THE PLAYERS ARE THE ONES WHO PLAY, NOT THE COACHES
Jorge Araújo
President of Team Work Consultores
Behaviors can (and should!) be directed, worked on, transformed in certain situations (training sessions) as long as they don’t become detached from or lose sight of reality (the game, the competition). By emphasizing how much the example of those who respect each other contributes to action, he highlights the intersubjective dimension of behavior. It also confirms the importance for a coach of establishing objectives that can be assumed to be common and that these objectives really become mobilizers of action when they are assumed individually. It also proves that motivation and the sharing of positive values, operating emotionally, are a decisive element of behavioral training. It also identifies a real emotional dimension of sharing and encouragement.
Let’s be clear!
When any sports agent displays certain behaviors, they never do so mechanically, but always with a certain purpose and meaning. That’s why it’s important to recognize that the effectiveness of coaches’ influence depends on their ability (or not!) to mobilize the motivation of teams, players, managers, fans, etc. And that behavioral issues sometimes overlap in their respective importance with technique and tactics.
Wayne Smith, an Australian rugby coach, said a few years ago that “all players are capable of taking on the biggest challenges, as long as those challenges are their own.” Nowadays, both science and philosophy illustrate that this statement is equally true of all of us human beings. We have lived, phenomenal, expressive and intentional bodies that are deeply relational and entangled with their environment. We coexist and live with everything around us, always starting and starting again, not only as an interested and intentional party, but also as a markedly influenced party. Bodies for whom to feel is to tune in and coexist, supported by a complex and pre-reflective perceptive life which, unifying sensitivity and motor skills, brings together the past, the future, the environment and its culture, the ideological and moral situation, etc. Where the phenomenal and the transcendent dialogue and it is in them that coaches can and must find the meaning and direction of life they want.
In other words, “the players are the ones who play, not the coaches”.
This requires all coaches not to forget the fundamental circularity of their players’ lives, based on their ongoing relationship with those around them, receiving influences of all kinds. In particular, the influence of the coach from whom they conclude at every moment whether or not he is worthy of their trust. Which in behavioral language means whether he lies often, whether he is consistent with the rules he lays down, whether he displays the necessary technical and behavioral competence and, most importantly, whether he shows constant concern for those he leads.
In the end, it serves, more than it serves…
