stories of situations where I feel like I've failed a kid or group of kids.  It certainly wasn't my intention at the time, but with a new perspective comes the responsibility to do and be better for the next group to come along.  Also there is the realization that another group of lessons learned will undoubtedly come with more experience over time.  That's kind of how growth works.  Anyhow, I hope your reading of this has allowed you to do some sort of mixture of rethinking and commiserating.  Until next time!

- Coach Ehrlich

(Pictured above is most of our Captain Class for 2018-2019)