Volleyball Coaching Life-Altruism

Coaches emphasizes the value of teamwork. Indeed, a large part of what coaches do in team sports is to instill how being a great teammate is important to the success of that team.  We ask the players to put the interest of the whole, the team, ahead of their self-interest. This is especially difficult if the players are  at the ages where self-involvement and what-is-in-it-for-me attitudes are a dominant part of their maturation. I understand that selfishness is a natural part of human development but knowing and acknowledging that fact certainly does not make teaching player how to be a great teammate any easier.

I also believe that being a good teammate directly teaches the players to be altruistic in their future lives, the lessons from playing on a team and learning, to think in terms of us rather than me has direct implications on the future behavior of the player. Indeed, this is a valuable lesson that team sports impart on the players.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the formal definition for altruism is:

1 : unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

2 : behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

The first definition is generally the definition of altruism that most will recognize: having regard for and devotion to the welfare of others. This definition refers to the expected societal behavior of all cultures: a devotion to this definition leads to the giving of ourselves —money if we have it, time if we have it. This thought manifests itself externally, things that we do — mostly giving materially — to demonstrate to others that we are altruistic. The definition does not commit the person to anything drastic, just to have concern for others.

The second definition is different, it calls for us to search internally to find the motivation to do  things that could potentially harm ourselves for the greater good.

The first definition is more general, it invokes selflessness without specifically asking for personal sacrifices, this is the altruism that does not ask us to put skin in the game; whereas the second definition not only ask for skin in the game, but it also calls for us to act with a greater purpose as we make decisions that will likely hurt us. In fact, it is asking for more than just putting skin in the game, it asks for us to give our all.

I have told the story about the difference between involved and being committed to my players every year. It can all be explained by our breakfast: bacon and eggs. In this breakfast dish, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. The chicken had to make a painful decision, but it is the pig that had skin in the game. The chicken is following the first definition of altruism, the pig is following the second definition.

Good teammates will cheer for their teammates and team,  they will carry water for the teammates and team, they will shag balls for their teammates and team, they will volunteer to officiate for their teammates and  team, they will hug a teammate when they need it and kick some butt when the teammate needs it. In short, they are observing the tenets of the first definition of altruism: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

The real question is:  are the players willing to be a great teammate? Are they willing to subjugate their egos by sacrificing their own turn under the spotlight? Are they willing to sacrifice personal recognition for the sake of the team? Are they willing to give up their starting role because a teammate is having a better day? Are they willing come in as a substitute rather than as a starter? Are they willing to take the bench role even if it means harming their own self-interests? Are they willing to make that sacrifice by giving up the opportunities to be seen and recruited? Are they willing to work hard in practice to make the team more successful and make the starting team better? Are they willing to work hard only in practice and not play one second of a match?

Great teammates are willing to do all that if that is what it takes: behavior that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others.

Many players excel at being a good teammate, not many are willing to do what it takes to be a great teammate. Age plays a role in this discussion, it is difficult to convince young people to sacrifice themselves for the team, yet it is also rare to see adults sacrifice themselves for the good of the team.

I believe that altruism is a human trait that is the greatest lesson that we can bestow on our students and players when we teach how to be a great teammate so that a great team can emerge.

What precipitated this line of thinking is the reality of our present society, I thought about the lack of apparent or even latent signs of altruism around me. In the cold reality of today’s ethos, I was lamenting the disappearance of altruism; but then I found this article from Vox: https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2022/2/17/22938873/covid-19-vaccines-skeptics-messaging which restored my faith in humans and it gave me some hope.

The article describes the results from a study conducted by Vincent Pons at the Harvard Business School and Vincenzo Galasso and Paola Profeta at Bocconi University in Milan. It tracks the evolving thoughts of  people with anti-vaccine sentiments and their opinions as the pandemic progressed; they found that people can in fact be persuaded by the right message.

