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 if your players know you love them

‪#‎uracoach‬ if your players know you love them

This seems pretty straight forward, but so many coaches get it wrong.  Coach, you cannot just say you love your players, they have know it without a doubt and they can only get there when your actions tell them.  Why do you have to love them?  You don't have to love them, but if you want your team to reach the highest level possible, you sure better be genuine in your care for them.  

Whether you're a weekend warrior coach or someone hoping to climb the coaching ladder to make this your profession, trust me when I tell you to go find Simon Sinek's books and watch video of him speaking - ASAP!  Some much information from him and so little time...  One of Sinek's key topics is the importance of safety for our brains to operate at an optimal level.  

When you come from a place of love, and again this doesn't mean 'the I'm soft and have low standards for my players' kind of love, you will start to feel synergy.  Synergy is what happens on teams at times when everything and everyone clicks. It's like a magic school bus appears to drive your team directly over every opponent and piece of adversity in your way.  It's the result of every member of the group feeling like every other member is a trusted and important spoke in the wheel and instead of 1+1 equaling 2 it equals 3 trillion.  That all starts when your players know, regardless of their performance on the court, that you love them as a people. 

Some of the toughest, meanest, most hard core coaches in the world talk openly about how much they love their players.  It's not a crutch or a sappy admission of weakness.  It's a the most powerful driver of human greatness.  

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.

Perspective...Choice...Little Moments

Over the weekend I had the chance to attend the celebration of the 2015 season of the CMU Volleyball team.  It doesn't go unnoticed by me that this wasn't a given.  After all, I had been released by the CMU Athletic Department at the conclusion of the season once our head coach resigned his post.  The new coaching staff, led by Mike Gawlik, extended the invitation.  They didn't have to.  It was a classy move only to be topped by his ask that I say a few words to the team at the event when I arrived.  Again, classy.

Not having prepared anything in advance I let the moment take me and trusted that whatever came out, it would be right for the moment.  When you speak from your heart and from a place of love and gratefulness, you really can't go wrong.

After I faced the crowd and fought back the sentimental tears that have a tendency to overtake me, I told a story that seemed right for the moment.  I heard it a long time ago on from Wayne Dyer.  He was walking along a beach in Hawaii where he spent the final years of his life.  As he tells it, he came upon a women who was looking to move there with her family.  She asked him what the people were like.  Wayne asked her what the people were like where she was coming from, she beamed about the people in her community.  "They're great, people help one another out, they're interested and care about your success, it's like a big family," replied the woman.  Wayne simply replied, "that's pretty much what you'll find here," and continued on.  A while later on the walk he came upon another woman who asked the same question.  Wayne again asked her what the people were like where she lived. "They're not nice, everyone is in each other's business, no one stops to help or cares at all how you're doing," replied this woman.  "Well, that's pretty much what you'll find here," he said before he carried on.

The story is about perspective.  Everything in your life, every person, situation and circumstance you find yourself in is about you and the way you see things.

I asked the players to move forward, work hard and demand that their teammates work hard and to be the very best version of theirselves everyday.  Isn't this what athletics and life should be all about?  To do things you never thought possible, you will have to seek the uncomfortable.  That banquet, as great as it was to be there, was extremely uncomfortable for me.  The reward of seeing and getting to hug and laugh with those players one more time made it worth it times a million.  It seemed the least I could do was to implore them to live up to their awesome potential as I had done many times before.

Everything in your life, every person, situation and circumstance you find yourself in is about you and the way you see things.

So it is for everyone, so it is for me.  I have chosen to make my journey the fault of no one else.  I have chosen to make the best of every situation I am in.  I am grateful for my circumstances, regardless of outcome.  It is my hope that my choice of response inspires the players I used to see everyday do the same.

I grew a little over the weekend.  I hope I helped them grow a little too.  We all grow in little moments.