Speaking With Purpose
by Ryan Krzykowski
In last week’s Coaching Life Group meeting, one of our friends shared a high school basketball story. She talked about how her coach was pretty rough with his words most of the time. Practices were sometimes tough to make it through, and while she loved the sport, she didn’t love the way Coach talked to the team. It certainly took away from the experience. But then at the postseason banquet, this same coach had some very positive, encouraging thoughts to share with the group. So which version of this coach was the real thing? I’m guessing both.
No doubt there are many of us who have all kinds of great thoughts and feelings about the young people we work with, and yet we speak harshly sometimes. I don’t pretend to understand all the context and variables that went into my friend’s basketball season 20 years ago, but I also wonder if her overall experience would have felt different if her coach had made it a point to sprinkle in some of those positive and encouraging words throughout the course of the season. Why wait until it’s all over and leave the players wondering “who’s that guy, and where did all those nice words come from?”
Here’s an example of a positive word spoken to me a very long time ago that I was reminded of in that same group meeting last week. I was in first grade — we were doing some kind of gymnastics unit, and the task was to walk a set of parallel bars on our hands. I was chosen to demonstrate, and while it wasn’t the easiest thing to do, no way I was stopping before the end of the bars. Our PE teacher said to me, “Ryan, you’re one of the most determined kids I’ve ever seen.” An easy enough comment to make, and yet, something I remember over 40 years later. I realized I could make a similar comment pretty regularly, once a week, maybe once a day. It doesn’t take much, and while it won’t happen every time, we never know when a comment like that might stick and provide someone a boost. Maybe even 43 years after the fact.
Let’s Coach With Purpose…