As far as the outside forces goes – I spend most of my time in the planning, facilitating and feedback phases. This goes for both the work teams and the especially the sports teams. It is so easy to set up the plan and just stay the course. With youth sports, there are so many outside forces that it makes it tough on the coach and especially the players. Coaches face a different challenge trying to balance what is right for the team, organization and parents. Pleasing everyone is not the goal.

“Perceived” failure is another way of saying the expectations of some were not met. Failure is in the eye of the beholder. I have had plenty of teams that have had winning season, won championships and plenty of others that have not. Is the championship the prize for a complete success? Sometimes. I don’t look at wins or loses as the key to success. In most of my goal setting with my sports teams – it is more on how we will improve, how we will develop as a team and where will we end up, realistically at the end. As a coach, it is my responsibility to be realistic in my goal setting. Coming in and saying that we will be the champs in the end, is a nice goal to set – is it realistic when you look at the roster that you have, the roster of the other teams you are playing, and level of commitment from the complete organization. I usually breakdown the a sport season into 3 parts. The first third is used to gauge where we are at, where we could go and what is needed to get there. The middle third is to see if the changes applied are working, commitment level is still high and setting the goal for the last third. Does this always work? No, but it my goal to achieve the highest level of success.

Work teams are faced with external influences such as management decisions and market/customer changes. Sports Teams, particularly youth teams, are faced with external influences from parents and organizations. Both need to be aware that these influences exist and a plan is needed to address these issues.

What happens when the team meets all of the goals and timelines and yet there is a “perceived” failure? Work teams pull together to make it happen, only to see a competitor take a product to market first. The sports team stays on task, focuses on meeting the goals, yet has a losing season. How does a leader handle these situations, reinforce the established principles, and keep the group together to play another round?

It’s a shame when people feel it necessary to degrade for results.