Life Lessons from the Playing Field

We at Positive Coaching Alliance and the Institute for International Sport (IIS) are excited to announce the 2010 Sports Ethics Fellows as part of National Sportsmanship Day (NSD). Dan Doyle, the visionary founder of IIS, which has pioneered NSD for more than two decades, asked PCA to collaborate in promoting NSD several years ago, and we were proud to do so.

It is so wonderful to learn about the great work Sports Ethics Fellows are doing all across the U.S. As in previous years, this group of Fellows comprises diverse individuals who are all working within their networks and with the tools at their disposal to make sports a better experience for youth athletes.

PCA and IIS hope that naming these remarkable individuals as Sports Ethics Fellows will provide them with a larger platform from which to effect positive change. The Fellows of 2010 have committed to using that platform to speak, write and act to extend the movement to make youth sports a positive, character-building experience for every youth athlete. All of us who care about youth sports as a means of developing Major League People are lucky these people are doing their thing.

Solomon Alexander, Director, St. Louis Sports Foundation

Clark Baker, President and CEO, YMCA of Greater Houston

William Burke III, Headmaster, St. Sebastian's School, Needham, MA

Dan Cardone, Director of Athletics, North Hills School District, Pittsburgh, PA

Joe Drape, Sportswriter for The New York Times and author of Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen

Mark Duncan, Athletic Director, The Shipley School (Philadelphia)

Mark Hyman, Author of Until it Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports

Mark Krail, Football Coach and Athletic Director, Pioneer High School, San Jose, CA

Richard Lawrence, Director of Athletics, Mount Saint Charles Academy, Woonsocket, RI

Tom Mezzanotte, Executive Director, Rhode Island Interscholastic League, Providence, RI 

Laura Mitchell, CEO, Sports Dreammakers, Los Angeles

Scott Myers, Executive Director, World Sport Chicago

Amy Nakamoto, Executive Director, DC Scores, Washington, DC

David Nisbett, President, 78th Precinct Youth Council, Brooklyn, NY

Jack O'Malley, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Scranton, PA & Chair, Bochicchio Sports Character Initiative

Peter Sabin, Director, Eureka Youth Soccer Club, Eureka, CA

Steve Stanford, Palma Ceia Little League, Tampa

Bill Wells, Columnist, Springfield Republican, Springfield, MA

Join Dan Doyle and me in congratulating them and wishing them further success in their crucial work by clicking on the Comments link below.

You know how sometimes you don't know what you think until you say it?  I was interviewed by Doug Lederman of Inside Higher Education about college football coaching awhile back, and I realized as I talked that coaches sometimes function like monopolists.  And history tells us that when companies become monopolists, it's not good for customers, suppliers or employees.

Typically monopolists have a source of power that protects them from the consequences of their ill-advised actions.  With coaches, that source of power often is a winning record.  John Madden once said that winning is the best deodorant.

If you win, people tend to interpret your behavior extremely generously.  If you bully players through verbal abuse, for example, it's because you have their best interests at heart, rather than the simpler explanation-bullies bully because they enjoy exerting power over others. And having a monopoly often leads to bullying.

When you use questionable means and get good results, it's easy to believe your good fortune is due to your wonderful decision-making, character traits, human decency, etc., rather than the fact that as a monopolist, you have power that all of your competitors lack.  Thus, any challenges to decisions seem especially irritating to a monopolist.

But bullying is not a sustainable leadership style.  Sooner or later most bullies get done in.  I am reading a fascinating book about the reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone National Park, Decade of the Wolf by Douglas W. Smith and Gary Ferguson.  In it, they profile alpha female "Number 40," the "full-blown tyrant of the Druid Peak Wolves," the largest and strongest pack in Yellowstone.

Number 40, who "throughout her life was fiercely committed to always having the upper hand," wrested control of the pack from her own mother, who left the pack and was shot not long after.  Number 40 terrorized other female wolves, especially her sister, Number 42, and may have been responsible for the death of 42's pups while giving 42 a "nasty trouncing."

Meanwhile, 40 was not creating any friends among the pack.  Later, when both 40 and 42 were with their new pups, 40 attacked 42. But this time 42 was surrounded by "friends," and apparently they beat 40 so badly that she did not survive.

Number 42 then assumed leadership of the pack and raised 40's pups as her own. She also invited a much lower status wolf -- Number 106, whom Number 40 had especially terrorized -- to bring her pups into 42's den. Number 106 went on to thrive under 42's benevolent leadership and 106 would "show herself highly capable of leadership, becoming among other things the finest hunter in the pack."

Sports history is replete with powerful coaches who get away with bullying their players and subordinates as long as they win.  Then when there is "blood in the water" and the bully appears vulnerable, often due to a losing season, the knives (or teeth) come out to exact revenge.

