Are Players Soft?

A recent Volleytalk thread sparked my interest. The title of the thread was, “Are players ‘soft’ or do coaches need to adapt?”¹ I interact with lots of club and high school coaches. There’s a lot of frustration with, “this new generation.” A lot of college coaches are feeling it too. The transfer portal is at an all-time high.

My favorite podcast host, Jocko Willink, addressed this in a recent Q&A episode. The question was basically a, “kids-these-days,” sort of lament from a football coach. And before I post his response, I’ll remind you that Jocko’s a former Navy SEAL commander who has said he enjoyed the SEAL’s infamous BUD/S training program because, “it was like getting paid to work out all day,” and who eventually ran that training program before retiring from the Navy. What I’m saying is, he wouldn’t come to mind as a “soft” person.

Here was his response:²

Out of the gate, give them ownership. That's #1. Give them ownership. Actually, let me say, out of the gate, the attitude of the kids, look... what were you dealing with in 1969 when there was hippies and freakin' rebels and yippies and all that stuff? What, those coaches, it was too easy for them? What about in the mid-70s when people were doing quaaludes and they had long hair and they were listening to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath came on the scene? What about in the 90s when gangster rap came out and the football players were listening to that? You see what I'm saying?

So, kids are little rebellious kids. Human beings have their own desire to be autonomous and have freedom and that's what they want. And by the way, the obedient kid that you think you want, you don't want. You don't want that kid. I didn't want a SEAL that was an obedient automaton. I didn't want that robot. I wanted a free-thinking person.

So, how can we help them? Well, first of all, they don't want to be robots, so don't treat them like robots. Treat them like people, treat them like people with brains. Give them ownership. Let them come up with a plan. Let them figure out how we can best be a victorious team. Talk to them about, "listen, what do you all think we need work on? What do you think is the best way to do conditioning? Who thinks we shouldn't do conditioning?"

See where I'm going with this? Is there anyone on the team who says, "you know what, we shouldn't do conditioning?" No. But if you just impose conditioning on them, they don't like it as much. Might feel good as a coach, might feel good to push 'em, but, if you actually say, hey, team captain... how about we get the team captain in the game... we appoint 2 people to be in charge of conditioning... how about we appoint 2 people to be in charge of tackle drills, and you let them come up with it?

Are they going to come up with something that absolutely sucks? Let me ask you that. There's a possibility they might. Most likely though, they're going to figure out, "hey this is probably good enough," and they come up with a 70 or 80% solution. That's good enough and they're running it. So, that's what we want to do. That's what we want to do with human beings. We want to, as much as we can, give them control over their own destiny. We want to allow them to have input. We don't want to impose on people.

By the way, if you have a team, where the only way you get them to do anything is by imposing, hmm... that's not a team. That's not a good team, by the way. If you get them to step up, you get them to take ownership, you get them to come up with how hard we're going to condition... that's how you do it. That's how you do it.

Oh you don't like them because they seem to have their own ideas about things? That makes you mad. No... don't let them make you mad. Be overjoyed that you got young kids that want to lead their own way of doing things. I love that! You talk with parents about kids, "my kid is so freakin' stubborn." Thankfully! Thankfully you got a kid with strong will. That's what we want. You got an employee that wants to do things their own way? Great! “How do you want to do them?" You got a member of the team that doesn't want to do this type of conditioning? "What type of conditioning do you want to do?" You don't like this type of conditioning because... no one has done this type of conditioning since the 60s? Cool. What do we do now? You don't think conditioning has improved since the 60s? It has! Your young team might know that.

So there you go. Free your mind. Don't be a authoritarian.

Those of you who listen to his podcast or read his books know this is a classic Jocko response. The question-asker thinks Jocko is going to say, “you have to go level-10 hardcore extreme and MAKE THEM DO IT!” And his answer is almost always some form of, “build a relationship, give them ownership, lead by example.”

More of my thoughts beyond the wall…