Climb a Ladder

The lack of women coaching other women is at a critical stage.  There are many many reasons for this, some controllable and others not.  Women who want to be coaches, listen up, this is for you. 

Every once in a while for the past few years, a few articles or studies come out around the same time talking about the lack of women in coaching.  I read most of them, I don't read every single one.  But every time I do, I'm left with the same feeling.  It's a feeling that there's something missing in these statements of outrage.  

Although I agree in part with many of the suspected reasons for the decline, I feel that at least in part some of the onus has to be on us - women in coaching.  As a female coach that fought her way up the ladder for 21 years, I am passionate in my belief that we own some of the blame.  No one will ever be as passionate about this cause than those that it directly affects.  Since that is true, let's just take ownership of the problem so we can fix it. 

I can't tell you how many times I have looked at coaching transaction websites with utter dismay at a hire that was in no way or shape ready for a position.  I know, it sounds caddy, right?  It's not. This is not professional jealousy. The eye roll is all too often prompted by a female coach who seems to have gotten a job that's over her head.  Not just over her head, but WAY over her head, to the point that the end result of the hire is entirely predictable up to the number of years or months she'll hold the job.  It happens and it happens a lot...many times with good intentions of administrators who mandate that either the department or their head coach 'MUST' hire a women.  Cool, but the female coaching soroity would rather those well meaning administrators looked at qualifications first, gender second.   

Gone are the days of past where a young and perhaps promising coach can get thrown into a head coaching job after her playing career, pat her on the back and let her work her way into the vast knowledge this job requires. The job is too big, it's too visible.  It's a good problem.  That means people - and a lot of them - are paying attention to our women's teams.  But hey, it also means people are paying a lot of attention to our women's teams.  

This is not to say that administrators shouldn't aim to try to find the most qualified females to coach their female teams.  I think they should.  However, there are administrators that have actually admitted to reopening searches after only finding men who were qualified for their coaching opening instead of hiring one of those qualified men.  So what's the problem with that you ask... Why so down on females getting more of an opportunity? 

Two reasons...

#1: The scenerio has played out numerous times...coach gets in over their head, they fail, they leave coaching to never re-enter the profession - that school is scarred and is less likely to hire female coaches in the future (even highly qualified ones) and MOST IMPORTANTLY there is one less female building her skill to move forward in the sport.  Perhaps this coach would have been great, we'll never know.

#2: That female fails and confirms some people's suspicions that males are just 'better coaches'.  The female candidate pool has a harder time getting gigs in the future.  Female athletes who played for this very under qualified woman have a bad role model, they themselves don't think for a second about coaching as a career and the pool loses future female coaching candidates.

So why is it worse when a female gets in over her head and fails?  Because as it is well documented, there are fewer. If you count men's and women's teams in Division I, about a quarter of head coaching jobs are held by women.  That 40% number you keep hearing, well that's only talking about coaches of female teams.  Add the 100% of males coaching male teams and you drop the overall number from under half to under a quarter.  The ripples of failure from female coaches are felt more fiercely than if a male coach fails.  Unfair, perhaps, but it's reality.  A seemingly outdated notion, maybe, so let me expand.  There is an unspoken thought amoung many male coaches in the volleyball world, usually expressed with only an eye roll at the story of a woman that failed.  'Of course she failed, she wasn't as qualified or ready as so and so that applied for that job' is what that eyeroll seems to say.  Perhaps it doesn't lower the glass ceiling for other women in coaching, but it does make it a bit harder for us to gain credibility with our male counterparts upon first glance.    Since all coaches, regardless of gender, need assistant jobs to gain expereince and becuase male coaches hold the vast majority of head coaching jobs and therefore are doing the hiring, those eyerolls cannot and should not be ignored.  Credibility in coaching is important for men and women, and I'm asserting that for females the importance of credibility is amplified and harder to come by when time and time again young female coaches get in too far over their head.  Again, is that fair - NO.  Is it reality, as someone who has seen a behind the scenes look at it, I'm here to tell you it is.  Especially in the world of coaching.  

  

My point? To all aspiring coaches, male and female: be smart, toil, work your way up, take your time to rise to the top, read more, study harder, learn from people before you, be responsible for your own mentorship, become an artist of your craft.  There is no such thing as a super star fast riser...it takes hours, a lot of practice, and many failures to build the skill of a master coach. Learn the craft apprenticeship style so your failures aren't so large.  Then, if you ware so fortunate to work with young women, build them day by day into confident women who will not be afraid to stand up to her boss for the raise she deserves or intimidated by the overzealous guy who thinks he can interrupt her every thought.  Like I say to every young athlete I work with in gyms across this country, I need you to be awesome so that you can, in small and large moments, change the world.

#uracoach when you keep it simple...

‪#‎uracoach‬ when you make complex ideas simple because like Bear Bryant said: it's not what you know, but what they know that counts.


Coaches sometimes get complicated.  Often it happens on accident and because taking complex ideas and making them simple takes a significant amount of skill.  This is a skill coaches get better at as they grow their skills.

