A Challenging Couple of Years

         The last couple of years has been challenging for me as a learner.  You see, I enrolled in a doctoral program to pursue an EdD in Performance Improvement Leaders, and one of the results they forgot to list on the "program outcomes" was:

*Learner will experience massive amounts of cognitive dissonance.

         What's led to this internal battle, you say?  Beyond being a compulsive doubter, the degree has caused me to rethink my thoughts on performance quite a bit.  Here's why.  My basic philosophy as a mental performance coach centers around individual performers being themselves in a way that combines celebrating who they already are while embracing the idea of continual improvement.  It's not really very radical at all in the mental performance world.  Many would describe their philosophies similarly.  So you could imagine my terror when, in the very first assignment in my program, we read the beginning of Thomas Gilbert's Human Competence, and within the first three pages or so, he wrote something to the effect of:

"If you have a performance problem, you probably have an environment problem."

         What?!  That can't be right!  Surely he means, "If you have a performance problem, the performer needs to find a solution."  Right?  RIGHT?!!  I kept reading, and he repeated it.  Then again.  Then, I saw his Behavior Engineering Model (BEM), and again, he recommended starting with the environment.  What's hilarious about it, looking back, is I'd completely forgotten that his model does include the concept of individuals as well.  It was that scarring.  

         Anyway, it really forced me to rethink how performance works.  That was hard to embrace.  I was starting my fifth year or so in the world of mental performance and had been excited to move out of a new practitioner mode.  In hindsight, probably a bit of Dunning-Kruger effect on my part in thinking I'd started to figure out this mental stuff.  It's continued to be hard to embrace as I've had to rethink, meld together, and decide again what I think is the best approach to empowering others to perform and enjoy (while also following assignment rubrics, of course).  I say think because if there's one thing that I've become more and more sure of through the process, it's that anyone sure of what leads to performance is kidding themselves.  There are way too many variables that factor in for any 5-step plan, no matter how many free universities you get your honorary degree from on Twitter.  

         That said, it's been fun too.  I've enjoyed learning, exploring different topics, and applying what I learn to improve projects at school.  I've even enjoyed the challenge of fighting internal second-grade Ben.  He wanted to be perfect on every assignment and took criticism personally.  Actually, that's a lie.  That's been a brutal battle with every click of the mouse to submit an assignment.  But I've made progress, I think.  The improvement of projects led me to a recent idea to return to writing, at least for a handful of short posts.  Great project ideas gone wrong were a significant factor in my return to school, and my hope is to share a few things I've learned from those failures that will help you avoid making the same mistakes.  To do that, I'll be sharing "5 Reasons Why Your Great Idea Didn't Work" over the course of the next couple of weeks or so.  If you're doubting me, I don't blame you.  A brief look at my "recent" posts led to pain in seeing my idea to shift the blog to organizational learning a couple of years ago... and then proceed to write 2 blogs in 2 years.  But hey, at least with one of the two, you could argue it did have something to do with organizational learning.  That's the plan, though, and I hope you'll check back in to see if I do it.  If not, don't blame me, of course.  Blame my environment!

- Ben

Coaching in a Snapshot Society: A Threat or an Opportunity?

         I've been thinking about it a lot lately, "We live in a snapshot society."  Every time there's a controversial coaching moment, it's blasted all over social media.  "They should be fired!"  "Kids today are just soft!"  A Twitter bot may chime in every once in a while, reminding us to tune into live coverage of the JV water polo game (if you're a HS coach, you know what I'm talking about...).  The tendency to evaluate coaches based on real-life snapshot moments has spread too.  Coaches can get crushed because of a moment's lapse in judgment or loss of control.  It's easy to say this isn't fair.  It probably isn't.  Maybe it seems like there’s a threat in every moment of coaching, but I think it's important to consider another perspective. There’s an opportunity.

