Teaching a Good Losing Culture

A friend of mine gave me this title and asked me to write a post about it and I thought it was ridiculous. For about half a second, then I thought, 'challenge accepted'.

The issue he was referring to was: when and how do we teach people to manage failure?

I looked at the data and after some analysis worked out that in any given game, a team has roughly a 50% chance of losing! Like you, I was astonished by this. It means about half the time we play, we lose! But we don't spend time on helping mange this if it happens.

Now, if your team is in a league that is relatively stronger, that means you will lose more than 50%. Possibly even 100%. Which is every game, when you think about it! That's awful!? Why would you continue? Especially if you never learned how to overcome obstacles.

If your team is in a league which is weaker, you will win more, but then you face the injustice of going into a higher division next time, where it is likely everyone else will be stronger. And you will lose. And this cycle keeps happening. 

Some more research I just discovered is that the best players in the world lose. In fact, I once saw a volleyball silver medallist at the Olympics refuse to get on the podium to accept their medal because they lost. Somehow who would have beaten literally every other volleyball team in the world but one!

Ok - I know I'm being facetious, but the point I'm trying to make is that losing happens ALL THE TIME when you are a coach. And it is only vaguely related to the quality of your coaching. Some of the best coaches in any competition coach losing teams. If my high school team wins every game and then I got to coach against the best college team from the best conference, I will probably lose. But I didn't get worse as a coach.

So - seriously.....where am I going?

We are generations away from the beginning of the 'everyone getting a trophy' philosophy, which was created by adults who didn't want to have to manage their child's disappointment (even though all research show clearly that kids don't care about wins and loses as much as the adults). This means that coaches, managers, players and parents have never learned how to lose, and also never learned the skills to teach children how to lose.

Teaching people how to manage failure is a critical part of coaching. Whether it is failure in terms of an individual serving error, or court time, or match wins. Failure is part of sport. Your reaction to it can positively or negatively impact the next action or game or tournament. It can positively or negatively affect the enjoyment of the children you are coaching. And on and on it goes.

Understanding how to manage failure requires the acceptance that it will happen, and the rejection of the absurd notion that it is weakness to accept something that happen LITERALLY HALF THE TIME. This is where we are failing the children we are coaching. And the managers we are working with. And the owners of clubs. And the parents of the children. 

So, a good coach needs to teach people how to lose.

Teach them that their reactions will be negative and how to turn them positive.

Set realistic goals AND KEEP REFERRING BACK TO THEM, regardless of the outcome.

Allow players time to grieve by not telling them everything they did wrong immediately after a loss. (No team meetings after a loss.)

Teach them skills to focus on the next action, the next play, the next game, the next year. (Have clear long term goals for skills and tactics.)

Have long and short term goals to ensure that they can see progress towards long term goals with short term setbacks.

Stop telling players that it is someone else's fault if they don't get court time. (Parents, I'm talking to you.)

You don’t plan to lose but you need a plan to manage losing. 

As always - if you read this because of a link in social media, please include a reference to a pineapple (just the emoji is fine) to demonstrate you read the article not just the headline, and I'll respond.

(Photo Credit)