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Put Me in Coach |
| John Ruff | 09.11.2006 | Any/All Industries | Teamwork/TeamBuilding |
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 Want to be a good manager? Then coach - literally. Sign up to coach little league, youth soccer, youth basketball, etc. It is even better to coach a sport you may have never even played as it forces you to work harder, be more creative and puts you in an accelerated learning environment. When you coach you are doing several things - teaching kids skills for the sport, being creative for practices, learning to handle multiple personalities in a team setting, sharpening your decision making skills in game-day situations, learning to delegate and learning to allow others to excel or fail based on their ability.
When you become the head coach of a youth team, you inherently accept responsibility for the kids you are coaching. As the coach, you want each child to develop skills, learn to work as a team and build self-esteem. When done properly, you will quickly learn about each child, what they enjoy and where they excel. Then you will work to put them in situations where they will do well, help the team and build self-esteem. When you are successful, you get a feeling like none other you have ever had. When things don't go so well, you start looking for ways to turn it around – remembering that the kids are looking to you as their leader.
Practices can be a real challenge also. Even if you only practice once a week, you have to come up with all sorts of different ideas and drills that will keep things interesting for the kids. Just like your team at work, your youth team wants new challenges, new approaches and new learning experiences. Also still like the work team environment, you must continually look at the games to determine what is not working and come up with ways to change it, improve it or eliminate it.
If you think about all the things you do as a coach, it is really very similar to what you would do as a manager. Being a coach is a great way to develop or improve your management skills and provide some excellent volunteer service for your community. It also allows you to make mistakes without endangering the company bottom line and then to learn from those mistakes.
In summary, coaching, like managing, is finding ways to put people in a position to be successful. When people on your team are successful, the team is successful and you are successful.
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