Getting to Us by Seth Davis (February 2019)
Sportswriter and longtime CBS commentator Seth Davis’s Getting To Us explores the various tactics and strategies used by coaches to bring their teams together in pursuit of their common goals. He does so by dedicating each of his ten or so chapters to a profile of a different coach. As always, I found much useful insight here that I will highlight over a couple upcoming posts.
The primary focus of the book is motivation. A team full of motivated players means everyone is committed to following one shared agenda. The coach’s role is twofold. First, the coach must establish the team’s mentality and ensure everyone understands the main goal. Then, the coach must learn how to motivate each player so that everyone understands how his or her individual contributions will tie into the team’s goal. Motivating individuals is a relentless and endless task. A good coach knows to spend time with players and learn how each responds to various emotions or stresses. This understanding will help the coach develop empathy for the individuals on the team and determine the best way to motivate players throughout the many challenging scenarios that arise over the course of a long season.
The aspect of motivating individuals is likely the hardest task for most coaches because the work involved doesn’t necessarily come naturally to them. Good people skills are rarely a prerequisite for starting in the profession and most coaches seem to learn on the job (or not at all). A majority of coaches get their start by having a deep knowledge about a specific element of their sport that can be applied in an assistant role. A new coach can win trust from the players by demonstrating his or her depth of knowledge and understanding of the game. The approach I always liked that Davis highlights is detailed practice planning. He points out something I never thought of but that I realize I’ve sometimes done inadvertently in my previous leadership opportunities – a great practice plan links the drills to how they will beat certain opponents or develop specific skills.
A common tactic coaches employ for motivation is internal competition. There is logic here because after introducing a skill or strategy to a player the coach must allow the player to explore and learn how to best apply the ideas. The challenge with using competition as a motivational tool is the possibility of a team losing its sight of the shared goal. When a coach sees divides form within the team, the internal competition has likely gone too far.
One up: Coaches face a consistent challenge of having to give a player disappointing news without discouraging him or her so much that it negatively impacts future performance. Davis proposes a good rule of thumb – share the truth with players in a way that encourages them to get better.
One down: Innovations in sports are often needlessly framed in the context of an invention replacing the obsolete. The I-formation, for example, was an innovation that helped offenses counter corner blitzing. Helmet football has since moved on and this formation is no longer among the dominant setups (and when it is used, it often is to help the running game). But when defenses adjust and make the corner blitz a devastating tactic, guess what formation will probably make a comeback? Innovation in sports is more circular than it is linear and commentators who forget this reveal a certain ignorance about the game.
Just saying: As I noted above, coaches start their careers with more knowledge than people skills. A particularly challenging area is when a mentally independent person – the sort who takes pride in being strong, the type that often seems to rise into head coaching roles – encounters players who need consistent support throughout challenging times. These coaches will need to work very hard to understand why a player’s response to adversity is demonstrably different than the values that proved successful in their rise through the coaching ranks.
Just saying #2: I liked this book’s definition of toughness – it means doing the next right thing.
