Have you checked on Player Q lately?

As a leader, one of our responsibilities is to try and get the most out of our athletes. It is common knowledge that to progress and improve; one needs to step out of his comfort zone. What is the one ingredient necessary to facilitate our quest of consistently pushing our athletes out of their comfort zone? Trust. Such a small word, but such a big player in leadership. Ask yourself, what can a leader do without trust? 

Would you follow someone you don’t trust? Probably not. Now imagine a person you don’t trust wanting to push you out of your comfort zone? How would that go? Not so good. As leaders, we need to foster that trust; sounds easy enough, right? Not so fast… trust is not something that can be expected, forced, coached, or demanded.

There are many ways to garner trust, and 500 words would not be enough to explore all the different avenues. So we’ll concentrate on the primary way to create a trusting environment: quality and quantity of interactions. As the leader of a team sport, have you asked yourself when was the last time you had a chat with Player Q? As you can see, I didn’t enquire about Player A. Player A is that extrovert top player that we, sometimes, would like him to talk less :), he’s easy. But what about Player Q? The quiet one who doesn’t show up on the scoresheet every night, the player that plays a supporting role on the team, an important role but a supporting one. When was the last time you had a chat with him? How will you make him progress if you can’t make him step out of his comfort zone? How will you take him out of his comfort zone if the trust is missing? How will you make him trust you if there is no interaction between the two of you except the daily “hi/bye”?

You see, it all comes down to interacting, taking the time to chat with every single player on your team. If you want to take it to another level, ask him about how his cat is doing or how he spent his last weekend instead of the 1-3-1 forecheck, etc. Those personal interactions will create wonders for your player relationships, and more importantly, will create a trusting environment. Showing you care will speed up the trust process, facilitating the “stepping out of the comfort zone” and allow for progression. Let’s not forget that we can be the best technical coaches in the world, but if our players don’t trust us, we will have a hard time having them do the things we want. So take the time, write down whom you speak to, review your notes every week, make sure nobody is forgotten because, as mentioned in the last post, on a successful team, EVERYONE has a vital role to play. It is our duty to try and help every member of our teams to progress and not only good old Player A…