Dear Friends
A number of years ago, I coached basketball
while serving as athletic director at Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale.
Fl. After a successful season, I knew the following year would be particularly
challenging because I was losing some of my best players to graduation.
Early in the preseason, I asked my assistant
coach if he had any thoughts as we entered what I knew could be a difficult
season. To this day, I still remember his words: “Tom,” he said, “look
for the little things to praise…and don’t worry about the scoreboard.”
I was thankful I had an assistant who always
helped me to maintain a healthy coaching perspective.
During the first game of the new season, I
kept the words of my friend in the back of my mind, and so after the game I
asked our team ‘bus chauffeur’ and scorekeeper Jean, who also doubled as my
wife, how she thought I did. I was happy to hear her critique. She said, “I
thought you were more positive and more under control than normal in spite of a
30-point loss.”
Wow, a big loss on the court but a major
victory on the bench.
Those words from the lips of my coaching
colleague still resonate in my mind today: “Look for the little things to
praise and don’t look at the scoreboard.” Those words helped me make it through
that very challenging season.
Reflecting on that season, I am reminded of
the book, Positive Coaching by Jim Thompson that I read that season. The
book so impressed me that as athletic director at the school, I ordered 60
copies, one for every coach and assistant coach of every sport we offered at
Calvary Christian Academy.
Positive Coaching is not only a book about
coaching; it is a book about life, and I told all our school coaches, my hope
was that the principles communicated in this book would not only be lived out
on the fields and floors of competition, but in their classrooms and in their
homes as well.
In the book Thompson shares a valuable lesson
on how our coaching style can positively impact our players’ success.
He tells of an experiment where a volunteer
leaves the room and returns to try to complete an unknown task. The
participant must discover what the task is by the feedback given by those in
the room. The person is told that when he/she does the wrong thing, they will
be hit ‘gently’ on the head with a rolled-up piece of paper. However, when the
person does something that moves them closer to accomplishing the task the
hitting will stop. Rarely does the volunteer figure out the task and accomplish
it. Often the mature adult gets so frustrated with being ‘whapped,’ that they
can’t even complete the task. Occasionally the person will even take a whap
back at other people out of sheer frustration.
Later the exercise is repeated with positive
reinforcement. When a correct move is made, a friendly sounding bell tinkles.
When the person is moving in the wrong direction, the tinkling stops. Each
effort is timed.
You probably can guess the results.
Invariably the positive approach works much more quickly (often as much as 10
times quicker).
Thompson says, “Punishment does carry
with it some informational value, and it can stop a behavior, but it rarely can
teach new ones. It takes positive reinforcement and recognition to get a child
to try something new, even like fielding bad hops in practicing baseball
without turning his head.”
Shortly after reading this experiment, I
learned that dolphin trainers rely exclusively on positive reinforcement when
training dolphins. Punishment simply doesn’t work with dolphins. They withdraw
and refuse to perform. Kids, and yes, adults, are a lot like dolphins:
“Positive” works better!
Thompson goes on to say, “Punishment leaves
bad feelings that eats away at motivation. Excelling in sports requires
emotional energy. When kids are punished, yelled at, or criticized, their
emotional energy is used up being angry, feeling sorry for themselves, or
thinking of reasons why their coach, teacher, or parent is wrong.
This experiment was a good reminder to me of
how important encouragement is in changing behavior.
The apostle Paul exhorts us to always
remember to “not let any unwholesome words come out our mouths except for those
which would build others up (Ephesians 4:29).
These are good words that I hope we will
always remember!
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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