 Victims: Start Your Engines“I hear almost every argument is a race for the victim spot.” - Andrea Gibson
Read that again, it’s really good. I recently had an incident with a parent that was unhappy with his son’s playing time. He requested a meeting to discuss his concerns regarding the situation, to which I obliged. Nothing unordinary was presented from his lens - he felt his son deserved more playing time, was better than the player that was given his playing time, and expressed the possibility of a personal agenda as being the only rational reason for the discrepancy. On the other side of this argument was the coaches’ perspective. We felt like we played the guys in that game that gave the team the best chance to win. During that game, at that time, it just happened to not include his son. We did not feel like we were operating by an agenda within the game other than trying to win. So, there we were, both in a race we weren’t aware we were running. He presented stats, examples, and opinions mixed with facts to justify his son’s position as the victim. Meanwhile, though I didn’t voice these thoughts, I countered with rational reasons to justify why we played other players more throughout the game. I was validating my position as the victim in my head while being confronted by this father. We both think we won the race, but really we both lost. Why Should We Care? In twenty-five years of coaching, I’ve had my fair share of arguments. Some with parents, some with players, and some with those pesky gentlemen in striped shirts. Regardless, as I look back, I can clearly see my desire to be the victim. Being the victim justifies us. It wasn’t our fault, there’s nothing we could’ve done about it, the other person is clearly the problem … No matter what explanation we cling to, the reason behind it is always the same: to escape responsibility. Owning responsibility means admitting mistakes or, worse yet, accepting mistakes that truly weren’t your fault. If that doesn’t seem right you’re looking at it through the wrong lens - try the eyes of leadership. From a leadership perspective, fault is irrelevant. It’s always everyone’s fault and spending time attempting to pin it to any one person is a futile waste of precious time. The only way to live in this fault-free space is to eliminate arguments, and with it, the pursuit of victimhood. I mentioned those guys in stripes earlier. One of the best examples of this came from an official I had complained to in a game regarding a call that I thought he had missed. Rather than telling me I was wrong or doubling down on how right he was, he simply said “Yea, that’s what I thought I saw, but I could’ve missed it.” He stepped out of the race to be the victim and there I was, left standing there racing myself. With no one else in the argument, I accepted the victim spot but with no fanfare or satisfaction accompanying it. REAL TALK - Action Steps Whether we vocalize our race to the victim spot or not is irrelevant. We know if we’re in the race and our actions will quickly tell everyone else. Here are two ideas for stepping out of the race before you get too far in.
The problem with arguments is they push both parties in different corners to the point that we can no longer see the other person’s perspective. We are left with racing to be the victim, but the bigger issue is that they block the free exchange of love. And, love is the life-blood of all teams. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!
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 The Consistency CrucibleIn science, consistency is the way in which a substance holds together, its thickness.
In life, consistency is behaving or performing in the same way. In science, a crucible is a container in which materials are heated to a very high temperature. In life, a crucible is a very significant, or difficult, challenge, test, or trial. Since we’re living lives, not science experiments, we’ll focus on the life side of things. Awareness of the difficulty in being consistent is not a secret. We don’t need to look any further than the dismal follow through on New Year’s resolutions to recognize the challenge of maintaining the simplest of behaviors for more than a week. We set reminders, lineup accountability partners, and create benchmarks to reward ourselves all in an effort to simply establish a hint of consistency. Likewise, awareness of the value and power in being consistent is not a secret. Excellence in any field is always traced back to performing a few simple actions day after day. As alluring as talent is, as much as it draws us to it, talent always fails to deliver at some point. Unfortunately, we aren’t privy to that timetable. Those that find excellence all start with the same basic action - they just keep showing up. Why Should We Care? However, showing up is simply the entry price of consistency. It’s required, but never enough. Life will flush out what is required. It is the crucible of consistency. Life is going to test and challenge our commitment to consistency dozens of times each day. Busy schedules, uncontrollable events, and obligations to others will undoubtedly create roadblocks in our ability to stay consistent. ‘Ability’ isn’t the right word. ‘Desire’ is probably a better choice. There will be people to blame, justifications to claim, and responsibility to avoid which all will hamper our desire to remain consistent. Though it seems more complex, consistency is nothing more than a choice we make from one moment to another. There are, however, a lot of those choices to make every single day. Most of the time it’s the choice to disregard an excuse - maybe a perfectly reasonable, valid excuse that still must be ignored. Of course, some choices are more difficult to make than others, but if consistency is going to continue, only one choice is acceptable. Adversity is the heat that distills our consistency to character and marks our path between excellence and mediocrity. Handled well consistently well, adversity convicts, emboldens, and elevates our life. It is the shortcut many are seeking but only a few are willing to accept. Consistency is the running mate of desire. What we truly want, we are willing to consistently work towards. When we are lukewarm our consistency will be the first thing we compromise. REAL TALK - Action Steps The ability to stay consistent is a superpower. It demonstrates an ability to prioritize a previous commitment over a current, often more appealing, option. Here are a few foundational pieces that will help drive consistency in all aspects of your life.