        There is incredible power potential, opportunity, in every moment a coach has to impact those they coach, particularly young people, for the rest of their lives.  It's been said, after all, that coaches are the most important factor in how a young person views their athletic experience.  While we'd love for all athletes to be so incredibly intrinsically motivated and emotionally intelligent that a negative coaching experience doesn't matter, it's unrealistic.  Others may emphasize, "Just focus on the message," which can be helpful advice.  But the delivery does matter.  It matters today, and it's always mattered to coaches who want to be as effective as possible.  Also vital to consider is that in every HS athlete-coach interaction there's one adult and one kid, one professional and one amateur.  To put the burden entirely on the amateur kid as a communicator is ineffective and unfair.

        So, what can we do?  In general, I'm not a fan of either-or logic, but in this case I think it may fit.  There could be two camps of coaches moving forward.  One camp will complain about the environment of coaching today.  They'll pine for years past, back in the day, when you could do whatever you want, say whatever you want, because, "Coach is always right," because "It's just coaching," because, "I'm just teaching your kid about the real world."  No, the coach isn't always right, and that's okay.  Just coaching is pretty often just bad coaching.  But we can improve.  Yes, the real world may have bullies, but your coach shouldn't be one.  These coaches may make themselves feel better with “kids today” logic, but I’m not sure how effective they will be. 

         Another camp of coaches will improve- they’ll find the opportunity.  They'll accept the challenges of coaching today and realize building an environment of trust that values athletes as people will give them some brevity to not be perfect.  But they'll also strive to be better.   To be better at purposeful communication that constructively criticizes behavior rather than attacking the person.  To be better at emotional control to minimize or eliminate moments that get away from them.  Fortunately, there are people and resources that can help coaches with both.  I know which camp of coaches I'd prefer to be included in and coached by, and I have a feeling I know which kids and parents today would choose as well.  The opportunity is there.

- Ben

"Got Joy?" Study Background and Survey Results

      One of the best parts of my job working in the high school setting is seeing so many different sports and performances.  In the fall and spring seasons, it's not uncommon for me to be around five or more teams in a given week.  With that comes a snapshot of each sport and a cumulative mental model collage of high school sports as a whole.  Sometimes I notice themes, and one of them over the last two to three years, in particular, has bothered me.  Both in the moment and after games, the reaction to success seemed to lack noticeable joy.  There are little celebration, appreciation, and congratulations.  Few smiles.  High fives.  And hugs.  No, the look and feel are pretty often more of relief than joy.  Relief from what?  I think pressure.  Imagine, if you will, young people are balloons, and the pressure to perform is the air constantly blowing up the balloons.  If you're bold, you can even picture your favorite young athlete in balloon form.  The pressure builds and builds until it is on the verge of popping.  Then, a goal is scored, a game is won, and some of the pressure is relived.  The air is let out a bit, and then it immediately starts to fill up the balloon again.  Any number of root causes could be there.  

      High school athletics today is different than in the past.  In some ways, for better, and some probably for worse.  The time demands have increased exponentially.  So has the skill level.  The expectations on so many young people and of parents have shifted to investment in the future rather than enjoyment of the experience of the now.  There are many different reasons young people participate in high school athletics, and I'm not one to tell them why they should.  I can say that regardless of the intentions of the athletes, teams, and coaches, there is room for joy.  In fact, even for the ultra-competitive, I'd argue that joy is a competitive advantage.  Are people more likely to give great effort, risk failure, and buy into something bigger than themselves (all elements of a high-performance culture) in an environment they enjoy being in or in one they dread showing up to?  

     I've learned in the doctoral program I'm in and through experience is that an opinion isn't enough.  For change to occur, performance to improve, and sustained change, we need to look beyond our own ideas to see the whole picture.  That's both for accuracy's sake and to build necessary buy-in.  None of us can do it all on our own.  I thought there was a lack of joy but was there?  Before exploring the question a little further, I first sent something to our Captain Class student-athlete leaders asking what they wanted to focus on for a project for the year.  The options were joy, sleep, and parent behavior.  Sleep got some votes, but it was clear the group's choice was joy.

