Do I want to follow you?
I’m going to go Bill Nye on you and ask you to… Consider the following:
As you ask yourself that question…
Understand your players are asking questions about you too.
If the answer to question 1 below is “no"…
The next two are coming quickly.
Do they want to follow you? Or do they just do it because you’re 20 years older than them and have a whistle?
Woof… Talk about a hard-to-swallow pill…
How can you avoid a scenario where your team is just complying?
Inversion tells us… Just don’t lose them.
How to Lose a Player… And Maybe the Team
I was pretty quiet, keep to myself, follow the rules kid. But when I thought someone else was off-base and not willing to look objectively at their argument… I was stubborn as hell.
Here is one way to lose a player.
When I was 18, I played in an independent tier 3 junior league that you can’t even lookup. I was there for 3 weeks.
For the first 2 weeks, I played for a coach that shaped me. He understood how to foster an environment for player development. I spent the first 2 weeks in hockey heaven.
He was young and when a pro team picked up the phone and called him, he went back to playing.
A new coach came in and pulled this on his 2nd day…
I was always the first person on the ice by about 30 minutes. We practiced in the morning and the ice was always ready and the lights were on. I took those 30 minutes every day and worked on individual skills.
At our 2nd practice with the new coach, he wanted to have a quick chat. I was about ready to grab the puck bucket and hit the ice, but I respectfully sat down for the team chat.
We were to have a team meal at Pizza Hut that night and he wanted to go over in detail how that was going to go. Players started to ask questions and get sidetracked.
I was sitting over in the corner stall… Losing my mind…
“This isn’t seriously going on right now, he’s legitimately wasting everyone’s time, including my skill time,” I thought to myself.
And he just kept talking…
It could have been handled over an email, a group chat or we could have talked after practice because we didn’t get extra ice after practice, only before.
Doesn’t he know any of that? I was getting really antsy and after I knew it wasn’t going to be wrapping up anytime soon… I made my stand.
I got up in front of him, told him I’d be working on my game, grabbed the puck bucket, and hopped on the ice.
I found out later, our captain was told(by the coach) to come out and get me off the ice.
I didn’t come off.
And I got to work on my game for an hour. (Yes this pizza meeting took an hour)
When the team finally hit the ice, the coach was going to send his message of dominance.
He blew the whistle, got everyone together, and called me out in front of the team.
“Because Drew thinks he is better than the team, we are all going to skate because of him, you can thank him for the next hour of your life. Get on the goalline.”
Nobody got pissed at me for what I did. I got a couple of taps from teammates saying “good for you.”
Players aren’t dumb. They know when you’re wasting their time, they can smell your insecurities and will eat them for lunch.
Get a moment like this wrong and you have a mutiny on your hands.
What I Would Do
I tell my players that story and then immediately tell them that the best idea wins here.
And it’s not bullshit.
If there are holes in my plan, I encourage players to ask clarifying questions and fill the gaps until the plan is one worth following.
Sometimes I ask what they want to do and then I fill in their gaps.
The SEAL Teams call this decentralized command which gives every member of the team ownership of the mission.
It transforms from “coach’s plan” or “what coach wants” to “our plan” or “what we want.”
I would have let that player leave the room and go work on his skills. And I would have run the practice as I had planned. If you can detach from the “ego hit” and run your practice as planned and then chat with the player after practice in a 1 to 1, that’s a leader worth following.
I would have started with:
I’m curious why you got up and left the chat today?
Fully let them explain without interrupting and getting shitty with them. If they can explain that they felt the meeting could have been handled after practice when we aren’t allotted extra time by the rink manager to work on skills… Understand they have thought this through, potentially more than you did.
Listen to them without getting defensive. Recognize that is a well-thought-out alternative to what you chose to do as a coach and that you didn’t think of that alternative.
The best ideas should win, even if they aren’t yours.
The coach is a member of the team.
The coach is a leader on the team, not the leader.
Earn their respect, not their compliance.
Go on to part 2 by clicking HERE
Join a community of coaches from: D1 men and women, WHL, OHL, Canadian Junior A, AAA, Academies, Prep School, High School and Youth Hockey who are looking to get a little better each week.