Excellence is a funny process. I don’t know everything about it, but from my experience it seems like it looks a lot like this: Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop … poof - excellence. Give or take a few chops. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Standard OperationIf you’ve never read the book Legacy by James Kerr, you’re missing out on one of the best insights into excellence and elite culture that’s ever been captured. Kerr spends over a year fully engulfed in all aspects of the day to day culture of one of the most successful sports teams in history.
The New Zealand All Blacks are a professional rugby team that has won nearly seventy-seven percent of their matches, known as tests in the rugby world. They’ve also captured three World Cups. Since 2003 when world rankings were first introduced, the All Blacks have held the number one ranking eighty percent of the time the. They’re the gold standard of team performance. For over one hundred and twenty years the players have changed, the coaches have changed, the circumstances have changed but the performance on the field has remained consistent. Game after game, season after season, decade after decade the All Blacks have out-performed the opposition. Many point to the lopsided win-loss record or the numerous championships as evidence of their gold standard status. While it’s impossible to deny those public achievements do not highlight the greatness of the All Blacks, they fall short of being the standard. This desire to cite outcomes as the standard illustrates our lack of a true understanding for what a standard is. A standard is not a result. It’s not championships, acquisitions, or cases won. A standard is a behavior, not a thing. It’s something you do, not something you get. Why Should We Care? Operating as if achievements express a certain standard is dangerous because it furthers the narrative that our outcomes are the primary measurement of excellence. Achievements often reflect the standards we operate by but not always, especially early in the process - when struggle and failure are most present. Standards must refer to behaviors rather than achievements. How we choose to act when we face adversity, how we choose to act when we experience success, how we choose to act when we are treated unfairly, how we choose to act when interacting with people that can not help us, how we choose to act when we feel slighted, how we choose to act when we don’t feel like doing what we need to do, how we choose to act when excuses are valid and available … The list could go on and on. The standards of the All Blacks is not their wins, it’s their behaviors that have allowed their wins to take place. How they prepare, how they compete, how they treat teammates, how they win, how they lose - these are their standards. As leaders, we need to think about establishing standards around the behaviors we desire rather than the results we’re trying to achieve. This is not a complicated process, but it does require a high level of intentionality. Once a vision is set, we simply consider the behaviors that must take place on a daily basis for that vision to become a reality. The challenge is staying true to those behaviors day after day, moment after moment. REAL TALK - Action Steps The draw, of course, is to conform to society and view our achievements as the standard. It’s easily measurable. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, our accomplishments - or lack thereof - are not fully within our control. Our standards, however, are. They are clear choices that we either make or don’t make. Here are a few behaviors to consider building standards around for your team:
Standards are not benchmarks, accomplishments, or rankings. Standards are behaviors that drive performance. Maintaining a focus on behaviors, not outcomes, is the only way to consistently drive excellence. We don’t get what we want. We get what we accept - those are your standards. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Procrastination StoriesWhen asking my leadership class about challenges they face that keep them from being the best version of themselves, one of the more common responses is procrastination. Digging deeper, students pointed to overloaded schedules, demands by parents, and a lack of appropriate time management on their part.
