Previously, I discussed the results of my LPI and the context that I don’t often consider myself a leader, but rather someone who is doing his own thing. I have not diverged from this belief much since the last blog post, but I have learned and experienced things along the way. One of the most significant events actually happened at a recent tournament, the 2017 Pan American Championships. As I have previously written about it on my athlete blog, I will simply give the highlights here. If you want the full background context, you can find it here.

At the event, on the day of the finals, it was a Canada vs. Canada match up in 3 of the 5 events, which meant that the National Team coaches could not coach. To make this more intriguing, my mentor for this class was one of the National Coaches, so perhaps we can get a full-on discussion in the comment section later on to get his side of the story. There have been situations in the past where this has happened, and the coaches forbade anyone from coaching, but I thought about it and well… knowing me, I decided to ‘Challenge the Process’. The key points here include that my partner and I were in the Mixed Doubles final, which was to be the last match of the day. Furthermore, she was in the Women’s Singles final, which was the first match of the day. Her opponent in the Women’s Singles final also happened to be our opponent in the Mixed Doubles final, which gave me even more purpose to act on that. I think it would be generally easier to play with a partner who has won her first final than someone who lost, especially as Women’s Singles is actually my partner’s primary event.

Despite the coaches recommendations, I went to coach. I was asked to leave by the tournament referee however, because they said that Badminton Pan Am did not allow players to coach. This is the first time I encountered this rule, as I played and coached my teammates one month previously at the Jamaican International. As a result, some other players in my situation at this tournament have taken it all the way up to the Badminton World Federation. I did respect the ruling after that, so I really only coached 1/6th of the match. In the end, my partner won the singles, and we won the Mixed Doubles. I thought that was the end of that, but the case is still open apparently to see what the consequences are from my actions. Maybe some day it will be resolved.

So, what am I? I leader? A rebel? A millenial who feels entitled to do whatever he wants to (we may be onto something here…)? If only we could do the LPI in this situation, I wonder how I would be rated. The National Team coaches and tournament organizers would probably score my leadership poorly (except my favourite, “Challenge the Process”), and my peers may not score me very high either (especially my opponents). But I would like to think my partner would give me a high score. If we averaged all the scores, I would probably score terribly, but would that really matter to me? Perhaps I can say that this time, I was truly “person-centered”. Everything else just becomes noise…

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The past weekend I was at the High Performance Coach Advance at PISE, in which we spent a lot of time discussing coaching development and ‘pathways’.   One of the exercises we had to do was to answer the question: “Who are you?” The exercise was meant to help us consider our different identities and how much weight we put into different roles. At the beginning of the year, I was torn between considering myself as a player or a coach, but thankfully, Dave Hill helped me see past it and I have embraced the concept of being both. I have taken it a bit further and responded to the question, “Who are you?”, with:

“I am who I need to be, in that moment. 100% of the time.”

I consider my identity to be a human being, 100% of the time. That will be the only label I will attach myself to, because I think defining ourselves with labels can ultimately restrict us by forcing us to live in the standards of those labels. How can we optimize ourselves if we are constantly labeling ourselves with different things? I can see that there was discussion with coaches that take very good care of their athletes and ensuring they are properly rested, but the coaches are often not taking care of themselves. Why is that? Perhaps it’s in the ‘label’ of what coaches are supposed to do. But who defines that?

I also brought up the concept of the difference with being a teacher, and simply someone teaching. It is similar, yet very different. Perhaps we can borrow the idea of an athlete’s self-serving bias, where successes are attributed to the athlete’s own actions, whereas less successful events can be attributed to external events. Perhaps we somewhat do this naturally, but the identities we live may not be the ones that mean the most to us, but rather what takes the majority of our time. I feel that dedicated coaches are often stuck in that situation because of the long hours full-time coaching demands.

Maybe that is why I continue to compete, because I have lived the athlete identity for so long. I would even go far enough to call it “athlete life”, which is also my most-used hashtag on social media. The only reason I bring this up is because there are times I have had more of a coaching role, and I started using #coachlife. Afterwards, in an attempt to be funny, I sometimes write: “#lifelife. But as the aphorism goes: “Many a true word is spoken in jest“. Perhaps this is a bit of the realization that no matter what kind of “life” I choose (e.g. athlete, coach, family, work, etc.), it’s just “life” in the end. Maybe I am not a badminton player, but a person playing badminton. Maybe I will not be a badminton coach, but a person who coaches badminton. These are just things that I do, but not necessarily who I am. Perhaps this type of detachment can be a strength, but it can be a weakness as well if we are too far removed. Why do I really care for something if it’s not who I am? But that’s a very personal question that each one of us has to answer on our own.

So to tie together the situation at the Pan Am Championships this year, perhaps I was only being myself. There was an opportunity to act on something and I chose to do something. Another adage is to “choose your battles“, and I chose to battle. If I had to pick an identity, it would be that of an athlete, but more specifically, a partner. I have not been the best partner to other players in the past, and perhaps a part of me was hoping to change that. That’s just part of the learning process. A similar situation happened at Nationals earlier this year, but due to the known coaching policies by Badminton Canada, there was nothing I could do. This time, I had a chance to do something and I did.

#life