That time I was a gymnastics coach

A very long time ago, I was a gymnastics coach. Not an especially good one. In fact, if I was to reflect on my coaching career, I would be of the view that I was probably quite terrible.

My coaching career was short lived, and I’d almost forgotten it had even happened until this year when I found myself spending Saturday mornings on the sideline of kids sporting fixtures. In fact, I have spent more time on the sideline this year than I have at Westfield. Parenting has its sacrifices.

 

Is an Individual, or Team Sports better?

Our son Charlie has spent his sporting career thus far in individual sports. Mostly Taekwondo and Swimming, as well as an astonishingly small amount of time doing gymnastics. The irony of which is not lost on me.

 

Eager to improve his ‘team player’ mindset, and firm in the belief that team sport helps build resilience and perseverance, we kicked off 2023 with our first season of AFL.  You hear many negative stories about things that occur at kids weekend sports games, and disturbingly many of those are about the parents acting like turkeys on the sidelines, not poor sportsmanship between the kids playing. Looking back on the first season of AFL, I feel we really hit the sporting jackpot.

 

Charlie was welcomed into his new team with open arms by a bunch of kids that were way more experienced than him and the support and encouragement he got was glorious to watch.  Given that I met the parents of these lovely boys this was hardly surprising. They too welcomed me into their circle, giving me a crash course about behinds and throw ins, and not rolling their eyes when Charlie’s first goal made me weep.

 

The Ted Lasso benchmark

I have had further insights into sports and coaching courtesy of three seasons of Ted Lasso. Those who know me well are also well aware of just how much I treasured this show and all that it represented. With Ted Lasso as my benchmark, I didn’t expect a great deal from Charlie’s coach, I only hoped he would be kind and encouraging. Steve was certainly those two things, but he was also energetic, determined, competitive and infinitely patient. It needed to be pelting rain before he would even contemplate cancelling training and I bloody loved this.

 

Not all Coaches are created equal

Steve’s capabilities have been further highlighted to me because we have now swapped goal posts for wickets, and we are a few weeks into our cricket season. Charlie’s cricket coach is a very nice man and clearly well intentioned. He is a volunteer, who I dare say would have many other things to do with the time he spends at training on a Tuesday night and the game on Saturday morning with a 7.15am start. Instead he chooses to coach my son and seven other 10-year-olds, and for that I’m immensely grateful. But so far, his coaching technique is not at all like Steve’s, and that’s okay because my son is not Pat Cummins. Nonetheless it has been an interesting observation.

 

Last week the opposition team we were playing were very good. For starters, they bowled with run ups (is that even the right term?). At half time they were all gathered in a semi-circle around their coach who, to say the least, appeared zealous and ridiculously pumped considering it was not yet 8.30am. Eavesdropping, I heard bits of his pep talk – “disappointing…, loving the aggression…, Run harder.” At this point, I looked over to our team who were mostly just throwing their hats at one another. I looked around for our coach and he was several metres away, sitting on the ground, looking at his phone. He might have been on Facebook but more likely he was googling ‘instant ways to teach a child to bowl.” I remember muttering to myself “what would Steve do?”

 

Before I get cancelled by the Volunteer Coaches Association (I made this up) let me again declare that I was a coach once and I was not very good. There is absolutely no way I could coach a bunch of kids in any sport in any capacity. I will cut up oranges, but I will not endlessly throw balls at children and tell them how great they are doing. I am quite sure that coaching kids has the potential to be a thankless job, which is why Schadd and I ensure that Charlie thanks his Coach each week before leaving training, and again after Saturday’s game.

 

Charlie learnt a lot from Steve, and I think having a different style of coach for cricket may well be a good thing. It will teach him to be adaptable. I’m aware this sounds quite critical but it’s not at all meant to be.  I mean, it’s kids sport, and I’m just there for the coffee, sunshine and to wear out my child and his boundless reserves of energy. But it is a reflection and one that made me think more broadly about how we show up, and the connection between the sidelines and the workplace.

 

From the sporting field to the workplace

Coaching styles in the sporting world offer valuable insights that can be effectively applied to the workplace. Take Ted Lasso for example. His cheerful humour, unwavering positivity and optimism transformed him from a fictional tv character into a real-life exemplar of leadership. By drawing parallels between the coaching experience in children’s sport and leadership in business there is a compelling argument that coaches of the sporting kind can teach us how to be better leaders. How to be a better person. Each week there are valuable lessons in life and leadership that play out on the sidelines of the sporting field and these lessons don’t just come from the coach.

 

Though our experience has largely been a positive one, you don’t have to look far to witness some appalling behaviour of parents. In July this year there was an actual punch up between Dads at an Under 9’s rugby league game in Townsville. It is the road rage equivalent for the weekend sporting world, and I think it is indicative of a wider societal problem of heightened stress and frustration. For some reason there are parents who seem to think it is okay to allow abuse, aggression and violence to manifest while watching their child’s weekend sports fixture. These same parents get up and go to work on a Monday. They are workers, colleagues, peers, supervisors and leaders. How someone acts on the sideline is evidence of their own internal values system and if you are a bully at a kids game of sport, then is it fair to assume you are a bully elsewhere?

 

Back to Coaching with Steve and Ted Lasso

When I think of Coach Steve, I am reminded of the things I saw in him, and those things were a constant theme during Ted Lasso. One is that there is strength in vulnerability and the second is that we all need to hope and believe. There is a famous scene in an early episode of Ted Lasso, when Rubert challenges Ted to a game of darts. Rubert assumes he will easily win, and if he does he gets to choose the starting line for the next two Richmond games.

 

As Ted takes his turn he says “Guys underestimated me my entire life. And for years, I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman and it was painted on the wall there. It said: ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ And I liked that.

 

So I get back in my car and I’m driving to work, and all of a sudden it hits me. All them fellas that used to be belittle me; not a single one of them were curious. They thought they had everything all figured out. So they judged everything, and everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me…who I was had nothing to do with it. Cause if they were curious, they could’ve asked questions. You know? Questions like: ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted’ To which I would’ve answered: ‘Yes, sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father, from age ten till I was 16 when he passed away.’ Barbecue sauce.”

 

I think we could all do well to be more curious, to ask more questions and to seek to understand more. And we certainly need to hope and believe.

Earlier this week I had a conversation with a colleague that underscored this, and it was a timely reminder that, as a leader, nurturing hope and belief in someone’s potential is essential for creating an environment where everyone can thrive. We can all bring a bit of Steve and Ted and into the workplace.

 

Now, don’t even get me started on the Beckham documentary.

 

 

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