It seems to me that each points to deeper factors. Many people justify their overloaded schedules by pointing to their high expectations - more commitments equals more accomplishments. While this holds with logic, it does not jive in practice. An overloaded schedule is simply an indication of a lack of focus. It’s an attempt to make everything important and, by doing so, we lessen the importance of everything. Students being burdened by the demands of parents is nothing new. It also does not have a solely negative impact. We all perform better when expectations are high. The problem arises when the demands of others, including parents, become a higher priority than our demands for ourselves. Time management is definitely a reflection of our schedules. However, it is more accurately a reflection of our mindset about our schedule. We all have the same amount of time in the day. Any excuse attempting to make your situation unique is irrelevant. Some people manage it well, some don’t. While my students, and many adults, are quick to list these justifications for their procrastination, they all fall short of accurately explaining it. Why Should We Care? Procrastination is typically tagged as laziness from the outside. Of course, we don’t label it that way when we are self-reflecting but we also don’t call it what it is - an avoidance of the negative emotion that surrounds the task we are facing. Sometimes it’s fear, sometimes it’s frustration. Sometimes it’s anger, sometimes it’s boredom. But, it’s usually not laziness. Lazy is an adjective used to describe a person. It’s an indictment of an individual, a judgment of a person’s character. Lazy is an unwillingness to do. Procrastination is choosing something else. It’s redirection and delay, but it’s not always a negative. It’s important to know that our procrastination is tied to the emotion, not the task. Unfortunately, changing our emotions is not simple to do. It’s much easier to just quit or hold off on the task that is creating that emotion. Our emotions are always tied to a story. Gaining control of these stories is the key skill we need in order to redirect our emotions. One of the most important aspects of procrastination that we like to ignore is the progress it can ignite. We can all point to numerous specific examples in which a break from a task has thrust us forward when we return to that very same task. What a shame if we waste years because of our unwillingness to waste days. REAL TALK - Action Steps Let’s focus on rescripting the stories that surround our emotions in order to fend off our natural inclination to procrastinate. Here’s a few ideas:
Procrastination is an emotional affliction. We should be careful to not tie it too directly to character and effort. To combat it best, become a master of the stories you tell yourself about your emotions. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  The Fight for SimplicityI’m very grateful for my childhood. Primarily for my parents who were loving, but honest; empowering, but strict; and hard working, but family-centered. I am extremely aware of my good fortune and recognize that I am still prospering from that good fortune.
I’m also grateful for the time in history I grew up in. The heart of my childhood was the ‘80s. Electricity and indoor plumbing were pretty well established, television was coming along nicely - even though the youngest in the house usually had to serve as the remote, and travel was far enough advanced to not have to worry about getting from one place to another. The ‘80s were also well before technology took over. There was little competition for our attention. Spending hours upon hours outside playing was the norm and I looked forward to it every day. We had no agenda and no rules other than don’t die. Those were fun parameters for a kid. Thinking back to those times always brings a smile to my face. I can’t say the same about the world kids today grow up in. Why Should We Care? When considering the future my thoughts are drawn to our ever-growing need to be entertained, want for excessive safety, and addiction to technology advancement. None of them are healthy, yet we charge forward in the facade of progress. But, is it really progress? The need to be entertained is devastating to our curiosity. The obsession for safety restricts the development of our resilience. The addiction to technology blocks our willingness to fully appreciate simplicity. I don’t believe the pursuit of progress, or technological growth, has the intent to cause these issues. I think technology, especially, is designed to simplify certain aspects of life. All the safety guidelines are obviously meant to protect people. And, entertainment is simply meant to help us enjoy life even more. In the pursuit of excellence we must be cautious of these dichotomies. While entertainment is enjoyable, there is significant benefit in our ability to creatively respond to situations that present themselves in our life with simple, common solutions even when they are less than enjoyable. Risk, while it has the potential to introduce physical and emotional harm into our life, is also one of the only paths to simple life-giving qualities like self-confidence, resilience, and toughness. Technological advancements keep us at the forefront of modern society, but often at the expense of an appreciation for the simple, basic foundations of life. If we want the present, and certainly the future, to be as incredible as the past we are going to need to begin fighting for simplicity. REAL TALK - Action Steps It’s simplicity that gets lost in all the examples shared above. Give a toddler a toy in a big box and I guarantee their curiosity with the box will entertain them longer than the toy will. Watch little kids on playgrounds, if you can find one without adults hovering waiting to catch little Johnny or Jenny, you'll see simple problem-solving being practiced and resilience being grown. They figure out what’s safe and what isn’t. And, take note of the unfiltered joy young people experience playing with no technology around. Here are a few more ideas to help win the fight for simplicity:
Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! |
About bcI'm a teacher, coach, and parent seeking excellence while defining success on my own terms. Archives
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