Tactical Empathy Pt. 1
“I don’t believe in sport as a democracy. Sport is a dictatorship.” — Harald Jahrling, former coach, Women’s Eight, Australian Row
Excerpt from Chapter 5 of Ego, Authority, Failure: Using Emotional Intelligence Like a Hostage Negotiator to Succeed as a Leader
Pushing herself beyond her physical capabilities to please others caused her dramatic meltdown during the 2004 Athens Olympic final. That’s how Sally Robbins describes one of the most devastating moments in Australian Olympic history…when she stopped rowing in the Women’s 8 finals.
“Suddenly fatigue sets in and I just can’t move, you know. It’s a feeling of paralysis where you just hit the wall,” she said.
It does not get much worse than that in rowing…to just stop. In rowing, the exertion is painful and you know it’s coming. An athlete can typically manage it with appropriate strategies but stopping is not one of them. You just don’t ever stop.
The team got to the finish with only seven people pulling the boat over the line…dead last in front of the world. The biggest moment in Robbins’ life and her worst performance ever. The team was racked with anger, frustration and disappointment. Emotionally, they were devastated. Was Jahrling there at the pontoon to see them come in and console? No. According to many accounts, he vacated the facility, depriving the athletes of a safe environment to process what had just occurred.
Many of them never got over it. Not just that Robbins stopped rowing but also that Jahrling had seemingly abandoned them. A coach has a responsibility to display Tactical Empathy, so that if an athlete or team has a bad performance, he or she is there to provide support. The coach has to be that person who is going to manage the conversation about what happened and the emotions associated with it.
“For him not to even be there…it’s almost criminal,” Bo Hanson said.
For his part, Jahrling said he regretted not staying by their side and deal with the issue immediately, but he also blamed the Australian authorities for failing to ask him to come back and address the reactions to the team’s performance.
“After I realized what happened back home and how everyone started bashing, I should have stayed. Or someone who figured out that it would happen could have called me and said, ‘Harald, just come back. We have to fix this with you there,’” he said.
At the same time, he said he did not believe that he had abandoned the team as some of his critics alluded however, it wasn’t just critics. There was evidence presented before the New South Wales Supreme Court that Jahrling, caught a flight out of Athens while the team was still “screaming and wailing.”
That said, Jahrling is unapologetic about his overall leadership style, which is ego dominant and authoritative.
“I’m a total control freak. You can’t get world class performances if you just let everyone loose everywhere…someone’s got to be a dictator.”
The coach is still involved with the sport, which is not uncommon. He returned to Australian Row in 2016 as a “key strategist.” Hanson says that leaders who behave extremely poorly often slip under the radar for a period of time and then resurface somewhere else, leaving a trail of broken employees and organizations in their wake.
“We see this all the time. CEOs that do terrible things… bankrupt organizations but somehow manage to find a job somewhere else.”
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Hanson says many athletes have finished their careers emotionally scarred because of their relationships with their coaches. These coaches either harassed, bullied or communicated with the athlete in a negative fashion. There is a fundamental deficiency in their ability to demonstrate Tactical Empathy and create a safe environment for their athletes — physically, emotionally and psychologically.
Plenty of examples come out of US colleges every year.
Alexander Wolfe wrote a piece a few years back for Sports Illustrated where he documented abusive NCAA coaches. Wolfe noted college sports has a long tradition of coaches engaging in conduct “that would meet most modern tests of torture.” Hyperbole? Maybe, but I got his point. He says the behavior is surfacing with more frequency now because players, empowered by today’s technologies, are no longer rolling over and taking it.
While there are examples of physical abuse — former Indiana Basketball coach Bobby Knight head butting Sherron Wilkerson during a game in 1994 comes to mind — most of today’s abuse isn’t physical, but psychological or emotional. In one study, 41% of athletes reported being so depressed it was difficult to function.
Jim Thompson founded Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), a San Francisco Bay Area group that focuses on mitigating the negative coaching paradigm. As he puts it, “It’s hard to be driven when you’re being driven…the best way to get the best out of athletes is to create a positive culture in which they’re respected and believe in their value, and that the coach believes in them.”
The “my way-or-highway” coach with an elevated ego and authority has historically been the norm. However, there is abundant research showing that this is not the best way to increase performance.
Surprisingly, the problem of abusive coaches may be greater with coaches of non-revenue sports than with the larger football or basketball programs.
David Jones, who has covered Penn State athletics for more than two decades, wrote, “The actions of unscrupulous non-revenue coaches often fly under the radar. Their sports are off on their own, watched and attended mainly by the friends and families of the athletes. What they say and do at practice and even during games is easily overlooked by the mass audience of sport…few take notice of how they behave. So, they can get away with all sorts of conduct high-profile coaches cannot.”
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“Sport is played by people, coached by people and managed by people, so it is imperative to get the people side right. And business is no different!,” Hanson said.
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This post is part of a blog series where I share excerpts and stories from my book, Ego, Authority, Failure: Using Emotional Intelligence Like a Hostage Negotiator to Succeed as a Leader and expand upon some of the themes within the book. If you want to connect, you can reach me here via email or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Also, you can find my book on Amazon — here is the link: www.amazon.com/dp/B07NF3HQV7