The researchers surveyed more than 6,000 people in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and New Zealand,  first in December 2020, to assess them before the vaccines were widely available, and asked them to pick a number between 0 and 10 to represent their likelihood of getting vaccinated; then they returned to them in the  Summer of 2021 to find out what they did.

Four messages were presented to the test subjects in December to see how they would move people’s intentions then and their actual behavior six months later:

1. Self-Protection (If you get vaccinated, you could avoid getting infected)
2. Protecting Others (If you get vaccinated, you could avoid passing the virus to others)
3. Protecting Health (If you get vaccinated, it can help protect the health of all the people in your country)
4. Protecting the Economy (If you get vaccinated, it can help a return to economic activity and reduce unemployment)

A control group heard no messaging at all.

Interestingly, the most ardent vaccine refusers, one-third of the people who had rated themselves 0 in December, had gotten vaccinated in the six months between visits by the researchers.

What was amazing is that the information presented to the sample population in the first wave affected not only vaccination intentions expressed in the survey but also the actual vaccination rates six months later. It even increased vaccination among those who had expressed anti-vax attitudes in the first survey. Interestingly, altruistic messages had the largest effect. Indeed message 2 and 3: protecting others and protecting the health of the nation were the most effective messages.

We see this same altruism in the world’s reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We were altruistic in our response, in all the senses of the word. The economic sanctions have and will damage the world economy, but the world sacrificed our own self-interest, we were altruistic in our intentions when responding to the Ukrainian people.

It is these acts of self-sacrifice on a global scale that let in the light through the crack of the dark façade of my perspective on our society. Therefore, I feel that we must reinforce the ideas of being great teammates to our future. It may not matter much on a local scale in the short term, but it means a great deal on the global scale in the long term. It will make us all better.

One last note. Ubuntu is Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s favorite word; it is also a phrase that is oft cited by Nelson Mandela. Ubuntu is a complicated philosophy of life which encompasses many aspects of being connected as people and as a society; a connectedness that should exist between people. My own favorite definition of Ubuntu is: I am Because We are.

Management Follies-There is Something About Airplanes

One of the major perks with being the CEO of a major corporation is that the CEO get to use the company plane if they have one. For some reason, people who manage really let the airplane thing get to their heads.

One company I worked for had a fleet of private business jets flying out of one of the smaller local airports, of course all the managers at all levels try to get a free ride on the company jet, a sign of virility in Manager World. What’s not to love, no hassles at the airport security, no check in lines, and you can come and go as you please. The corporate presidents and VPs keep the fleet pretty busy however. One day I was shopping at a department store and a guy came up to me because he saw I had one of the company polos on and asked me if I worked for them. I said yes. He said he was one of the corporate pilots. We got to chatting and I asked about the very famous CEO of the corporation, a man who was known for his foul temper and stone-faced countenance. He said he had no problem with the man, he was always very pleasant with the flight crew. The pilot said that the CEO was always appreciative and humble around the crew. But, he said, not all the executives were that way. He said the younger ones, the ones who had just climbed on the fast track were as arrogant as they come. They would come to the plane on the tarmac and drop their garment bags at the foot of the stairs and expected the crew to bring the bags on board for them. The irony was that the pilots probably made more per year than the junior executives. The pilot said that he would disabuse them of their arrogance quickly by announcing over the PA right before takeoff that the garment bags left at the foot of the stairs would be left there when they took off, so if it was anything they needed, the junior executives would need to schlep it up to the plane. He said, with great satisfaction, that they all scrambled like puppies to grab their garment bags.

Apparently one of the junior execs reported the pilot’s insolence to his immediate superior. The guy was shocked when he was called into the CEO’s office and was ripped a new one.  The story got around, and it never happened again.

