in my humble opinion... wrote:
Some clues to ego driven coaches:
- do they seek the spotlight?
- do they claim responsibility for success?
- do they talk about their own accomplishments?
- do they talk about technical aspects of training, making it sound like success is because of their plans?
Some clues to those in it for the kids:
- do they stay in the background when their teams and athletes succeed?
- do they give the praise to their athletes for success?
- do they talk about athletes characteristics that aren’t related to performance, such as leadership ?
- do they talk about culture more than training details?
This is a good post, but you can do the former to a small extent and still be more geared toward athlete improvement.
The OP gave me a good chance for some introspection. So for me personally
-I don’t seek the spotlight, but I don’t always defer when complimented either. If someone compliments me on my team being good, I usually just say “thank you, we’ve all put in a lot of effort”. If they specifically compliment me on the consistency of my teams performances, I’ll usually point out that it’s the kids that actually have to do the workouts. If the follow on compliments are something to the effect of, “well, you designed the program that they follow, I usually just say thank you” in all instances, I feel gratified.
- I often talk to my athletes about the accomplishments of past teams and individuals. I do this in the context of what the teams had to do to be successful and point out that it takes a combination of talent and hard work to reach the highest levels, but that every team has enough talent to be competitive at the local level. I try to frame previous successes as being more dependent on the work teams have put in and I love to point out that talent is not always readily apparent. I also try to reward improvement more than results. For example, my biggest compliments are reserved for the kids who were slow when they started at Hughson, but have seen massive improvement. We run a series of time trials during the summer and pre season and the lists I publish are ordered by who has improved the most rather than by who ran the fastest. I spend more time talking about the kid who was fat and taking 22 minutes to run 2 miles as a freshman but got down to 5 flat as a senior than I do about the kid who ran 4:30 as a senior after starting out at 5 flat as a freshman.
At least 5 times a year, I get asked by my anatomy students (that’s my primary teaching assignment) if my knowledge of the body gives me an advantage over other coaches. I answer yes. When we study muscles, circulation, or respiration, I try to tie much of what I’m teaching to sports physiology. Mostly I do this because most of my students play sports and it’s a good hook to get them interested in the subject, but also some of my runners are invariably in the class as well and when I physiologically detail the adaptations that take place during a given workout, I feel it gives them confidence that they are getting well designed training and that they will share that sentiment with their teammates.
I talk about culture a ton. Over the past 5 years, culture development has become the dominant aspect of what I try to do team wise. I feel that a lot of the stuff I described above leads to a good team culture.
I realize that I said I a lot in this post, but as stated before, there is a bunch of personal satisfaction derived from knowing that I am a difference maker for these kids.
So yeah, it’s complicated