Previously, I wrote about valuing through John C. Maxwell’s concepts of living intentionally and adding value to others. After about 5 months, I still do my best to practice these concepts regularly and have also included “Add Value To Others” as part of my coaching philosophy. However, it has not been an easy task because when adding value to others, you sometimes wrestle with trying to figure out whether it should be a social or market norm. Dan Ariely talks about the cost of social norms in his book “Predictable Irrational”, where market norms dictate effort levels. In my example, I find I may tend to hold back some information at times if I feel that I have already given a lot of things “for free” already. Since we all “need to eat” (i.e. make money), it becomes a bit difficult to unconditionally give, although there may be tremendous rewards in doing that, but as a struggling athlete, I feel caught in a dilemma between how much I should really be giving away for free.

That becomes the topic of this blog post: what about me? What about you? If you cannot take care of yourself FIRST, then how can you really take care of other people? If you do not value yourself (eg. health, mindset, state of being), then how can you really value other people? There is a difference between valuing others and being a “Yes Man” (great Jim Carey movie, by the way), but establishing that difference can be very difficult at times. Sometimes there are guidelines laid out in certain procedures, such as oxygen masks on airplanes. You put your own mask on first, then you can help someone else. Of course this is a physical health issue, but mental health issues have also been on the rise over the years. Perhaps there are personal boundaries that need to be set given the mental strength of the coach, but even I have seen the best of coaches get burnt out over time.

I have seen personal examples of this myself, and I continue to see it in my sport. Coaches start off so well: enthusiastic, hard working, and often times self-sacrificing. They really add value to others and their athletes get tremendous benefit from them. They are your model coaches, and ones you want as your badminton coach. But over time, slowly but surely, it starts to fade. Perhaps it’s routine, or perhaps there are things that happen (or don’t happen) in situations not in their favour. How many times did another potential star player quit early? How many times did a parent become too overbearing in what they want for their kid, and if they did not get their way, they would threaten to leave? How many times did the sport organization fail to act approriately? I don’t think it’s ever the wins or losses that affect the coach, but rather the things that they did not prepare for. Perhaps their expectations were set too high, perhaps they are trying too hard to control the uncontrollables. Sometimes coaching is very rewarding, but there are times when it is a struggle. Who is left to fend for the coaches?

We feel the coach should be the leader, the manager, the one who guides the athletes. Especially at younger ages, the coach plays such a critical factor in development. Coaches are often underpaid and overworked, and yet we still want them to continue to learn and develop themselves, with only a fraction of the support an athlete gets. Athletes get all the credit for the win most of the time, while coaches get little in return. Wouldn’t a good business model be a necessity for the coach? If coaches make sufficient income and are paid appropriately, then wouldn’t that be the best solution? I don’t have an answer for that, but that is a bit of the aspiration. Teachers and professors are compensated reasonably, so why not coaches? For example, the Finnish school system is arguably the best in the world, with less hours to teach each day, and teachers even requiring a minimum of a Masters degree to apply. Further discussed in Shane Snow’s “Smartcuts”, he describes how only 10% of applicants are chosen to begin teacher training, and better trained teachers are more likely to teach children how to learn. In contrast, the American school system, with a teacher fulfilling multiple roles by teaching various subjects, is more likely to teach children how to memorize. How different is this from coaches that teach multiple sports to secure an income, and instead of coaching athletes to perform their best, they just teach athletes the rules of the game?

To shift perspectives slightly, from an athlete point of view, valuing a coach is substantially less than what it might be vice versa. However I feel coaches tend to fill the void by having multiple athletes to look after, at least for badminton. As a player, value is also given to therapists and other IST staff, in addition to partners, teammates, etc. The athlete is much more equipped than the coach in a sense, because they are the ones who are competing. They are like soldiers on the front lines of a battle. Ironically, in terms of revenue generating potential, athletes and entertainers are usually the ones making the most money, compared to coaches/directors, administative staff/production companies, while actual military people probably make the least in terms of chain of command. I should count my blessings. However, to stay on topic, I believe different athletes value coaches differently, and the same could be said the other way around. Coaches may value players that are more suited to what their expertise is, and I think that is fine.

Before I write about how I demonstated this core competency, I will share another story I have heard a few times from different sources. There is a type of crab that can escape almost any trap set for it individually, but based on one particular trait, it succumbs to the simplest of traps. This trap consists of a cage with a hole at the top, and a bit of bait at the bottom of the cage. It attracts a crab, which climbs into the cage and eats the food. However, once other crabs climb in, they become stuck. For some reason, when a crab wants to escape, they pull it back in with the rest. Nobody is allowed to leave. In the end, they make a happy fisherman because they are all caught and hopefully provide some delicious seafood for someone, somewhere. This story is used to explain the pull of mediocrity, or simply just being good enough. That is probably what happens when you value yourself, but stop there. That is probably also what happens to those coaches I’ve seen who have given so much, but neglected to look out for themselves first. At first it seems to go well, but they encounter the other “crabs” that pull them back to the norm. “Why are you trying so hard?”, “They will just leave you anyway”, “I’ve tried that before and it didn’t work”, or my favourite: “If you want to make money, don’t do badminton”. And just like that, nobody can escape the pull to fit in with the rest, and in the end, nothing changes.

However, I think there is an escape to this vicious cycle and an equal compromise between valuing yourself and others: “Be so good they can’t ignore you” – Steve Martin. Whether you are a player or coach or administrator, pursuing mastery in your chosen path should include appropriate levels of valuing for the sake of mastery. Cal Newport describes this as the “craftsman mindset” instead of having a “passion mindset”, from his book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”. The mastery process is often the path less taken, as most opt to be “good enough”. If most people opt to be like the crabs that will not let others leave the cage, perhaps it is best to steer clear from that cage in the first place. Think outside the box, or in this example, the cage.

The changes to my coaching have now shifted from worrying about being fairly compensated, to asking myself whether this will help me become the best coach I can be. This is a remarkable shift in perspective because based on the concept of “be so good they can’t ignore you”, you only need to worry about being better, instead of being paid. This helps me focus on long term benefits instead of short term gains. Additionally, valuing ourselves and ego are uncomfortably close together. And ego isn’t something that you defeat. It’s more like something that needs to be maintained daily, much like brushing teeth.

For now, I opt to value myself first, with a focus on mastery of my coaching abilities. I will continue to add value to others based on a mastery approach. And finally, I will continue the pursuit to “be so good they can’t ignore you.”

Adding value… to everyone, including me.