But the real tragedy of a bully as leader is how it limits the potential of team members (106s lurking in the shadows).  When you are afraid of telling your boss he may be wrong, you are not going to grow into your own potential as a leader.  Assistant coaches who do only what they are told seldom evolve into the kind of superb leadership team needed to reach sustained excellence. 

And athletes who learn only to jump when told to jump and be quiet otherwise are not going to develop their own leadership abilities. 

Across this country, thousands of 106-equivalent athletes with great potential are hunkering down to avoid being bullied rather than learning to become all they can be.  And that is not good for those players, a team, for our society or even, ultimately, for the bullying coach.

So down with the coach as bully and up with the leadership style of Number 42!

I’m a long-time fan of Giants pitcher Barry Zito who stifled Colorado in a crucial wild-card contest on Saturday.

I especially like the way he won the game. A principle of Responsible Sports is a focus on mastery rather than the scoreboard. Zito personified this against the Rockies, concentrating on putting pressure on hitters rather than worrying about results.

"I'm just going out there and not being concerned with results.That's the toughest thing to do in life. You have a whole stadium full of people who want results, but when you go for results, things don't look pretty."

Sports psychology research validates Zito's approach. If you focus on what we call the ELM Tree of Master (E for Effort, L for Learning, M for bouncing back from Mistakes), you actually win more on the scoreboard.

To paraphrase Barry Zito, "When you focus on mastery, things tend to look pretty!"
--PCA Founder and Executive Director Jim Thompson

A wise Wyoming rancher named Jim Mines once told me he was saddened by rules banning horses from wilderness areas, which meant that as his ability to hike diminished, Jim would not be able to travel to places he had loved. He said, "Even though I may never go again, the idea that I could saddle up and do so makes me happy."

While not many football players made the jump from the Arena Football League to the NFL, Kurt Warner did, going from the Iowa Barnstormers to Super Bowl MVP. And that gave hope to others that they too might hit the big time.

I suspect that, like Jim Mines, the idea that they might be able to emulate Kurt Warner, made AFL players happy, even though the odds were astronomically against them.

That's why I'm sad that the Arena Football League went out of business last week.
--PCA Founder and Executive Director Jim Thompson

In one of my favorite John Wooden stories a UCLA alum asks him how the upcoming season's team was going to do. Wooden, winner of 10 NCAA Men's Basketball Championships in 12 years, as UCLA Basketball Coach from 1948-1975,said, "I'll let you know in 20 years."

Wooden embodied the idea of a Responsible Coach with the twin goals of winning and teaching life lessons before there was a name for it. Here he meant to convey that he was concerned with the men his players became as much as their win-loss record. You couldn't judge them solely based on the scoreboard that season.

Wooden was recently voted the greatest coach of all-time by Sporting News Daily. Andy Hill who played for Wooden from 1969-1972 said, "...the titles didn't make him great. What the titles did was get all of you to notice how great he was."
--PCA Founder and Executive Director Jim Thompson

Recently Positive Coaching Alliance hosted a youth sports forum in Los Angeles featuring a star-studded panel. I’ll write about other panelists in the future. Today I want to focus on Darrell Miller, Director of the Urban Youth Academy in Compton, California.

Major League Baseball sponsors the Urban Youth Academy, but Miller, a former major leaguer with the Angels, was clear about the Academy’s goal.

“If someone makes it to the big leagues, that’s great, but we want to produce Major League People.”

I often say PCA’s mission is to use sports to develop successful, fulfilled, contributing members of society. But in just three words, Darrell got it exactly right with a much stickier message.

Few youth coaches will have the chance to coach a future major leaguer.

But we all have the chance to encourage every kid we coach to become Major League People! So here’s to coaches developing MLPs!
--PCA Founder and Executive Director Jim Thompson

Watching the Lakers defeat Orlando last night, I thought about two crucial reasons why Phil Jackson has won more NBA titles (10) than any other coach.

He fosters self-confidence. Trevor Ariza, who came up big in the playoffs, said he knew he wasn’t going to get pulled from the game if he missed a shot. Jackson’s players don’t tighten up in the clutch, worried about what will happen if they miss. They play to win, not to avoid looking bad. Players worried about their coach giving up on them don’t do that.

He also develops players as leaders. Michael Jordan never won a title until Phil showed him how to make his teammates better. Now even Kobe Bryant detractors should see how Bryant has grown under Phil into a leader who makes his teammates better.

Phil Jackson, PCA’s National Spokesperson, is a wonderful role model for youth coaches.
--PCA Founder and Executive Director Jim Thompson