Responsibility

Saturday morning at MLC, 2008.  There's a steady 15 mph wind gusting to 30, 34 degrees, and a pleasant mix of freezing rain/snow.  I've only been outside for 30 minutes, and it's already apparent I'm woefully underdressed to play in these conditions.

We're running a warm up in-cut drill.  I make my cut, disc goes up.  The wet disc slips off my cold outstretched hands and hits the ground.

"TWO HANDS"

The response is swift and automatic.   A captain shouts at me and the team, but mostly me.  I feel a collective groan from the team.  It hits me like a slap in the face, but I'm used to it.  This is the norm, the status quo.  They shout, I take blame.  Why shouldn't I?  It's my fault, right?

Three hours later.

We're playing Truman State and we're getting wrecked.  Down 2-7.  I've played 1 point so far today.  I'm mostly here because I agreed to tag along on the 9 hr drive.  The leadership decides we aren't coming back in this game and decide to give the bottom of the roster some PT.  We're on offense.  My defender peels off to help deep and I catch an incut.  Disc in hand, I turn upfield, no mark.

"CHILLY"

Automatic.  They shout, I take blame.  Chilly seems to mean: you suck and we don't trust you to not turn it over.  Blame assigned for a turn before the disc has even left my hands.

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If a team wants to be successful, I think a high standard of play must be set by both the captains and the non-captain leadership.  I also think that successful teams have trust in each other, and this trust must also be projected and amplified by the captains and non-captain leadership.  So the challenge is to both cultivate trust and a high standard of play.

When your team is fighting hard to get better, I think it is easy to be ultra-sensitive to the blame/fault process.  Especially in the heat of competition, be that at practice or in a game.  I'm going to refer to this as the "responsibility process".  As a player, I think it is natural to want to know if a turnover was the result of your mistake and how you can correct it.  As a teammate, I think it also feels like your duty to hold your teammates accountable, and even let them know if they made an error that needs fixing.  As with most things, I think there is a full spectrum of good and bad ways to go about this.

The little things matter a lot here.  I think the way a team goes about assigning and accepting responsibility is massively important in the long term development process.  If handled badly, the responsibility process can put a huge amount of pressure on interpersonal relationships, and as a result, team culture.  I think this can build up over the course of the 7 month college season and really wear guys down, leading to frustration, burnout, even quitting.

This gets further complicated by the wide range of perspectives and personalities most teams have.  In particular, maybe your team has guys who thrive when shouted at and love that pressure. Maybe you also have guys who hate that and feel that they're being attacked with that approach to the responsibility process.  Maybe you have guys who are off in their own world and need to be alerted to things, or maybe you have other guys who verbally berate themselves whenever they think they mess up.  So how can all those different approaches be managed at once, constructively?

I have a few theories that I like:

Trust

I think trust has to be a constant at all times.  I like to talk about trust when coaching.  It takes effort to build and give trust.  I like to design practices that give players a reason to trust in each other and themselves.  For example: everyone on Bolt throws a minimum of 50 throws every time we see each other.  I can put a guy in the game and trust him to complete a 20 yard open side flick, because I have seen him do it at least 3 times a week for the past 7 months.  I can trust his ability to do so, his team can trust his ability to do so (they've seen him do it), and he can trust in it (since he's put in the work).  Drills, games, and conditioning should build trust, not erode it.

Feedback

I think that the ability to accept and give feedback is massively important to the responsibility process.  I think teams must be constantly challenging themselves to do this well.  Some caveats: 1. It must be recognized that different players will receive feedback very differently (i.e. it doesn't matter what you say, it matters what they hear).  2. Feedback must always be constructive in nature.  3.  It must be clear at all times that the objective is to create the best team possible, together.  Feedback without constructiveness is just blame and degrades team culture.  Language and tone matters a lot here.

Lift Your Teammates Up

I think that if we are truly focused on creating the best team possible, the best version of ourselves as a team, we should always be striving to elevate each other.  This could mean a lot of different things.  I think the critical piece of this theory is that you are the support system for your teammates.  When times get tough or things get chippy in practices or games, I think it is imperative for players to be able to rely on each other.  Good plays should be encouraged and reinforced by teammates.  If the team energy is low, a player should help their teammates bring it back up.  This requires mental effort and must be practiced.  I think this is critical to creating a healthy team culture and giving guys room to grow.

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Aside:

I hate "chilly" and "two hands".  They're just noise and are meaningless.  It's like shouting "catch it" to a receiver.  Totally pointless, a waste of energy, faceless non-constructive blame.