JOURNEY INTO COACHING - Stamina

It’s really hard for sports teams at any level to put together two high-performance games in a row. Recently, the soccer team I coach played on Saturday and again on Sunday. On Saturday we had a thrilling 3-2 victory where we came from behind to score in the final 10 minutes and held on for the win. It was a proud coaching moment. We beat a team that was more athletic and better skilled, but because of our teamwork and commitment to a strategy, we found a way to win. We had positive energy both on the field and on the bench. Then on Sunday, we lost 0-1 to what I’d characterize as an inferior team. During halftime, I could feel a lack of energy. I think we wanted to be somewhere else. Right from our warm-up, I could tell we were going to come out flat. We had lost the energy from the day before and in its place was a dry, hollow desire to be doing something other than playing that game. As great as I felt on Saturday, I felt equally low on Sunday. All of my tactics to raise the energy failed. Most frustrating was the nagging voice in the back of my head before Sunday’s game predicting this and me feeling helpless to change it. Why is it so hard to maintain high performance and positive emotions over time?

What about for teams within companies and the companies themselves? I have seen something similar play out with my HR team. One quarter - we kill it - we exceed expectations, followed by a quarter where it feels like a slog to barely meet expectations. Or a company has a great year, followed by a year of missed expectations. Obviously, there are all sorts of factors and explanations that impact a team’s energy and output. To combat the ebbs and flows, we need to find ways to recharge our psychological and emotional energy, but how? How can we build “engagement stamina” over time that allows us to break through to greatness or at least gives us the energy to have a chance? 

Great teams and great companies separate themselves by finding ways to get wins even when emotional fatigue sets in. They find ways to adapt and grow over time. And, our quest as coaches and leaders, whether in business or on the sports fields is to learn how we can prepare and teach our teams to have high emotional endurance. Here is a definition of emotional stamina:

The ability to withstand difficult situations, handle adversity and remain productive and capable throughout.

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At practices, during scrimmages or drills with my soccer team, I will play the part of referee and, at times, make questionable calls or decisions to see how the team will react. Every ounce of energy my team spends complaining, making excuses, and trying to convince me I was wrong is siphoned from more productive activities that will actually lead to a positive result. Referees are not changing their calls so having my team practice dealing with “bad” calls is a simple yet effective way of not only building an ability to deal with adversity but also learning how to better channel energy towards activities that can make positive changes. 

In the real world, we don’t necessarily have the luxury of making bad calls to practice our emotional stamina. The stakes are higher. However, we do need to give our people space and our teams time to develop and be resilient. It is critical our teams learn how to persevere in the face of new and diverse challenges. As business coaches, we may try giving smaller projects, with limited resources to see and teach ways to handle difficult situations. In a Harvard Business Review article by Herminai Ibarra and Anne Scoular, called The Leader as Coach, the idea of situational coaching is discussed, which is described as using both non-directive and directive styles of coaching depending on what is needed in a situation. Situational coaching requires deep listening skills and the ability to ask open-ended questions. The mindset of the coach shifts to include unleashing a potential already present inside someone. Many successful mentors use this approach when building relationships with their mentees. The mentee, in many cases, is driving the content of the discussions while the mentor is illuminating a different perspective, ultimately helping the mentee better articulate their own ideas. Whatever coaching context you find yourself in - whether in business, sports, or somewhere else, figuring out how to get your team members to “illuminate” solutions to their own challenges will be a critical foundational step for them successfully dealing with future unforeseen change.   

I read this blog How to build emotional stamina and found the following interesting quotes: 

• “The fastest way to build emotional stamina is sleep. The second fastest is talk therapy. The third way is head knowledge: learning skills, listening to podcasts, reading books, working on breathing techniques,” 
• There’s also a fourth element to building emotional stamina: faith (whatever that means to you in your life)

I think in most, if not all contexts, coaches have the biggest influence on the amount of rest taken by their teams. In the corporate world, we describe this as balance. I’d summarize the 2nd and 3rd fastest ways to gain emotional stamina outlined above as awareness. Bringing into awareness the things going on inside the brain – both conscious and unconscious - is part of the art of coaching. Faith is the 4th element, which I would describe as purpose. What is the “why” behind each team's decision to show up for practice or to the office? As coaches, how can we help our team members better understand their “why”, accept it, and understand how it is impacting their energy on the field or in the boardroom?

 I have thought for some time that setting up a coaching development program where the participants are asked to coach youth sports would be a really good way to teach executives how to be better leaders and better coaches, including a forum to learn techniques for developing emotional stamina. The similarities between a youth sports team and a senior executive team are quite prevalent. The youth coach sets the tone for her players – the CEO (departments head, team lead, etc.) – sets the tone for her team members. Expectations and rewards for “winning” need to be determined upfront. Both the CEO and the youth coach want to have more players working from intrinsic motivators than extrinsic ones. Extrinsically motivated players show up because they want to look cool (have a nice car, nice house), they think it will make their parents happy, or they want status. Intrinsically motivated players show up because they love to compete, want to perfect their craft - be better today than they were yesterday - and love building relationships with other team members.

Executive leaders have a few major constituencies – shareholders, customers, and employees. The youth sports coach has parents – who are providing the funding and acting like shareholders, has players, and has fans- who act as customers. Both the youth sports coach and business coach need to effectively communicate with their players (team members) and parents (shareholders) daily. Most importantly, she needs to learn how to communicate in a way her players (team members) can receive and apply the information. This means understanding her player's motivation, setting individual and team goals, applying the concepts into digestible information for her players (team members), and translating that information into changed behavior that ultimately leads to improved performance.

Questions coaches and business leaders can ask include:

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• How can I coach my players to believe they can achieve something they may not think is possible?
• How best to communicate so my players can absorb and understand?
• How do I help my players move from a conceptual understanding – to the application of a behavior or skill – to increased and consistent improvement of performance? (More on this in future blogs.)

Although there are all sorts of contextual differences and enhanced complexities associated with being a leader, compared to coaching a youth sports team, the core skills related to coaching and leadership are very similar. Coaching a youth sports team could be a fantastic training ground for executives at organizations. I mean – if you can get a group of kids to commit to something bigger than themselves, to check their egos, to work together as a unit, to want to battle for a cause – with all the distractions in their world today – then you have the basics for being a great coach and leader within any organization!

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We had another game this past weekend. In the first half, the team had low energy and played not to lose by playing to avoid mistakes. The score at the end of the half was 0-0. In the second half, we took risks, dictated the pace of the game with our energy, and focused on scoring rather than just defending. The score at the end of the game was a 6-2 win. We celebrated each goal with such enthusiasm that the opposing coach complained to the referee. But the energy was contagious. We had people from the games on adjacent fields coming over wanting to see what was happening. Same players, same field conditions but a complete 180 result. Amazing…our energy was the difference!