Winning coaches are insecure and four other vital lessons on leadership from a high school football coach.
High school football occupies a position in the deep South that most folks will never understand. Men decades removed from their playing days still wear their high school letterman jackets and reminisce longingly for their glory days and a quip about the local team’s playoffs prospects should be handy if needed at all times.
For most of my early life I bore witness to this spectacle. My uncle, Patrick Hargro, a man I respectfully addressed only as “Coach”, lead my high school football team. He was one of those men who paced the sidelines in what appeared to be untroubled contemplation —sometimes chastising a referee for a unacceptably bad call, but never mimicking his more animated counterparts.
One Saturday morning, after an especially close loss, I rallied up all of my pre-teen courage and asked him about his dispassionate posture on the field the previous Friday night. “Coach,” I began, “Why don’t you do more coaching during the game? Maybe if you did we could have won.” His response was one that I would only fully understand once I was in a leadership role myself:
“The most important part of my job was over before the game started.” he said.
This was a revelation. The usual grandstanding that bubbled from the sidelines on game nights was not where the art of coaching was on display, it was where it was judged. The repeated practices and film sessions were what mattered. Thus, I learned my first truth about leadership. Lesson 1: The result of good leadership is clearly visible, but the hard work needed to achieve it, is often hidden from the view of spectators.
From the confidential conversations I’ve overheard due to my close relationship with an experienced coach, I’ve picked-up a few lessons about leading teams that aren’t so obvious from the stands.
Lesson 2: Winning coaches are insecure too.
I never saw my uncle as disturbed as when our team started the season 4–0 for the first time in a decade. It wasn’t as much a direct fear of losing as much as it was the notion that he would ruin the team’s streak through an over adjustment.
What I learned: Even when things are going well, we leaders at times second-guess our decisions, have trouble believing sincere compliments, and get defensive over the smallest slights. Some of us overcompensate for this insecurity, through stage-hogging or faux humility.
What I do: No matter the project, I always seek to understand the reasons for both my successes and failures. I’ve discovered that the biggest inoculation I can provide against personal insecurity is to ask for candid feedback from my team and those closest to me and trust their observations. We can’t always see clearly when we’re under pressure so we benefit by trusting those who aren’t in the hot seat.
Lesson 3: Bad coaches care more about looking smart than being smart.
A complex playbook and confounding language is death in high school football. A 16 year old kid has a lot on his or her mind and the complexity of your system, while brilliant to you, can’t compete with high school crushes, an ever-changing body or in the best cases homework. Only bad coaches insist on overly complex systems that tax your players.
What I learned: In leadership this tactic could take the form of using complex language that no one understands. Or, being so vague and aloof in your directives that no one knows what is expected of them. Both of these extremes foster confusion and ambiguity, an environment that provides a scapegoat for insecure managers when things go wrong.
What I do: One of the most important tasks for a leader is to absorb ambiguity so that’s what I do. Everyday. If my team fails to understand what’s expected of them or what our top priorities are then it’s because I’ve failed to communicate with them effectively.
Lesson 4: Don’t disregard a good players instinct.
Early in life, a great player is the product of good instinct and natural talent. They haven’t had much training so it’s this instinct that landed him or her on your team in the first place. But under the guidance of a weak coach, a players instinct is capped and discarded in favor of the “system”.
What I learned: In our world, many universities are struggling to prepare students to work in tech. Therefore, a good Product Manager or Designer is often the product of some measure of raw instinct and product intuition.
What I do: My job is to give these qualities room to mature, not to bottle them up or worse, attempt to drastically reshape them in my image. Instead, I spend time trying to understand the thinking and methods a person has developed over the years. On more than one occasion this has lead to me discovering new new and superior ways of doing things.
Lesson 5: Empower your team to change the plan.
One of the most powerful delegations of authority in high school football is giving a quarterback the ability to change a play after the coach has given it. For any coach this can be a nerve wrecking proposition. A coach sometimes with 20 or 30 years of experience is leaving important and critical decisions in the hands of someone who probably just got their first drivers license. Of course, you don’t give this responsibility to just anyone, but if you have a talented lead on your team who understands your principles, allowing them to change direction is powerful. Some pro football players even make a career reputation out of this skill.
What I learned: As managers, even if we follow best practices and continue to do some hands-on work, our teams will always be closer to a project than us and thus will have insight that we won’t. If you’ve done the work of setting clear objectives and principles beforehand, you can trust them to make important calls.
What I do: Sometimes I ask my team what changes we need to make today to be better than we were yesterday. If the suggestion is solid then do it immediately. This gives me the opportunity to both instill confidence in them and evaluate their judgement before a game time crisis.
Good coaching isn’t easy. When your players win, the victory is theirs. When they fail, the responsibility is yours and sometimes as a result you will be replaced. However, in the long run the impact of perfecting this art is worth it. You develop a rare ability to both manage success and parse failure without it wreaking havoc on your self-esteem. More importantly, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped shape people who know how to perform.
“Coach” Hargro retired last year after over 20 years on the sidelines. In the end he won about as many games as he lost. His name isn’t inscribed on any buildings and his notoriety never extended beyond our little corner of the state but every few months he tells me about the unexpected phone call he gets from a former player telling him how much he impacted their life. After I wrote this story, I did the same with the best manager I ever had. In life, just as in sports, the greatest impact comes when we contribute to the development of another person instead of ourselves, and the hard work of doing this takes place before the spotlights turn on. It takes place before the game even starts.
