IT'S ABOUT PROCESS NOT OUTCOMES OR WHAT FOOTBALL TAUGHT ME
IT'S ABOUT PROCESS NOT OUTCOMES OR WHAT FOOTBALL TAUGHT ME
So, if you can bear with me and allow my propensity to perhaps over-romanticize my 25 years as a footbal coach, I promise there is a lesson(s) here. You don't even have to like the sport!
To be perfectly honest, when I first started out as a football coach, I thought that it was all about me and that my worth as a coach and upon reflection perhaps even as a man would be measured by the number of games I won versus the number lost. Yes, how I defined myself back then came down to my win-loss record. A pretty narrow definition of what constitutes a self-accepting man, not to mention its complete lack of consideration for the needs of the players.
For a while I just didn't get it and it went on this way for the first few years that I coached. And although the end of those early seasons brought some success and satisfaction, I was always left with this empty feeling and the thought that there was something missing from my coaching, but what was it?
I am not exactly sure how it happened but the fact that it did is what really matters most. When the light finally came on, let's say one dark and stormy winter night in the off-season, I realized that coaching had little to do with me and everything to do with the boys. Most importantly, I learned that my purpose for being there was to use football as a vehicle to grow young men. It was about focusing my efforts to guide and support my players in becoming the very best that they could be as individual players within a team environment. And a part of that was about instilling in them the kind of values and way of operating that would carry them well beyond their football playing days. It of course made perfect sense and I kicked myself for not comprehending this simple but profound truth sooner. I shook my head in disbelief for having bought into the societal norm that to often judges our worth by our wins and losses.
When I began to think about how to translate and action this with the boys, it occured to me that if it was not about winning as an outcome than what it must be about is process, the process of growing through experience and education, in fact a journey and not a destination.
When you think about it, isn't life really about the journey. How often upon reflection do you remember the awards, the trophies, or the collection of souvenirs? In fact, it's those same trophies or souvenirs that remind you of the experiences that happened around them along the way. Those are the memories that endure, and those are the accumulated life events that remind us all that it is the process of living that defines our lives.
As previously stated, these two life lessons have become a part of my philosophy of life and of course an essential part of the way I approach my personal coaching. You can bet that when I am with my clients we are all about process, calling upon their previous life experiences to understand how they came to this place in time and creating new and meaningful experiences to add to their journey and shape a future that creates the greatest possibilty for them to become the very best that they can be in the four dimensions of self and life.
As an afterthought and the irony in all this, when I applied this philosophy to my work as a football coach, with its emphasis on process and the journey, one unanticipated outcome of my actions was winning on the field.
I am grateful for the experience of football and what it along with the boys taught me about how to live my life. It has served me well ever since. If there was but one regret though, reflecting back on my years in football, it was the damage that I might have inflicted on those boys who played for my early football teams as I struggled to find my way as a coach and as it turns out in LIFE.
My thanks to all of them and for our journey together.
Coach Ladd
ITS ABOUT PROCESS NOT OUTCOMES OR WHAT FOOTBALL TAUGHT ME - To learn more about this author, visit James Ladd's Website.
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Two of the greatest life lessons I ever learned believe it or not came early in my amateur football coaching career. They were to have a profound effect on my philosophy of life thereafter.
So, if you can bear with me and allow my propensity to perhaps over-romanticize my 25 years as a footbal coach, I promise there is a lesson(s) here. You don't even have to like the sport!
To be perfectly honest, when I first started out as a football coach, I thought that it was all about me and that my worth as a coach and upon reflection perhaps even as a man would be measured by the number of games I won versus the number lost. Yes, how I defined myself back then came down to my win-loss record. A pretty narrow definition of what constitutes a self-accepting man, not to mention its complete lack of consideration for the needs of the players.
For a while I just didn't get it and it went on this way for the first few years that I coached. And although the end of those early seasons brought some success and satisfaction, I was always left with this empty feeling and the thought that there was something missing from my coaching, but what was it?
I am not exactly sure how it happened but the fact that it did is what really matters most. When the light finally came on, let's say one dark and stormy winter night in the off-season, I realized that coaching had little to do with me and everything to do with the boys. Most importantly, I learned that my purpose for being there was to use football as a vehicle to grow young men. It was about focusing my efforts to guide and support my players in becoming the very best that they could be as individual players within a team environment. And a part of that was about instilling in them the kind of values and way of operating that would carry them well beyond their football playing days. It of course made perfect sense and I kicked myself for not comprehending this simple but profound truth sooner. I shook my head in disbelief for having bought into the societal norm that to often judges our worth by our wins and losses.
When I began to think about how to translate and action this with the boys, it occured to me that if it was not about winning as an outcome than what it must be about is process, the process of growing through experience and education, in fact a journey and not a destination.
When you think about it, isn't life really about the journey. How often upon reflection do you remember the awards, the trophies, or the collection of souvenirs? In fact, it's those same trophies or souvenirs that remind you of the experiences that happened around them along the way. Those are the memories that endure, and those are the accumulated life events that remind us all that it is the process of living that defines our lives.
As previously stated, these two life lessons have become a part of my philosophy of life and of course an essential part of the way I approach my personal coaching. You can bet that when I am with my clients we are all about process, calling upon their previous life experiences to understand how they came to this place in time and creating new and meaningful experiences to add to their journey and shape a future that creates the greatest possibilty for them to become the very best that they can be in the four dimensions of self and life.
As an afterthought and the irony in all this, when I applied this philosophy to my work as a football coach, with its emphasis on process and the journey, one unanticipated outcome of my actions was winning on the field.
I am grateful for the experience of football and what it along with the boys taught me about how to live my life. It has served me well ever since. If there was but one regret though, reflecting back on my years in football, it was the damage that I might have inflicted on those boys who played for my early football teams as I struggled to find my way as a coach and as it turns out in LIFE.
My thanks to all of them and for our journey together.
Coach Ladd
ITS ABOUT PROCESS NOT OUTCOMES OR WHAT FOOTBALL TAUGHT ME - To learn more about this author, visit James Ladd's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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