I have been coaching soccer for a long time now, and it has been and continues to be an interesting journey.  Coaching boys, coaching girls, coaching young players or coaching nearly adults.  They think differently, behave differently and have different needs in terms of motivation and challenge.

The interesting and intriguing facet is that no two kids are quite the same, and as a coach you have to unlock that player to know them, and from there help them to have fun playing and learning the game.

Having been doing this job for so long it
sometimes misses my consciousness of what
motivates me? What challenges me?  I spend most the day considering my players and club, that I find it hard to find the next step in my own challenge and learning.  Well, last week I became a soccer instructor for a national soccer coaching organization that coaches the coaches.  Ahead of taking on this role I was apprehensive and intimidated by the prospect of having to teach 23 adults (unknown people to me, coming from far and wide), and I had to teach them about how to be better at coaching

There is no question that if I could have opted out if I would have.  It would have been the wrong thing to do, but I think I would have done it.  As it was I was not able to opt out, and I got far outside my comfort zone, and then did numerous presentations both on and off the field.

It went swimmingly.  I just cannot express how satisfying it was to make a difference in this new but tangible way.

An off the cuff comment made towards the end of the course made me smile the most.  When a coach in attendance was asked how would you solve that?  He replied “WWPD”, Everyone, almost simultaneously said “what does that mean”?   It transpired that their problem solving amounted to…   What Would Phil Do?  I’m not sure I have had a greater compliment.

All this led me to writing about coaching, for me that is soccer, but the sport does not really matter.  Coaching is a process that aims to improve performance, and that process for me fuels the daily motivation on the field about maximizing a player’s potential in soccer and in life.  Not so much teaching them, but rather helping them learn, it is a subtle difference, but an important one.

Of course, my creative self wrote a poem about it, because poetry is easier than coaching, …sometimes.

Coaching

The guiding principles they guide me,
I plan, reflect, quite quietly,
The Q, the A and the guiding in discovery,
Are in the mix, for the mix, and part of the problem solving.

Improvement comes with learning,
When development is the culture,
And work, respect and teamwork are within the structure.

The X’s and the O’s they are always part of planning,
If you misread the how,
You are not quite getting there,
Don’t mistake the why,
The players need to know you care.

The coach will be the leader,
Who leads far beyond the team,
Life lessons will be learned about striving and the struggle,
Working alongside others and making small successes double.

So, if the clock is ticking down
And the score is not going your way,
It is the lessons that they learned that will make the players want to stay.