Logo

Investing in Kids

May 31, 2016

Tom Farrey, the journalist and author who now serves as executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, included this comment in his opening remarks at the “Project Play” Summit on May 17 in Washington, D.C.: “Invest in kids who aren’t your own.”

Upon hearing that, I thought this is precisely what coaches do ... the good ones anyway. They pour their lives into the lives of athletes. And in school sports, they do it not so much to improve students’ chances to be successful in an athletic contest as to be successful in life after competitive sports.

This is why the Michigan High School Athletic Association pours so many resources into coaches education. The MHSAA’s Coaches Advancement Program is delivered face to face anytime and anywhere schools, leagues or coaches associations can gather 20 or so learners.

For 2016-17, the MHSAA is offering every member junior high/middle school and senior high school $300 in free CAP training – six $20 vouchers and three $60 vouchers. Visit the CAP administrative page in July. (Users must be logged in as administrators to access the vouchers.)

Organized sports without trained coaches can do more lifetime harm than good. Coaches education, infused with the core values of educational athletics, is a necessity, not a luxury. And sports without purposefully trained coaches can be a liability.

Holding Back

February 24, 2015

I wrote last week in this space about the positive place for disagreement in organizations; and I held back on pushing the topic a bit further.

Sometimes an organization leader has to hold back. Sometimes the leader needs to recognize that the organization has more disagreement than it can handle and that taking on another topic for which much disagreement is likely would be like drinking from a fire hose.

In Leadership on the Line (HBS, 2002), authors Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky write that “leadership requires disturbing people – but at a rate they can absorb.”

Heifetz and Linsky describe the need to “orchestrate the conflict” in four steps:

  1. “Create a holding environment” – a safe place to interact.
  2. “Control the temperature” – turn the heat up to get people’s attention, and turn it down for them to cool off or to catch up.
  3. “Set the pace” – not too fast that we leave too many people behind; not too slow that we lose the vision and momentum.
  4. “Show the future” – remind people of the “orienting value” – that is, the positive reason to go through all the negative rancor.