Where Pride Still Matters - cont'd
In his book Leading with the Heart, Mike Krzyzewski, coach of the Duke
University basketball team, tells of a time when, as a cadet at West Point,
he was walking down the sidewalk and somebody stepped in a puddle, splashing
mud on his shoes. Seconds later, an upperclassman barked at him for being dirty.
Krzyzewski’s first impulse was to blame the guy who’d splashed him. But then
he realized it was his fault. He should have turned around immediately to go
clean up. That’s a story he tells his players about accepting responsibility
when bad luck happens.
The best coaches, the McCarthys and the Sullivans, don’t emphasize winning
as much as effort. They demand practice. They demand unselfishness. If Sullivan’s
team is wining by 15 runs and a player is goofing around in the dugout, that player’s
in big trouble because he’s not respecting the game and he’s not respecting the
other team.
Coaches are also zealous about work and preparation. The typical coach
was once the kid who didn’t have as much talent as some of the others, but figured
he could bull his way to the top through hard work. These guys are still at it,
which is why so many of the best coaches are up nights studying game films, and
are sweating through their clothes w3hile pacing up and down the sidelines like
madmen. In his book Competitive Leadership, Brian Billick, coach of the
Baltimore Ravens, quotes the military strategist Carl von Clausewitz: "The personal
physical exertion of leaders must not be overlooked. It is as important as any
strategy or tactic." And what they expect from themselves they also expect from
their players.
Finally, good coaches believe in loyalty. So many relationships in
life are conditional. You can change jobs, switch parties, or leave neighborhoods.
But the best coaches give the impression that team loyalty is inviolable. That’s
because, while the rest of us work with keyboards or machinery, coaches work with
people. Their tools are individuals. They often feel fiercely protective of them.
My own kids sometimes have trouble with the rudimentary techniques of
cleaning up their rooms. But during the weeks they are at Coach McCarthy’s baseball
clinic, you can see my eldest son and daughter out in the backyard polishing their
cleats. When we found them some fluffy polishing mitts to help them do a better job,
they were as happy as if they’d been given a new bat.
The ultimate lesson good coaches offer is that if you demand that people
live up to a rigorous code of honor, they are excited by the challenge. Unless I’m
mistaken, kids are quietly ecstatic to find authority they can respect, learn from
and admire.
Each week McCarthy opens his camps with straight-ahead homilies about kids
whose families can’t afford baseball camp, or kids who don’t respect their gear or
take the time to learn from players less gifted than they are. The campers sit on
the stands during these sermons, their parents in a reverent semicircle behind them.
One day, I heard a mother ask her boy what he thought of Coach’s speech
that day. "Aw, parents love that kind of stuff," he said.
True enough. Sometimes, you can look at the parents’ faces and see the
tears welling up in their eyes.
Men's Health Magazine
- David Brooks
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