The coach in me, guides me. Coaches are leaders, leaders are coaches. The lessons learned in coaching, apply to leading. All day, every day.
The Coach in Me
I have spent my entire adult life coaching sports. Whether it’s pacing the sideline in football, drafting the lineup card in baseball, or kneeling in the corner of a wrestling mat…my place is always coaching.
Coach is a title that is nearly immortal. It has a generational impact. I can be walking through a grocery store years after coaching a kid and hear the unmistakable call of, “Coach!” The word alone, requires no associated name. Those five letters can close the distance of time.
Coaching is in my blood. I started coaching youth football when I was eighteen years old. My father asked me to be an assistant coach for him for the 2000 6U Acworth Warriors! This was the same youth program I grew up playing in as a kid.
That same year, I took over the youth wrestling program at my alma mater, North Cobb High School.
Within a year, the youth football board had granted me a waiver to be the head coach of my own team. The bylaws did not allow anyone under the age of twenty-one to be a head coach at the time.
Until writing these very words, I’m not sure I was fully aware of how much that vote of confidence would Intercede the rest of my life. Coaching would shape and mold me to the leader I am today. The associated experiences on the field and on the mat have become invaluable to me in my leadership journey.
Here are three critical leadership lessons from the coach in me:
Communicate with Others
When someone asks me how I learned to be comfortable speaking in front of an audience, I tell them it was coaching. As a head coach, the football association required me to hold a weekly parent meeting. Every Monday at 7:00 p.m., like clockwork.
I would recap the previous game, establish the plan for the upcoming week, and share important information on behalf of the association. At times, it would require delivering tough messages and/or reinforcing expectations with the parents. Especially on Mondays when the preceding Saturday didn’t go so well!
As an 18 year old, I would dread the watch rolling over to 7:00 p.m.! But, I would put one foot in front of the other, walk over, and communicate the message. Something that I would have never been willing to do on my own.
Leadership requires communicating with others. Whether the audience is full of raving fans or Haters. There is always value in communicating with others…frequently and regularly.
Use Prescribed Emotion with Others
In the world of medicine, we don’t just take it to take it. It must be a Prescriptive Treatment to deal with the disease or illness.
Coaching demands emotions. The great ones do it with situational application. There are times when emotion is the necessary prescription, it’s just unsustainable to apply constantly. When the team needs an emotional application, the coach should respond accordingly. When the team needs stability, the coach must remain calm.
Leadership requires prescribed emotion. A leader who stays in a constant state of emotion becomes the thermometer of an organization. They rise and fall with the temperature of their circumstances.
Effective leaders are the thermostat. They set the desired temperature for the team and bring everyone back to it when the circumstances heat up.
Love Others
The greatest indicator of success is the level to which they love their players. Show me a selfish coach who loves themself more than their players…I’ll show you an ineffective one.
There are countless stories in which a coach redirected a young person’s life. I have personally watched kids break generational chains of trauma, addiction, and poverty due to the influence of a coach. Ordinary lives exchanged for extraordinary ones. Every single one of those redirections was driven by the love that the coach possessed for the player.
Love is the most powerful tool a leader possesses. It can be an uncomfortable topic around a conference room table, but critical to organizational culture. A leader who loves is transformational, not transactional. Love is what those that we are entrusted to lead need most. If we desire people to follow, lead with love.
Conclusion
Travel back to the early 2000’s. There was a parallel transition taking place in my life at this time. My eleven-year-old football coach, served as the City of Acworth Parks and Recreation Director at that time. He called me in my last week of high school and asked me to be a summer camp counselor. My initial plans were to go to Kennesaw State University, major in History, be a teacher, and coach high school wrestling.
He convinced me to take that temporary, eight-week job until college started in the fall. The circumstances of that summer gave me an opportunity to stay on and work with the city part-time cleaning bathrooms, cutting grass, and prepping ballfields. It worked perfectly with my school schedule.
Fast forward to 2002. Both the football association and baseball association that utilized the city facilities were volunteer led. While the football association was extremely organized and successful, the city had little to do by way of supporting it. The baseball association was walking through a very dysfunctional time.
The city decided to create a position that would serve as a liaison to both associations. Someone charged with building the bridges necessary to create something special. A relationship built on a foundation of communication, steadiness, and love.
Coaching put me in position to fulfil that gap. The city gave me my first full time job at the age of twenty as an Athletics Coordinator. The rest is history. I switched my major to Recreation Management, became the Parks and Recreation Director at twenty-three, and eventually transitioned into being the City Manager for the community I grew up in, was educated in, and was coached in.
I am forever grateful for what coaching has done for me. As long as I lead, there will always be a coach in me.
