Priorities Revealed
A belated happy new year to the subscribers of my scribblings, and thank you for the thoughtful responses and dialogues. I’m looking forward to many more in the coming year.
A friend had an experience with their kid’s rep sport team that I have seen occur again and again. The “second string” or backup players get very little playing time, even in when they are blowing out the other team. This was on a weekend where the team had multiple games, some very competitive.
I find this revealing and a bit maddening. Revealing in that the coach’s motivations and priorities are laid bare. The top priority is revealed to be winning, and by as much as possible.
In my opinion there are higher priorities. Rank ordered from top to bottom the priorities should be:
Player safety
Player development (as a player and as a human being)
Fun
Winning is a subset of fun…losing all the time is not fun
Overplaying top players is highly counterproductive. For a bunch of reasons and I’ll save the one most related to leadership for the end.
This is unsafe for the top players, and can lead to repetitive strain / overuse type injuries which are notoriously difficult to recover from if even possible. Players’ careers could even be shortened dramatically.
The backup players do not develop. Eventually there will be injuries to a top player and if the back up players have not had a chance to perform under pressure, then they will not be ready to rise to the opportunity when they get it.
No one wants to sit on the bench all weekend, or game after game, even when it is a blow out.
It is noteworthy that the backup players would be superstars if they were playing one level down.
The last reason is related to something more insidious: a mental and emotional burn out. This is all bearing in mind that this is AMATEUR sport. These are KIDS or maybe young adults who are plating (or ought to be) for LOVE of the game. Sure, this is a pipeline to a professional league, but it is NOT professional. The vast majority of these kids will never be professionals, and most will not even play college or university.
This never or under playing the backups approach has the insidious effect of damaging mutual respect in the team. The backup players do not feel respected, and begin to lose respect for the coaches, and probably self respect. Their level of engagement drops. In the model of burn out that I have developed mutual respect and engagement are critical components to preventing burn out. Even if these backup players do not have a high workload they are on track to burn out, becoming cynical and disruptive.
The top players have what is an unrealistic workload. In modern professional sport we are seeing greatly increased longevity of top players. In part this is from improved self care (nutrition, recovery, therapy modalities etc.), but it is also due to a more scientific approach to load management. Back to our rep sport situation. The top players are playing with a very high work load. They will start to feel some of the cynicism of the backup players. Are these amateur players really getting the self care needed to recover from this output? No. They are going to school, and have family commitments. Their families may have limited means to support more costly self care. Burn out is likely here too.
We have not even added toxic parents to the mix.
How many players burn out from a sport, never to return to the sport they once loved, never to contribute as a coach? Never to serve. I have observed this in my years as a Dad on different sports different teams, some with my kids and some without. It makes me want to pull out what little hair I have left.
I do coach at the house league level even though my kids are past that. I love it. The right priorities are in play and it is wonderful to see these young people grow, develop and have fun along the way.
I think that there are broader leadership lessons in this. There is so much emphasis on the individual rising stars and high performers that the supporting teams don’t get enough recognition and some credit. They are in the trenches too grinding it out.
Where I think it gets interesting is in the development of some of the players who are not superstars and we get assignments that are similar to that team we know we will blow out…something a little easier and within the player’s proximal zone of development. This is when we put that backup player in. This might be someone who is in a support role like project coordinator and shooting to become a project manager. This project coordinator could not handle a complex project (yet) but we have something a little simpler they can handle with some more coaching or support. It might be more work for you as a leader to help this player perform and develop, but in the end you will have a deeper bench of capable players that can back each other up. Another opportunity like this is the primary PM goes on vacation and the project coordinator will cover for them while away with a little coaching or support from a leader one level senior to the PM. (Note this is dancing around Blanchard’s model of situational leadership. Reach out if you want to geek out on that. His excellent book “Leading at a Higher Level” is a must read.)
Greeleaf’s questions about whether you are doing servant leadership right come to mind:
Do those served grow as persons?
Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?
And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?
Coaches need to get grounded and ask themselves these questions when making personnel decision in amateur sport, and so do we as business leaders…regularly.
So with that I wish you all success and growth in your practice of leadership in 2025!