An Endless Procession of Teachable Moments: How Coaches Can Help Kids Thrive
November, 2005
by Jim Thompson, Founder & Executive Director, Positive Coaching Alliance
My first thought when I started Positive Coaching Alliance seven years ago was simple: stop bad things from happening to kids in sports. When I became entangled in youth sports more than 20 years ago, I was stunned by how much had changed since I grew up in the "golden age of sandlot ball." Unhappy parents, unhappy coaches, and unhappy kids dropping out of youth sports at rates that were alarming to me.
But as I worked in the field I began to realize that something even more important was at stake. The playing field is the ideal place to teach life lessons and build positive character traits in young people to help them thrive. There is an endless procession of teachable moments available in youth sports, but only if the adults who coach and parent athletes are prepared to seize them. Coaches and parents obsessed with winning on the scoreboard can totally miss a teachable moment as it glides gracefully by them.
That insight led to a new model of coaching: the Double-Goal Coach who wants to win (goal #1) but not at the expense of the second, more important goal of using sports to teach life lessons.
Everyone involved with youth sports lives in the larger society in which a win-at-all-cost mentality has established supremacy, especially visible in professional sports. Thus it's not surprising that most youth and high school coaches have a win-at-all-cost mentality, in which winning on the scoreboard is "the only thing."
What would a coach focused on helping kids thrive look like? Double-Goal Coaches pursue three strategies that address many of the Thriving Indicators developed by Thrive Foundation for Youth:
- Redefining what it means to be a "Winner,"
- Filling Emotional Tanks, and
- Honoring the Game.
1) Redefining "Winner"
Kids need a strategy for success, for being a "winner," that they can apply to a variety of challenging situations they will face throughout their lives.
The typical definition of winning is focused exclusively on the scoreboard- did we get more points than they did? Are we better than they are?
PCA's redefinition of "winner" is based on 20 years of research from sport psychology and is focused on personal mastery, what PCA calls the "ELM Tree of Mastery"-E for effort, L for learning and constant improvement, and M for bouncing back from mistakes.
In PCA coaching and parent workshops, we recommend the establishment of a team mistake ritual like flushing mistakes. When an athlete makes a mistake, he typically is mentally out of commission for a while. His mind is in the past, perhaps beating himself up for having done something that hurts the team. A mistake ritual helps athletes return to the present more quickly. You make a mistake and before you can even start to beat yourself up about it, your coach and teammates are telling you to "Flush it!" and encouraging you with hand motions similar to flushing a toilet.
What do you do with stinky stuff? You flush it down the toilet. Mistakes stink, so don't let them stick in your head, flush them and focus on the next play.
Coaching to the ELM Tree reduces anxiety and builds self-confidence in athletes. With a decrease in anxiety, kids enjoy sports more (in one sense enjoyment is the opposite of anxiety). As self-confidence rises, we know from Albert Bandura's ground-breaking work, that kids tend to work harder and stick to tasks longer.
The wonderful news from sport psychology research is that (all things being equal), coaching for mastery results in more wins! Paradoxically, the best way to win on the scoreboard is to deemphasize the scoreboard and focus on what your athletes can control: their effort, their continuous learning and their ability to bounce back from mistakes rather than fear them. The ELM Tree!
2) Filling Emotional Tanks
Every youth (of any age) has an "Emotional Tank" that helps determine how they perform. Kids with empty E-Tanks, like cars with empty gas tanks, aren't going to go very far. Kids with full E-Tanks can do things that even surprise themselves.
Double-Goal Coaches are constantly filling the E-Tanks of their athletes. More than that, they are teaching their kids how to fill each other's E-Tanks. One tool taught in PCA workshops is the "Buddy System," in which athletes are teamed up during practice with the assignment to fill the tank of their buddy. Periodic team conversations then reinforce the concept during and at the end of practice. In this way, kids learn to be fillers as well as recipients of filling.
People who are tank-fillers are sought out as managers, teachers, coaches and mentors. So teaching kids about Emotional Tanks and how to fill them (with specific and truthful praise, with expressions of appreciations, by listening to people, etc.) helps them contribute to a winning team and also helps them prepare them for success in life. Kids who learn to fill tanks as athletes have a huge advantage in the adult world where so many people walk around with empty tanks.
3) Honoring the Game
Young people need a moral compass (as do we all!) to help them navigate a world in which it seems that being #1 is the only thing and they are pressured to cut ethical corners to appear successful to the world. Sports is the perfect place to learn how to compete within an ethical framework.
Double-Goal Coaches teach and model the ROOTS of Honoring the Game.
Rules: You don't bend the rules to win, even when you can get away with it. You live up to the spirit as well as the letter of the rules.
Opponents: You value your opponent as a gift that helps you be all that you can be. You compete in a "fierce and friendly" manner and you resist every temptation to demonize your opponent.
Officials: You show respect for officials even when, especially when, they make a mistake that goes against you.
Teammates: You never do anything, on or off the field, that will embarrass your teammates.
Self: You live up to your own standards even when others don't. This is the cornerstone principle of Honoring the Game-and an extremely high expectation to set for athletes when seemingly the entire sports culture is heading in a downward spiral of nasty-snarly, win-at-all-cost behavior.
Double-Goal Coaches devote time in practice to preparing their team to be able to Honor the Game under adverse circumstances just like they practice their offensive and defensive schemes over and over until they become second nature to them.
I recently read a wonderful book called Last Chance in Texas by John Hubner, which features the football program at the Giddings State School in Texas where criminal youth are given treatment that is effectively their last chance at avoiding long prison terms. In spite of taunting by opposing teams ("Who did you kill? Your mother or your sister?"), the Giddings Indians have never been involved in a fight or been penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct. As their coach Sandy Brown says, "We're the criminals! If a fight breaks out, it's going to be our fault, no matter who started it."
If Honoring the Game can be effectively taught to youth who have committed serious crimes, it can be taught to all youth, if they have Double-Goal Coaches.
Athletes who learn how to thrive in sports from Double-Goal Coaches, can then use those same frameworks and tools in the rest of their lives. They can apply the ELM Tree of Mastery to their college studies, to their first job, to their relationship with their spouses. They have a strategy for tackling challenges that gives them confidence that they can ultimately succeed.
Athletes coached by Double-Goal Coaches learn the importance of managing emotional energy. Learning to fill the Emotional Tanks of their teammates, they will know how to work in a team of adults in the workplace, how to encourage their colleagues, how to be an effective leader in tough situations. They will tend to draw people to them because we all want to work with and for someone who fills our tanks.
Finally, Double-Goal Coaches endow their athletes with a moral compass that will serve them well when they find themselves pressured to cut moral corners to succeed on the scoreboard of business. Having been taught to Honor the Game, they will be better able to honor the game of life.
Double-Goal Coaching can play a huge role in helping kids thrive. Positive Coaching Alliance is committed to making that happen. We have set a goal of training and certifying 1 Million Double-Goal Coaches over the next decade. Every athlete deserves a Double-Goal Coach to be able to thrive in a tough world.
Jim Thompson is Founder and Executive Director of Positive Coaching Alliance, and the author of "The Double-Goal Coach." PCA has an on-line workshop for individuals who want to be trained and certified as a Double-Goal Coach (www.positivecoach.org). |
