Is this really the sign of a good coach?
I love this photo of me and I’ve been thinking about it and agonising over my body language for the past few couple of days.
On one hand, you can see the frustration ingrained throughout my face and body yet we’d just won 5:1. But I wasn’t totally happy with our performance for a variety of reasons and I came away disappointed and feeling a bit down.
A few friends of mine saw this photo and told me I ought to be happy and that a 5:1 win is a good thing no matter the performance. Then another person struck a chord and said to me: “it’s a sign of a good manager to win and not be happy”.
There is of course a balance to be had between knowing what is and isn’t good and knowing what is going to be destructive. On this occasion I just couldn’t hide my frustration because it was genuine. We stopped doing so many things in this match that we had been doing really well in previous games, so I was annoyed and felt it was a step backwards because we replaced that with a lack of effort or just plain stupidity at times.
We still won though and I was really pleased that although we didn’t play brilliantly we were still able to find a way to win comfortably. There’s a fine line though and I keep telling myself that I have to be careful with my body language when I’m operating with a young and new team and that I must be aware of it.
The irony is I only managed to show that frustration for a brief moment as I sent them off on a cool down behind me. I don’t think they would have noticed, but whether that’s a good or a bad thing is open to debate.
It’s important they don’t get the wrong vibe. As much as I was disappointed by things I saw on the pitch, it is also personal. I felt responsible for some of that in the sense that I felt I didn’t make them understand quick enough as the game went on and I couldn’t find the right type of information to give them to make them understand and get the change we wanted to see. Perhaps it’s just down to a lack of experience, but it’s certainly a challenge I’m embracing.
That frustration is still encompassed by a positivity and a pleasant understanding that sometimes they don’t realise what they’re doing well, even when they’re playing well, so you have to be ultra precise with your feedback to get the message across and it gives me and the rest of the coaches something more to work on for next time. And that’s a heck of a lot of fun in itself. I really love this shit!
