I had asked a question of the denizens of the Volleyball
Coaches and Trainers Facebook page and the answers kind of surprised me.
The question was:
When did you feel that you were comfortable being a coach and
not just treading water?
Most
of the coaches who responded said that they are still not comfortable no matter
how experienced they are, and I find that hard to believe.
Either
they are being overly modest, disingenuous, or they are putting themselves
through misery when they coach.
Discomfort is a natural response to
doing something new, it is the mind’s response to new challenges and stimulus,
but as the mind becomes better at doing the coaching tasks, the discomfort
should transform into a sure handed confidence as we perform this task, we get
better at what we do and as we progress towards competence, we should feel more
at ease with performing the task, until we eventually become sure handed and we
get into a flow or a zone when it
comes to coaching. It becomes the
dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is
optimally active and effective.
We most often will coach with certain amount of trepidation and
discomfort because that discomfort drives us to progress in our coaching acumen,
we also must reach a certain level of equanimity with certain coaching tasks,
because if we didn’t, we would not be able to coach to our best abilities, we
would be forever in a cycle of fear. If
we are continuously stressing over the same mundane tasks: whether it is two hits
or three hits, whether the kid with the different colored jersey can hit front
row, we will never get anywhere. It is this sense of equanimity that I refer to
as being comfortable.
We humans have just a limited amount of bandwidth with our
cognition abilities, and as we are feeling uncomfortable with how we do what we
do, our cognition gives all our bandwidth to performing those uncomfortable
things. If we are never able to become comfortable with the basic rudimentary
tasks of coaching, we would never be able to advance our coaching capabilities because
we would not be able to free up that bandwidth to learn and adapt new skill,
information, and be able to deal with uncertainty.
I have been coaching for over twenty
years, and I truly felt comfortable only after I overcame my impostor syndrome
and started to think about the game beyond the in-the-moment mindset, beyond
treading water, beyond hoping that you are never caught being an impostor. In
order to get there I had to go through and be comfortable with many things. The
x’s and o’s of coaching volleyball: knowing the rules of the game, finding myriad
ways to communicate that knowledge, knowing how to put together a lineup,
knowing how to teach to different ages, speaking in public, overcoming my
natural aversion to large crowds, knowing how to read and teach the fundamental
physiological demands and techniques that make up the volleyball skills well
enough to diagnose and identify problems.
Once I was comfortable with the
rudimentary tasks, I was able to progress in my coaching abilities. It wasn’t until
I realized that I had a lot to share with my players and that I am not an
impostor that I became truly comfortable. This doesn’t mean that I am complacent
or that I have stopped learning, it just means that I am learning more and
different things, I am exploring the more complex issues in my volleyball and
athletic knowledge skillsets. You can not progress through the knowledge of the
game without being comfortable with the foundations of coaching.
I had always marveled at some of my
coaching mentors, how they can anticipate and see things happening on the court
as well as the behavior of players. When I started to anticipate the action on
the court because I knew the game and the human tendencies well enough, my
level of discomfort de-escalated. My
epiphany with comfort came when I know what I needed to do to help them as they
are dealing with the chaos and challenges on the court without losing my mind
or the confidence of my players. I felt calm and equanimous in most coaching
environments, I didn’t fear the coming practices or matches. I still must deal
with situations that comes up, I still get frustrated and I still get jolted
when the unknown rears its ugly head. It is still a struggle to handle all that
happens and the pit in the stomach never goes away, but I realize that I can
handle it and that I am capable of making reasonable and quick decisions, fully
knowing that the decision may or may not work out; knowing that it might not
work but still having the courage to make the decision is also a sign that you
are growing comfortable with your role as coach.
Being comfortable is also about living
with your decisions, however it will result and being able to analyze and
dissect your reasoning process with clarity and without biases after it resuts,
this comes with experience and the recognition and acknowledgement of our
fears, weaknesses, and errors in our judgement and being able and courageous
enough to overcome them a little bit at a time. None of the doubts go away, you
are just better able to handle and deal with it and be able to achieve
equanimity.
Concomitant with this sense of comfort is
a sense of curiosity and adventurousness, you begin to ask questions that carries
more gravitas, that are more global in scope, and with more granularity and
depth that you were able to muster as a frazzled and uncomfortable beginning coach.
You can ask the better, deeper, and broader questions, more importantly, you
are able to understand the explanations and potential answers. All that comes
with comfort.
I hope I was better able to explain the
intent of my question and explain why a cursory: I never get comfortable, is not
a good answer.
I want to emphasize that being comfortable
in your coaching role is not a sign that you given up on learning, questioning,
or have come to a complacent rut in your coaching, far from it, being
comfortable enables me to explore more of our sport and be able to understand
the Why’s, What-if’s and how’s.
To answer the question for myself, I
stopped feeling like an impostor when I started a club with some great friends
and they, through their own actions and examples, showed me that I was not a
complete idiot. It was about six or seven years into my coaching life.
