Calls on handling

There is a discussion on a Masschusetts forum about a decision that was made in Virginia about handling calls. I posted the following:

Last year while working with another referee I noted that he explained the handling rule to the U12s who were playing. I liked it so much it now is part of my pre-game check in. It doesn't take long but I make it clear that just because the ball touches the player's hand or arm is NOT automatically a foul. I'm looking for intentionally changing the path of the ball to the player's advantage. The coaches often express appreciation for my explanation. I also tell the players that the explanation is also for the benefit of their parents, not for the game I'm calling because the players won't be talking to their parents until the game is over, but for future games.

So far I haven't had any cases of the coaches calling for a handling call during my games.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - Review

I posted this review under my Flourishing blog but feel it would be of interest to coaches so I've posted it here too.

Do you believe you are born with certain innate talents that can't be changed? Or do you believe your intelligence and other traits can be developed? According to Carol Dweck, Lewis and Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success the first conclusion represents a "fixed" mindset while the second shows a "growth" mindset.

This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. … [T]hey believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

So what difference does it make if you have a growth versus a fixed mindset? A lot. People who believe growth is possible will “value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort. Our research has shown that this comes directly from the growth mindset. When we teach people the growth mindset, with its focus on development, these ideas about challenge and effort follow. … When we (temporarily) put people in a fixed mindset, with its focus on permanent traits, they quickly fear challenge and devalue effort.”

In addition Dweck claims growth minded people will also be more honest about their weaknesses and failures because this provides valuable information growers can use to improve themselves. Those with a fixed belief will not be as honest about their mistakes because everything hinges on outcome and validation. Failures thus reflect negatively on -- and possibly undercut -- your innate abilities. She cites examples from business such as Enron whose top leadership exemplified the fixed mindset versus other companies whose leaders are guided by a growth-oriented mentality.

In one world – the world of fixed traits – success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other – the world of changing qualities – it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

So how do these conclusions apply in the real world? At work, for example, “Instead of just giving employees an award for the smartest idea or praise for a brilliant performance, they would get praise for taking imitative, for seeing a difficult task through, for struggling and learning something new, for being undaunted by a setback, or for being open to and acting on criticism.”

In relationships, fixed mindsetters believe problems have no cure because change isn’t possible for either party. The only recourse is to place blame or plot revenge. For growth mindsetters, “it was about understanding, forgiving, and moving on.” They still feel pain but not humiliation, the hallmark emotion for someone with a fixed mindset.

For parents Dweck says they can best help their children by teaching them “to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”

Fixed mindset parents, on the other hand, send a different message to their kids. “’We love you – on our terms’ Those with the fixed mindset feel their parents won’t love and respect them unless they fulfill their parents’ aspirations for them.”

Dweck also comments on the ill-advised attempts to help raise grades, test scores and self-esteem by lowering standards. She feels this approach back fires because it ”just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work.” Amen to that! Dweck also sites Benjamin Bloom’s study of world-class performers which revealed, “their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment.”

Because the growth mindset accepts the idea of continual improvement coaches like basketball’s John Wooden strive to help their players to improve through constant preparation with focused effort. As Wooden explains: “You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better.”

Or, as Dweck says: “As parents, teachers, and coaches, our mission is developing people’s potential.” You can’t develop talent if you believe your players, kids or employees have a fixed, unchangeable nature.

As you can tell I liked Mindset. I know reviewers are supposed to find something to criticize and I’m sure I’d find something if I looked long enough. However I believe Dweck’s distinction between growth and fixed mindsets provides a key concept that explains many things about how people act and relate to each other. It also gives us invaluable assistance to improve how we work, relate, parent, coach and grow.

The Talent Code Review

I posted this review under my Flourishing blog but feel it would be of interest to coaches so I've posted it here too.

Why do some people excel in their fields while others struggle or stagnate? Is it their genes? Their upbringing? Luck? According to Coyle it's none of the above. Three factors help propel people to achieve more than others: deliberate practice, ignition and master coaches.

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. covers a lot of the same ground as Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else but takes a different approach that is broader by spanning the range from basic neurology to coaching techniques. Both books feature the vital role of "deliberate practice", focused effort to improve. Not just doing something repeatedly but also doing something in a targeted manner that drives improvement.

The Talent Code goes a step further to explain why. Repetition causes myelin to grow around neural paths in the brain. This layer of myelin shields the pathway to reduce signal loss and ultimately accelerates and strengthens the signal. Deliberate practice builds myelin while also forcing the practicer to the edge of their ability where mistakes are made. Fixing these mistakes results in strengthening their skill. Although the author doesn't mention it this process also fosters "flow", the state of being so absorbed in an activity that you lose sense of time and of self.

Deliberate practice requires hours and hours of commitment. What motivates people to invest thousands of hours? Ignition: the desire to become who you want to be. (This resembles the ancient Greek concept of daimonism: becoming your ideal self.) These people have a vision of who they want to become: their vision draws them forward.

Practice and fire by themselves aren't quite enough. We need someone to guide us, to push us to the point where we make mistakes then help us correct them. We need master coaches, or "talent whisperers" as Coyle calls them.

These coaches work their magic not with stirring pep talks but with sharply focused, corrective input. When their student does an act correctly they say, "Good, now do this" and pose a more challenging task. He holds college basketball coach John Wooden as an exemplar of this approach. Wooden prefers to present challenges that his players have to solve. If they don't figure out the solution Wooden helps. (I've used this approach in coaching youth and premier league soccer and believe it helps create players who can think for themselves in competition rather than depending on the coach to give them solutions during the game.)

