Facts Beat Speculation Every Time

TOPICS: COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Imagine for the next few minutes that you are the head coach of a professional football team. The season is going okay, you are winning more than you are losing but something needs to change if you are going to make the playoffs.

You call your assistants and coordinators into a brainstorming session. “Coach, I’m hearing a lot of grumbling about the offense,” says the defensive line coach. “The guys just don’t believe we have the right game plan and the practices are disorganized.”

Two of the other assistants agree that there is a lot of frustration in the locker room. By the end of the meeting there is a very negative feeling surrounding the coaching staff. As the meeting breaks up you notice small groups of coaches gathering to continue the conversations.

You retire to your office, shut the door and consider what was said during the meeting. It seems interesting that the negative comments about the offense came from a defensive coach. Practices seem to be organized and run the same way as in past seasons. You wonder if the locker room is as frustrated as the coach indicated, or if a couple of voices are dominating the conversations.

You didn’t get to be the head coach because you relied on the speculation of others. Instead of spending your time finding out who the dissenting voices belonged to you resolve to find out what the leaders of your team think. As the Head Coach you know which players influence the locker room. You choose a small group of leaders from both offensive and defensive sides of the ball and convene a casual meeting.

Your only agenda is to take the temperature of the team and find out whether real issues exist. You begin the meeting as follows: “We are off to kind of a mediocre start this season and I’ve been told that the team is frustrated. I’m frustrated too, but we can’t succeed with a fractured locker room. If we have a problem, I want to address it head on, and that’s why I called you in. What’s really going on?”

“Coach, I think the team is frustrated because we aren’t winning, nothing more,” says the first player. “Yeah, I agree with that. Winning cures everything,” says the second player. The third player, who the coach knows is a straight shooter hasn’t spoken. “Bob, do you agree with them,” Coach asks? “I wasn’t going to say anything, but the problem is with the third string quarterback. He thinks he should be starting and he runs his mouth to anyone who will listen. A couple of the other non-starters have climbed on his bandwagon. Frankly, that’s the source of any locker room problems. I think we’d have more success if we got rid of the negativity and all pulled together. But I will say that I think our practices are less focused than they used to be and that is a problem.”

Armed with facts instead of speculation you are now in a position to lead your team forward. You’ll probably want to ask your coaches why they settled for rumors and gossip when they could have been the source of factual information. You’ll also want to get those practices back to being focused and organized. As for the third string quarterback, I’ll bet you can live without him.



How are you investing your valuable leadership resources? Are you getting to the bottom of issues or are you wasting time on rumors and idle speculation?