     The next step, a couple of months ago, was to meet with a couple of groups of Captain Class members.  With the first group I asked them what they thought and about an idea for the next steps.  The group unanimously did agree that there was more we could do to help our athletes experience joy.  We decided to start with a survey for student-athletes and coaches to help move beyond the opinions of one or a few.  The student-athlete survey was sent out through Captain Class members and coaches.  We ultimately got 158 responses with some level of participation from every team at the school, except for one.  The results were interesting.

     There's an infographic accompanying the blog with main findings, so I'm not going to bother regurgitating them here.  Instead, I'll share takeaways I had from the results, and what I think they mean moving forward for the project.  The first takeaway is that, at least according to the results, there is more hope than naturally cynical Coach E realized.  Almost 75% of those surveyed said they experience joy in their sport daily or almost every day.  That's a pretty solid foundation to start with.  It's reflective of positive experiences and opportunities still for growth.  A second thing that stood out to me is that joy, although overall a mixture of personal success and team, skews much more in the team components of the experience.  For whatever reason, there's a tendency to think young people only care about themselves.  If you start a tweet with, "In today's society," you're nearly guaranteed to go viral amongst high school athletics social media.  Sometimes we assign intention for behavior that either isn't intentional or isn't accurate.  The findings reflect young people care a lot more about the team than we may give them credit for.  It is also clear many do care about individual success too.  I think that's okay.  We and me can coexist.  Again, we're challenged to be better by moving beyond our opinion.

     The final major takeaway is what brings young people joy within their sport.  A second group of Captain Class members met with our strength coach and me to review the results and note themes we saw in the answers.  It was a lot of fun, and the Captain Class members did a great job.  Unfortunately, someone lost a picture with the themes we came up with (that someone was me, but I don't want to call myself out in front of the whole group reading.  I'd rather address the mistake with myself 1-on-1 because I know I am a soft snowflake).  I did my best to recreate the themes in looking at the results again.  Six emerged.  They were success, the team, growth mindset, others related to self, fun, and coaches.  Success was the number one answer, and it ranged from winning to making plays individually.  Made sense.  You spend a lot of time putting in the effort and want to see it pay off in the form of results.  There's nothing wrong with that.  The team was a close second, and the category was all about being part of a group.  Again, makes sense.  People want to belong.  The fact that success and team so overwhelmingly stood out, in my opinion, speaks highly to the level of competitive young people we have who also yearn for a quality team atmosphere.  The growth mindset category included answers about improvement, difficulty, and challenge.  I found the number of responses that fit into the theme to be pretty encouraging and indicative of an area to help others.  The final three themes were others related to self, fun, and coaches.  I lump them together because they didn't show up nearly as much as the others.  Of note is was that fun and joy are two different things.  Also, although coaches did not appear a lot, I think it's important to acknowledge how crucial they are to both success and team.  Coaches create the environment, after all.

     So, where do we go from here?  I'm not sure!  Sharing the results is an important step for sure.  At first, I had plans to do interviews with student-athletes and create a video.  Time hasn't allowed for that, though, and probably won't.  One hope is adults involved in sports see the clear idea that success and being part of a team are the two most common elements that bring joy to the athletic experience, as an opportunity to mold an environment that allows for both.  I'd love to see if there is a correlation between those who find joy in more intrinsic values like improvement and challenge and how often they experience joy.  Additionally, we'll be brainstorming further as a group.  Sometimes increasing joy can be less about creating it and more about noticing it.  We'll be looking at centers around helping our athletes recognize the joy already present in their experiences.  We'll also be thinking of ways to notice joy, celebrate it more, and appreciate those who bring it to their teams as well.  The process has already led to some interesting findings that have forced me to think and rethink.   Still, ultimately the information is only as valuable as what we do with it moving forward.  Hopefully, that will be helping our young people to perform better and to enjoy the experience as well.  Regardless, I will keep you posted!

Here are some of the results of the survey that I felt were most pertinent to the blog, made anonymous:  The Results. Questions about the results?  Send them my way.  Ideas for how to use the results?  I'd love to hear them.  Do you have something you're already doing with your teams?  Again, I'd love to know.  Joy is something all young people deserve to experience in their athletic journeys, and the more we can do to help them the better.