In essence The Talent Code says:

1. To build myelin use deliberate practice (which encourages flow).

2. To maintain motivation follow your ideal self - ignition.

3. To maintain one's course rely on a master coach.

Speaking as someone in his late 50's The Talent Code also has an optimistic message for people like me. You can grow myelin, hence skill, at almost any age. It just takes longer as you get older.

Why No Plan B?

In a recent soccer coaching forum, there is a post titled Why do we give our players only one weapon - one method of play? And, what should we do about it? I’ve seen this myself, both as a coach of a girls U17 club team and as a referee. In my case the typical attacking method for teams is to put tall, fast gazelles as forwards who wait for a ball to be served over the top so they can beat the fullbacks, run onto the ball and shoot. We played a team several weeks ago who had one forward with exceptional speed but, fortunately for us, had poor shooting skill. Almost all of her shots were wide or high. I assigned my fastest back to mark her which took her out of the picture. The opponent had no Plan B. We also played in a tournament over the weekend. All three of the teams we played used the same approach. I don’t think I saw one attempt to build up an attack out of the back.

The team I work with also has at least one speedy forward who can easily beat defenses but I’ve been working with them on alternate attacking patterns in case an opponent neutralizes our forward. We’ve been working on diagonal through balls, crosses, bent and curved runs that frame the goal, etc.

This thread confirms my observations that the U.S. approach depends too much on speed and size over technical build up.

Do Sports Build Character or Express It? Yes!

I’m sure this isn’t an original thought but it is something I’ve concluded based on my ten years of experience coaching soccer. The common saying is that sports build character. I’m sure at young ages when kids first get involved this is true. They’re being taught the importance of teamwork, doing your best regardless of the circumstances, respect for teammates, coaches, your opponents, officials and yourself and the discipline needed to get good at anything.

Having coached kids from 10 to 18 years old I’ve concluded that participation in sports for older ages is an opportunity to express one’s character, to show what one is made of. I’m sure the coach can still exert some influence on older kids but I think these kids are fairly set in their basic principles and beliefs by the time they enter the later teenage years.

Talent is Overrated Review

I posted this on my Flourishing blog but the ideas also apply to coaching youth sports.

Most of believe some people “have it” and some people don’t. What the people “have” is talent. Gobs and gobs of talent that allows them to be world class level competitors. People like Tiger Woods or Alex Rodriquez. CEOs like GE’s Jack Welch. Many of us believe that these people come into this world equipped with talent that allows them to beat the competition and that we who don’t have it will never be able to reach these lofty heights of achievement.

Geoff Colvin disputes this in Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else . He claims that the top performers in sports, business, the arts and other areas share something in common: the use of “deliberate practice.”

- The gifts possessed by the best performers are not at all what we think they are.
- Even the general abilities … are not what we think.
- The factor that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice.
- Most organizations are terrible at applying the principles of great performance.

What is deliberate practice? The elements are, as Colvin explains.

It is actively designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help. Identify elements that need to be improved then work intently on them. It can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally; … and it isn’t much fun. … We insistently seek out what we’re not good at. Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over.

Speaking personally, I heard about the concept of deliberate practice in my research on soccer coaching in which I stumbled upon an article on the subject. I applied the concept to tennis, my sport of choice. By working diligently on my weaknesses (primarily the serve) I have been able to transform my serve from a liability into a weapon.

Colvin also addresses another misconception. We’ve heard many times that we with repetition we’ll get to the point where we don’t have to think what we’re doing. While it is true we can automatize complicated movements to the point where we no longer have to consciously guiding these movements. In fact, we can thwart smooth performance by thinking too much. However Colvin shows that:

Great performers never allow themselves to reach the automatic, arrested development stage in their chose field. … Ultimately the performance is always conscious and controlled, not automatic.

In other words, top performers maintain a constant awareness of whether their actions are producing desired results. When these results don’t occur, they modify what they are doing to improve their results and use this input to refine the design of their deliberate practice.

In addition to being constantly aware of what they are doing, top performers perceive more. How?

- They understand the significance of indicators that average performers don’t even notice.
- They look further ahead.
- They know more from seeing less.
- They make finer discriminations than average performers.

And top performers “had more knowledge about their field.” They “have better organized and consolidated their knowledge, enabling them to approach problems in fundamentally different and more useful ways.”

In addition to explaining how top performers use deliberate practice to distance themselves from their competitors Colvin shows how we can use the same principles in our own lives.

They approach the job with more specific goals and strategies, since their previous experience was essentially a test of specific goals and strategies; and they’re more likely to believe in their own efficacy because their detailed analysis of their own performance is more effective than the vague, unfocused analysis of average performers. Thus their well-founded belief in their own effectiveness helps give them the crucial motivation to press on, powering a self-reinforcing cycle.

Finally, Colvin explores the role of two kinds of drive: intrinsic and extrinsic. According to his research creative people focus on the task (How can I solve this problem?) and not on themselves (What will solving this problem do for me?). This is an example of intrinsic motivation, being driven from within. Extrinsic motivation on the other hand depends on outside factors like rewards or penalties.

Does Colvin argue that extrinsic motivation plays no role? No.

Extrinsic motivators that reinforce intrinsic motivation could work quite
effectively. Like what? Recognition that confirms competence turned out to be effective. … ‘constructive, nonthreatening, and work-focused rather than person-focused,’ in Amabile’s words. That is, feedback that helped a person do what he or she felt compelled to do was effective.”

Feedback from coaches and teachers focused on the task and doing it better.

Lastly Colvin reveals that the majority of childhood prodigies don’t grow up to be top performers and that top performers are rarely child prodigies. This gives us hope for improving how we perform. “[B]y understanding how a few become great, anyone can become better.”