Life Changing Insights from the Barefoot Coach

 

Earlier in my career, I used to hear that the most abused role is a “Scrum Master” and now it is applied to the word “Coach”. How often are Sports Coaches or Agile Coach roles understood well by the team members and sometimes even the coach themselves?

I had a chance to read an excellent book “The Bare Foot Coach” by Paddy Upton on Coaching. I have tried to summarize it over here from the Agile and Coaching perspective.

The book starts by saying – to understand the difference between Facilitating, Coaching, Mentoring and a brief on how coaches could be great servant leaders.

The Indian Cricket team never went to great heights with their previous coach before 2008 as it was more instruction based and probably there were no coaching conversations at all.

Bring in specialization in the team rather than one Coach who plays all the roles of Batting, Bowling, Fielding, Fitness, Mental fitness coaches. Most importantly it’s great to work from BCCI who were convinced of the need of a Mental fitness coach and not just Batting, Bowling Coaches.

What can we learn from this book Bare Foot Coach which can be applied for Agile teams and as an Agile Coach?

Accept Fear and Failure

• Failure is temporary
• Look at what you can control and what is beyond your control
• What actions you took to overcome the failure matter and that should speak not the winning or losing
• Embrace the fear, make it your friend

When to Coach and When not to

• Coaching Vs Instructing
  • Get great achievers from other Industry, hear out their stories and leave it to the team to learn lessons they want
  • As coaches sometimes it is too difficult to draw a line between instructing as by our experience, we might know what to do but allow the team to decide what they need to do as a group.

As an Agile Coach/Agile Values – Take away

• Team building sessions

Respect

• Allow people to speak at all the levels
• Junior most person like Sanju Samson and Senior-most person Praveen Thambe (lesser-known before IPL) both had equal rights to speak and share their knowledge with the team
• Did Dravid know well about a cricketer who played for, under 13, 15 or Sanju Samson know better about him as he played or watched the player more than anyone else in the team?

Discipline

• As a coach asking powerful questions to Dhoni who decided what should be fine if even one team member come late to the sessions

Team Culture

• Win or lose – Music runs in the dressing room
• Celebrate the best moments even when the team had lost the match
• Sachin’s example of how the state team members had a conversation and how it helped Sachin to be more humble right from the beginning of the career. Even today Sachin or any other great players are remembered how they behave outside the playing field

Build Self Organizing Teams

• Team member decides how much hours and what he would be practicing in a day rather than instruction based on a coach. The schedules can be on their own rather than decided by the Coach
• Do you know your body well or the Coach? Lovely example on how Harbhajan Singh learned other exercise routine suits him more than running
• It is not always winning but how well we played the game

Focus

• Plan for readiness 10 months before the world cup. As a team are we ready to win the cup and what actions can be taken on the same
• Focus on strength, making it perfect than draining your energy over your weakness
• Specific coaching for Virendra Shewag to leave the bouncers which ideally, he would have hooked it for a Six!

Commitment

• How each team member committed to giving their best and will be supportive of each other
• Everybody gets their time
• Dhoni exhibited this in the finals of the World Cup who didn’t have many runs scored in that season till the day came where it mattered the most
• Who can forget the famous Helicopter shot to win the Cricket world cup 2011

Courage

• Sanju Samson’s courage to attack Dale Steyn by playing a few feet before the crease. It shows the character that he was ready for the big games

Transparency

• Create transparency in the team where this was well exhibited during team meetings on why a player is dropped and what is considered for that match. These were discussed right in front of the player than behind them