This past collegiate season, I’ve been working with a team that been competing at a very high level, both over the long term and in recent history. One thing that has come up time and time again is the decision points that a coach finds themselves in.
I’ve often spoken about “Fireman Mode” coaching, where you find yourself running from place to place putting out fires. Most of the time, it’s in the context of the mental health of the coach. Fireman mode is very detrimental over the long haul of a coach’s career, as you begin to anticipate (with considerable worry) problems popping up and having to react to them.
Another consequence of “Fireman Mode” is that you end up making many decisions that perhaps seem like the best in the short term, but over the long term make it harder and less enjoyable to do your job. Beyond that, many short term competitive decisions limit your potential in the long term.
In this post I’m going to talk about some of the common types of decisions you may find yourself making a coach, and how to assess whether you’re making the best decision for the long term.
But before I do that, I have to acknowledge something very important for everyone reading this. I have absolutely no judgment about short term decision making. The point of this post is not to explain why short term decision making is “bad” and long term decision making is “good”.
Frankly, for all coaches there will come a time when you might consider that the best decision for the long term is going to mean that you don’t get any more decisions (you get fired, in case that wasn’t clear). Coaches have to make a living, just like everyone else. So stay safe out there and have a way of gauging the potential risks of your decision making.
Standards
One of the first examples I can think of this was in my very first year of college coaching, back in 2007 at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the frequent frustration points for my head coach was the poor attendance of many athletes on our team. As a result, some of them did not get the training they needed to improve and perform well.
We decided to start actively monitoring attendance, literally taking roll every day. We also told the swimmers that attendance below a certain level would result in them not being eligible to compete.
However, when it came time for our first dual meet, we faced a quandary. A number of our higher level athletes were below the attendance requirement. Holding them back from the competition would result in an immediate competitive disadvantage.
Ultimately, our head coach decided to toss the attendance requirement on the spot. It was something that I disagreed with at the time, and I’ve pretty much not wavered on it since. In my opinion this was a perfect opportunity for setting things up in the long term.
However, that argument is not entirely foolproof. At the collegiate level, the consequence of not being able to compete risks alienating athletes that might otherwise just decide to stop swimming. Then where does that leave you?
Having my head coach toss out the attendance requirement turned out to be a boon for me professionally in the long term because it put a serious limitation on my coaching. That limitation forced me to learn! If I could not learn to motivate swimmers to come to practice some other way, I was out of luck.
What actually got athletes to come to practice was the long, slow work of forming strong relationships. Athletes were more likely to come to practice if they felt like a coach on the other end truly cared whether they showed up or not.
So often when you’re considering a long term standard of what you’d like to see on a team, try to think more broadly about what might get you there. The easiest tool in your box is to do something punitive, but punitive action has side effects.
Caving
In this section I want to talk about two examples that I have witnessed during the tension filled preparation for end of season competition. They both were about roughly the same thing, placement on a team.
In the first instance, when I was an assistant at Georgia Tech, we had a swimmer who got out of the water in tears. This was the day before we had informed athletes that rosters for the ACC Championships, and she was fully aware that she was on the bubble for the squad.
She stated that she could not focus on practice because she was so emotionally distressed about whether or not she would make the team. We caved and put her on the team. It will surprise probably no one reading this that she did not swim well at the subsequent championship meet.
In the second instance, I heard secondhand from a head coach that was approached by an athlete in the lead up to their championship. The athlete wanted to know if they would be on the 800 freestyle relay. The coach had named a couple athletes already but not the full squad.
The athlete aggressively stated that they were not going to be a team player if they did not get what they wanted. This put the coach in a tough position- he was actually leaning towards putting the athlete on the relay before that! Now he was reconsidering, but also thinking about whether it was petty to purposely exclude the athlete from the relay because of his extortionate tactics. I consider it a failure on my part that I was not able to convince the coach to trust his gut and leave the athlete off.
The coach put the athlete on the relay, and to the surprise once again of probably few readers, they did not perform well in the relay or meet.
One of the most important things to consider when you find yourself in such a situation is that every human being on the planet is conflict averse. Some of us are less conflict averse, but conflict expends massive emotional resources for us. So when somebody puts that kind of pressure on you, you will feel an extremely strong motivation to assuage them in order to avoid conflict.
This is one of the most important moments you can have an advisor in your corner, preferably someone who does NOT coach the athletes day to day. That is not the same as being “non-biased”. I don’t believe anyone is “non-biased”. But in this instance, your conflict aversion is heavily biasing you towards making a crap decision! Having someone who can weigh the information you give them without having to consider the possible conflict is extremely valuable in such a case.
Postponing Gratification
As a coach you’re going to find yourself in a lot of situations where you’re desperate for a win. This is the most dangerous time for you as a coach, because it can prejudice you to make decisions that make it harder to win in the long term.
My advice, have someone you can call up right when you need them to help you weigh all the factors before you make a rash decision.