One day, my ten year old daughter begged me to coach her rec-center soccer team. Most of what I know about managing and motivating business teams comes from coaching youth soccer. I agreed and went skeptically to “draft night,” unsure of why kid’s needed to be drafted. There I found two other coaches pouring through the kid’s applications and putting them into two piles; the ones they wanted and the ones they didn’t. It appeared they had been at it for a while.
When I asked them why they were separating the applications, they indicated that they thought some kids needed to car pool together. I asked to look at their selections and their discard pile. A quick glance showed me that they were selecting mostly boys, and that the applications were about evenly split between boys and girls. So I made them an offer. I would take all the girls if I got first choice of uniforms. They immediately agreed, and I selected the nice looking red jerseys, and left them with the sick yellow ones.
At the first practice the girls wandered in one by one. When they were all there I introduced myself and asked them if they noticed anything. A hand went up.
“We’re all girls!” replied one.
“Yes,” I said, “What do you think about that?” Another hand went up.…
“Are we going to play boys?”
“Yes. The teams you will play will be mostly boys, maybe one or two girls, but they won’t play much. So what do you think?”
A chorus of “Cool! Excellent! I get to play my brother!” echoed back.
What they told me with their enthusiasm is that they shared none of the doubts that I had lingering about my offer. I was worried about how well they would do, or whether they would be physically at a disadvantage. But they didn’t seem to mind. Lesson one is that small teams like challenges, and they don’t need the baggage of anyone else’s preconceived ideas about whether they will succeed. Only a reasonable chance.
We had three practices where we had fun learning passing skills and some basics around position, attacking and defending. Our first game was under the lights. While I was a little nervous with parents telling me that the all girls team was a great idea, the girls arrived looking like players in their red jersey’s, black shorts, and red socks. It was a cool fall night and they squirreled around doing cartwheels and chasing each other. I pointed out the boy’s team already warming up, and asked Sara to warm up the team. They looked at the boys doing pushups with their coach counting out loud and got very serious. They warmed up with a jog around the field and stretching. Lesson number two. Small teams can manage themselves. Give them responsibility.
The ref blew his whistle and the boys kicked off, a booming kick which launched the ball all the way back to our stopper, Meredith. The boys charged forward after the ball. I told the girls that the boys would swarm the ball. Their job was to pass it before that happened. Meredith calmly passed the ball off to our wing Lizzy. The boys changed direction. Lizzy passed the ball up to Ester, one of our forwards. The boys changed direction again, all ten of them. In a few seconds I realized the girls were in control and doing what we practiced. It went that way for the whole twenty minute half. Lesson three… teams do what they need to do without being told if they know what the goal is.
With about five minutes to go and the game still tied at zero-zero, I felt a tug on my coat. It was Abbey and Katie. Katie said, “Can we go in? Can you put us in?” I said, I’d consider it, but they had just been in so I asked why. “Because if I get the ball, I’ll pass to Abbey and she will score, and if she gets the ball, she’ll pass it to me and I’ll score.” I put them in. Katie got the ball, she passed it to Abbey on the left wing, who dribbled ball forward and then let go with a left-footed shot from thirty yards out. The ball sailed over the goalies out-stretched hands into the net in an HD-slow-motion-world-cup-replay sort of way. The girls won the game. Lesson four… trust your team. Good team members depend on each other, and often step up. Give them a chance.
The boys all spit on their hands when the teams lined up to shake. After the game, little Lizzy came up to me and said, “Mr. Stocking, did you hear what those boys said before the game?”
“No,” I replied, “What did they say?”
They said, “Do we have to play a bunch of girrrls.” The word girls had a lot of derision in it.
“Well Lizzy, congratulations. You did really well out there. You and the team.”
At about fifty pounds I was surprised when she replied, “Yeah. We kicked their asses.” The girls went on to win the city championship. Someplace, there is a lesson in that. I don’t think I had much to do with it.
Do Great Things.
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads SM
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)
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