Another company, one that was not as profitable or as large as the previous company, had a small fleet of a few private prop planes. In order to justify the expense, the CEO ran the planes like a bus service. Most of the non-offshore plants were placed in the southern states to avoid union labor. They also resided in very small towns, so driving to the plant from the nearest commercial airport would take longer than the flight on a commercial airline. The idea was to run two routes, one east and one west. The pilots would go out in the morning and hit all the plants, three or four of them on each route. The pilots would stop for lunch and then take the backward loop and pick people up on the way back in the afternoon. Just like a transit bus. I thought that was clever when I heard the scheme. Turned out this was a way for the CEO to pay for his airplane habit. He was an ex-air force pilot and wanted to indulge in his flying but didn’t want to pay for all the planes that he wanted to fly, so he had the company buy the planes. Kudos to him for coming up with a scheme that actually made sense. The airplanes were the first thing that the private equity firm sold when they unceremoniously took over that company.

One of the companies I worked for had a tradition of having the board of directors hold their regular meetings at different plants. The idea was to let those on the board see the factories and to also pretend like they cared about the workers, have a grand plant tour, an all-hand meeting, and pretend to enjoy being with the little people. When it came time for the meeting to come to where I was, we had to scrub the plant from top to bottom. Essentially stopping any productive work from being done for about a month before the meeting.

When the day came, we were told that the schedule had been slipped by a few hours. It turned out that the corporate jet had picked up all the directors at their respective cities and flew to our little town. The board of directors sat around and pow wowed at a local hotel while the plane turned around to pick up a stray director that was left behind because he couldn’t or wouldn’t meet the flight schedule.

This is an old story that passed around quite a bit at the multinational company where I worked. It happened well before I started to work there, but it is so outrageous that it became company lore. The company was one of the top ten largest corporations in the US at that time. The CEO of the entire corporation was well known to be quite arrogant, very much into his perks, and personified the word entitled. One thing that he did was to make sure that all his minions, VP and up, at headquarters bought homes in the same gated community where he has the biggest house.

He announced that he was taking a grand tour of the corporation divisions  in Europe. Everyone started to prepare for this visit months in advance, preparing charts and product samples to show off to the gros fromage from America. When the CEO arrived at the private airport in Italy, all the heads of all the European divisions were lined up next to their charts and posters and ready to give their prepared elevator speech to the CEO.  

It caused more than a big stir and not a little bit of confusion when the CEO walked right past them into a waiting limo and drove away.  Of course, all the European big shots were left sweating and pondering what they did to make the CEO do what he did. As it turned out, this was all a head fake. The CEO needed to take a trip to visit his newly bought winery in Italy and he took advantage of the company plane and made it a work trip. He had no intention of talking to anybody that had to do with the European companies.

It gets better.

On the return trip, the CEO loaded the company jet with cases of wine from his Italian winery. He brought it all back with him and flew into the private corporate airport. He had the cases of wine unloaded and taken up to the boardroom. All the senior managers, senior corporate vice presidents, directors and all the presidents of the divisions were called into the meeting.  They were standing there and looking at these stacked up cases of wine. Some thought that this was their reward for doing a good job and that they were going to get a bottle of wine or a case for all their hard work. Nope.  The CEO had them take a number of bottles of wine so that they can sell them to their friends and family at the CEO ordained price and then turn the money over back to the CEO.

A more recent private jet story involves the CEO of yet another top ten US corporation. This was exposed in a newspaper story.  Whenever this CEO flew over to Asia, he naturally took the company plane to save him some time because his time was valuable, and he could not be bothered to fly commercial. Many corporate CEOs have the same habit.  What was exposed was that he also had a second jet following the first jet, just in case the first jet had mechanical issues; this way the CEO didn't have to wait around for a second jet and be left stranded. Two jets flew to Asia and all the local cities that he visited just so that the CEO had a backup.

He was properly excoriated in the press as well as by his board of directors. The irony was that the company had a full-blown marketing campaign going about corporate responsibility and their determination to make solving the global warming problem a corporate priority. This all came out of course just when his seat was getting blistering hot because the stock prices were in the dumps. He was unceremoniously kicked out by the board, but he did walk away with a nice golden parachute.

So. If you want to be a CEO? You better have an airplane fixation. Or is that the other way around?