I don't usually watch the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four. I watched the Iowa Vs South Carolina game mainly because of the publicity that Caitlin Clark and the South Carolina Gamecocks have garnered for the tournament. Both have brought the game to an excellence that is remarkable; it was a well-played and hard-fought battle.
But it is what happened after the game that made me think. I
first thought about the difference I observed because of the women centered
leadership and the difference that it made how I perceived the game. Caitlin
Clark had a 41 point night, and she had a hand in all of her team's points in
the fourth quarter, whether as points scored or as an assist. Her play and the
way her game flowed were eye opening and she certainly deserved all the
accolades that she is getting and will get in the future. Yet, when she was
interviewed by Holly Rowe of ESPN, she happily
deflected the attention that Rowe tried to focus on her individual
accomplishments to her teammates. She framed the night in a way that any coach wants
to hear from their players and she did it naturally; no false modesty and no
pretentions. She emphasized that the success of the team came from her team;
they seem like, first and foremost, a team that loved each other
unconditionally and they lived and died as a team. Holly Rowe, to her great credit,
did not pursue her original line of questions.
As for Dawn Staley, she was obviously disappointed. Her team
was the defending national champion, and they had a 42 game-winning streak. She
is a great coach and trains her team to play at a very high level. South
Carolina also has a team ethos for success, they played and sacrificed for each other. They just ran
into a buzzsaw that's named Iowa. The remarkable thing about Coach Staley’s
responses was that she did not flinch when faced with the questions, she did delve
into what went wrong; reporters had to ask, because even with South Carolina’s
body of work, the reporters had to ask what went wrong. Coach Staley answered
those questions, but she also told the press that she had to get back into the
locker room because she had to go take care of her team, talk to those
individuals who will no longer for the South Carolina Gamecocks because their
time with the team is has run out. This is something that we don't hear too
much of in sports. Post game press conferences focus on what the teams did or did
not do, and on their successes and mistakes. But her focus, even at the end of
a loss, was on her players. It was vital to her to rush away to address her player’s mental
welfare post loss ahead of everything else.
I am very sure that most coaches do go through that process
internally. I am sure that there are many great coaches who think line Coach
Staley. Very few think in terms of these players who were just becoming adults
and how they were handling what might be the biggest and most public failure in
their lives up to this point. Even if it seems natural to only focus on the
failure, is that the right thing to do? Should we not be more concerned about
the human beings that we are coaching rather than the results? Collegiate sports
are highly competitive, obviously, especially revenue generating sports. The
reality is highly competitive and highly volatile for the coaches and their jobs.
For a coach to say right now my main concern is my players, especially in that
arena with that amount of attention, that is remarkable to me.
The two observations seem to align with the trite saying: women bond to battle
while men battle to bond; that the relationships between players and coaches
plays a more significant role in the successes of the teams than we are led to
believe. Although the reason I believe the saying is trite is because it is so
true. The relationship between players and coaches is a large part of the
bonding. It is a natural part of the team experience to build that symbiotic
relationship for athletes and coaches. The process of creating a team ethos is
an infinitely iterative process of using competition to build relationships and
conversely, building relationships to foster competition. In the aftermath of
Title IX, I believe that the divide employed by that saying has eroded away and
the two conditional statements has become a single biconditional statement which
affects everyone: people battle to bond and bond to battle.
Returning to my original thought: were the two observations
I perceived an example of the difference women leadership can make? I don’t
know. In my experience with very limited data and considering my completely
subjective observations, I believe there is something to it. Although I have no
tangible proof.
Consider a broader scope of inquiry, is it possible that the
difference in the team culture cultivated by the coaches is the reason for the
successes of their teams? Is the difference due to the fact that we have
coaches who are more empathetic?
Empathy, as the ability to actually feel what another
person is feeling — literally “walk a mile in their shoes” — it goes beyond
sympathy, which is a simple expression
of concern for another person’s misfortune.
Even though I have known empathetic men coaches and
completely unempathetic women coaches; they are small samples which offers counterexamples
to the generalization about men and women. Do those counterexamples completely
negate the original hypothesis that women leadership is the difference in what
I perceived? I don’t know. I do know that I want to believe in my original hypothesis.
Is empathy a salient characteristic of teams that are led by
women, as the head coach of Iowa is also a woman? Is it that empathetic culture
which explains how Caitlin Clark is so team oriented? Or is it that she was so
empathetic that she thrives in a familiar and welcoming culture? Which raises another
question: is the team culture a necessary part of winning? Or turning that
question around: is winning a fortunate byproduct of building an empathetic
human centered culture?
Winning and losing is the basis of all sporting activities. Coaches
do all that they can to prepare the players, they teach and prepare them for
the necessary requirements to win tactically, technically, strategically, and
physically. Should they also do so personally? Coaches absolutely want to win,
but should they put their personal relationship, their mutual trust with their
players in the competitive context? Should the coach-player relationship be
transactive? Is winning the driving force for their relationship with their
players or their teams?
I have seen many coach-player relationships become something
that is transactional: I will build a personal relationship with you, if and
only if, you do as I say and help us win; with winning taking precedence over the
personal relationship. This is my personal observation over years of coaching.
I have seen that transactional relationship happen with junior club coaches, with
high school coaches, and with college coaches. My caveat is that my perception
is exactly that, perceptions; I am not privy to the behind-the-scenes relationships
between players and coaches, I can only surmise through my own observations,
all based on decisions made and without context.
I have observed coaches make decisions for the benefit of
their team results rather than what is best for the player. Is that the right approach? Is that the wrong
approach? For the team? For the individuals?
In terms of my observations of Caitlin Clark and Dawn
Staley, we are essentially asking the which came first, the chicken or the egg
question: is winning a function of established culture? Or is culture a
function of winning? In the short term, do you, as a coach, do what is best for
your culture and your relationships with your players and expect success? Or do
you lead the team to get the best results at that moment and hope the culture
and relationships thrive?
Just some extemporaneous wanderings.
