Know the Good, Bad and Ugly
By : Coach Bigs11 3 2006
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction. - Douglas MacArthur
Dirty Harry must have been the first one to understand the latest Good To Great
Understanding what your team can and — very important — can't do is the only way to work on the right things. Collins calls this Confronting the Brutal Facts.
When you start with an honest and dillegent effort to determine the truth of the situation, the right decisions often become self-evident.
In the book Collins relates a powerful story from Admiral James Stockdale. Stockdale was the highest ranking American Naval POW in Vietnam. He was shot down in 1965 and held captive until 1973. Collins asked him the type of people who didn't make it as POW's. He said it was the optimists who couldn't handle it. He said the optimists were hoping they would be released soon, they didn't accept the fact that they were POWs and likely to stay that way for a long time.
This doesn't mean that Stockdale gave up on his situation. He never gave up believing he would be released, but he "retained faith that he would prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties."
What does this mean for coaching kids? Remember the Hedgehog? Figure out what your team can be the best at and work towards that goal. How can you become a hedgehog if you don't confront the brutal reality? But then how brutal is the reality when you're talking about coaching kids?
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