You can’t buy passion, and we won with passion today boys.
Despite
Many clubs achieve great things off the field (which usually result in great on-field things). Finding a great sponsor, recruiting an excellent coach, attracting better players, finding more volunteers.
My question for you and the club is does this happen in a club because of the structures, tools and methods your club has put in place or despite it? It’s probably a bit of both, but imagine what would happen if you amplify the positive side of things!
Paying for help.
Typically clubs pay for the things that they consider matter (and they do), things like more footballs, coaching talent, training equipment or more drink bottles. Unfortunately there seems to be no desire to get better at the administration things that matter. A long day at work usually sours our desire for administration at the club. We tend to avoid another meeting, reading more notes and dealing with other overheads.
Now consider how much better it would be to get better at:
Recording the numbers
How to hold a meeting
Giving a presentation
Recording minutes
Short-cutting membership registration
Merchandise
Canteen management
How to attract and retain volunteers
How to raise money
Recruiting sponsors
But for most of us we need to wing it. We stumble over the same hurdles as the person before us. Paying for tools to make your job, and the job of the person that comes after you is something worth doing and will allow you to recruit and retain volunteers around you.
Coaching Passion
I’m not a coach, I tried it once a long time ago and maybe I’ll do it again some day. But there are many similarities between a good manager and a good coach. Both are trying to get the most out of their recruits, both are trying to achieve a common team goal.
Some choose to find the passionate and teach them competence. Others try to find the most competent and teach them to be passionate.
One theory is that once someone becomes competent at something they will automatically become passionate. Or maybe after someone finds something they’re passionate about, they will stop at nothing to become more competent within their chosen field.
Maybe if we’re just a little harder, a little stricter, they’ll get better?
Obedience + Competence ≠ Passion
The formula doesn’t work. It never has. You can’t gather up a group of kids and add some footballs, a sprinkling of discipline, a dash of technique and then passion arrives.
Some say that it arrives with success. But if there are 10 other teams all vying for the premiership and they all have equally skilled squads there is a 10% chance of winning. If you have 4 teams in your club, there is a .0001 of a chance of everyone winning. Obviously a rare occurrence, so you as a club, as a coach need to bigger than just a premiership. You need to drive passion as well as competence side by side. Success will come albeit perhaps by different measures.