Sometimes, though, coaches keep it complicated because they're insecure in what they know and are trying to prove their worth or knowledge to themselves and those around them.  

And sometimes, they just lack the disciplined to iron out their lessons to just the things the players need to know to be successful.  

At any rate, as you grow your skills - remember for the good of your players' development - KEEP IT SIMPLE ALWAYS.  Find new ways to keep it simple.  Find fun ways to keep it simple.  And then, end practice by keeping it simple! 

Happy Coaching!

Standards vs. Rules

In the MIVCA speaking appearance from a couple of weeks ago, I failed to get to some of the points in my outline.  In an attempt to make up for that, this blog will cover some of the points I didn't get to.  This installment will be about the bullet point 'Standards vs. Rules'.

This is a subject I've been asked about a couple of times and also a point I make with those that I'm working with on the construct of their program books.

Most coaches and leaders would agree with the idea that a high level of trust is the cement that the foundation of any high functioning group of people is built upon.  Yet, many say that and then pursue ideas and policies that breed the opposite.  Rules are limitations.  Rules, by their nature, lead teams to feel like they can't be trusted to do right by the organization or team.  This is not to suggest you shouldn't have any rules, but they should be broad and values based.  They should also be enforceable and be enforced on an extremely consistent basis.  If not, all the rest of the rules might as well not exist - no one will know which ones to follow and which ones are BS.

Even a coach as harsh and discipline-based realized this during the course of her career.  Pat Summit in the late 80's/early 90's started to realize that in order to help her team be champions on a more regular basis, she should adjust when it came to rules.  She did this before the craziness of texting, social media and every other influence we, as a coaching community, say changed our players forevermore.  She did this, because humans are humans and ten or fifteen years into her career, she realized it was her job to adapt to them, not the other way around.  On page 208 of her latest book, Sum it Up, Coach Summitt talks about it:

"I also made our team rules fewer and simpler.  I'd learned that if you have one hundred rules, then you have to police them, and kids are going to break them, and that just creates problems.  Better to have a few rules, but strictly enforce them.  I treated them as adults, until they gave me a reason not to, and usually they didn't.  As long as they abided by the rules, I was pretty flexible.  But if they didn't, I could be as tough as any person they'd ever met.  But I also prided myself on being fair, firm, and consistent."

"...But it was my observation that young people wanted discipline, even craved it, because they wanted to succeed.  They wanted an environment of healthy structure, one in which they felt I cared about them and cared that they did things the right way.  Deep down they understood there was a relationship between discipline and success, and they wanted me to show it to them."  Our rules and policies were just another expression of caring.  There is an old saying: 'Rules without relationship result in rebellion.'" 

Standards vs. Rules if I had gotten to it, would have been my plea to every coach in the stands to be very careful about what you put in your rulebook for your team.  Your players often time fail to trust you when you fail to trust them. A quick way to show them you don't trust them is to load them up with a bunch of rules right off the bat.  It's more than just semantics, and I really don't think it matters which word you use.  It's about the concept.  Are we telling our players what they can't do or is one of our main purposes as a coach and leader to show our players what they CAN do?

Remember Coach, the old saying that "we tend to judge ourselves by our intent, but we tend to judge others by their behavior."  A good place to start with your team is to have the generosity of spirit to assume the best of them and to judge them as you tend to judge yourself - by your intent.

Be careful when you set the construct for your team. Be sure to set your standards or rules based on your program's core values and not in reaction to misdeeds done by those before.  Be sure that your rules are consistently enforceable and as simple as possible.  This is the framework upon which trust and team success is built upon.

Make it about the what, how and why - not about the who

There's a trend in college coaching.  I don't think it's totally new and based on conversations I've had in the past few weeks, I know I'm not the only one who has noticed.  The trend is not good, is somewhat dangerous and it's growing.

First of all, I will concede that networking is indeed important.  Regardless of your occupation, it is extremely helpful to grow your sport, business, customer base, etc.  However, networking in college volleyball, as of late seems to be less about sharing great information and having deep conversations about how best to attack the complex job of building a great program than being seen out with the right group of coaches.

Coaching is complex at every level.  Coaching a college sport is insanity run amuck.  Coaches are tasked with the following things:

• Understanding at a deep level the nuances of their particular game
• Having great skill at training the skills associated with executing that game
• In game tactical skills
• Expert communication skills so they can communicate that game to players with an ever changing communication skill set
• Skills to both identify and evaluate the right talent and people to fit in with their program philosophy
• Budgeting expertise
• Fundraising abilities
• Knowledge and business skills to market and run camps
• Culture building skills
• Public speaking abilities to inspire their players, administrators, fellow coaches and fans to support the vision they have adopted for their program

So I'm just saying, perhaps the majority of the pie chart that makes up the skill set of the typical college coach should be focused on the what, the how and the why you do it.  Networking is important, sure, but perhaps lets spend 10% of our efforts on that and 90% on gaining the skills for the most important aspects.  We owe that to the profession, our players and the sport we coach.