THE POWER OF THE PEN

COACHING POINT: The Power of the Pen

I am primarily a football coach . . . so this is the off season, But there really is not 'Off Season' Basketball, wrestling, track, baseball, etc., those are really conditioning for football season. Events last week did remind me of a very important coaching point. A friend of mine is in the banking business & just made a career change which requires that he build up a client list. He asked me to recommend some folks that he could email an introductory message to.

So I asked him, "When you daughter graduated from high school last spring, did you send her an email? When you wife recently had her birthday, did you send her an email?"

Now more than ever before the power & impact of a letter written on letterhead stationary, first class stamp, hand addressed, not on a copy machine, but individually printed or better yet hand written, is far greater than ever & a way to differentiate yourself from the rest.

Remember how important you felt when you got a letter & maybe $5 from Grandpa when you were a kid? I just hit a sale on hoodies at the mall of 'Superman' sweatshirts. I bought one for all the Grandsons & sent them all an individualized note about how great they are. Do you think that might be a tad more impactfull than a text?

For coaches, this is the time of year for preparation. There's not much out there that would have a greater effect than to sin down and hand write a note on your teams stationary [you team does have it's own stationary, right?] talking about how important each player coming back & the contribution they can make to the team effort. How important there leadership in the weightroom and conditioning is to set the example and the work ethic necessary for the next Championship run.

Yes, it's easier to send a text or an email. But neither has the power to impress like a hand written note from "THE Coach."

If you really want to test this out . . . just send your wife an email on her birthday & judge the reaction.

-->

To get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad - until you improve to be declared good. Baby steps are the royal road to skill. Remember, repetition is the mother of skill. "Every great & commanding moment in the annals of the world is a triumph of some enthusiasm," Emerson.

-->

Deep practice isn't a piece of cake: It requires energy, passion, & commitment. In a word, it requires motivational fuel, the second element of the "Talent Code." Coyle refers to it as ignition. Ignition supplies the energy while deep practice translates that energy over time into forward progress.

Ignition is a hot mysterious burst, an awakening – lightening in a bottle. It’s a sudden moment of realization that “I can do this thing.” Or, “If he an do it so an I” like when Bannister broke the 4 minute barrier, once an insurmountable wall that Roger turned into a stepping stone. The right butterfly wingflap was causes talent hurricanes. And it’s really a butterfly wingflap not some earth shattering event. Two personal examples: I was never a very good little league baseball player, never really learned to hit the ball to hit the ball till I was coaching baseball & found out it really was not that difficult. Anyway, the day I went to pick up my first Sox baseball uniform, I went to my coach’s house up the street & picked it up. I was walking on cloud 9. As I tucked it under my arm & walked off the front porch, I heard coach say to his assistant, “There goes the biggest uniform on the team & he isn’t worth a shit,” not exactly putting lightening in my bottle. And then there’s a time years later that my high school football coach pulled me aside & told me that I was “the best lineman on the team & he expected me to be the Captain of the line to help everyone execute their assignment properly.” Two different experiences = two different results. Often tiny, seemingly insignificant cues can, over time, create gigantic differences in skill. 

As with everything, our attitude determines out altitude, from the beginning starting with commitment. With the same amount of practice, long-term-commitment groups outperform short-term-commitment groups by a whopping 400%. The long-term-commitment group, with a mere 20 minutes of weekly practice, progressed faster than the short-termers who practiced for an hour & a half. When long-term commitment combined with high levels of practice, skills skyrocketed. 

Just think about this, I live in Oregon. Kids grow up heir entire life either a Duck or a Beaver wanting to put on the uniform, especially those of the Ducks, & play. Again, especially at Autzen Stadium for the Ducks; or play for the Beavers & beat those Ducks on Autzen. That is a long-term-commitment. Sadly, over 90% of the players for both teams are scholarshipped players from out of state, mostly CA kids who grew up wanting to play for USC, UCLA, CAL or some other school closer to home. They never gave Eugene or Corvalis a thought until they got rejected by the CA schools & Oregon came a’calling. Fast forward to the level of play when these teams get behind, especially a CA school. You can just see them “give in” – all their live they have been told how much better these CA schools were than those rejects up North. After all, if they were any good, they would be playing for the Trojans. My theory is that if say, 40-50% of the players on those Oregon teams were from Oregon with their long-term-commitment, life-long, fighting to the end would be more evident. Bob Devany would do this at NB which has even fewer players & opportunities than here in OR. Kids would grow up chanting “Go Big Red” their whole lives, generations even. NB once had the absolute best walk on program in the country. Every year I think 3 scholarships would go to those players who participated in the walk-on program which always had nearly 100 kids in it. Going that route to the playing field certainly demonstrated very long-term-commitment. And giving in was not an option. After all, the more you put into something, the harder it is to hang it up. 

Coyle reports that coaches can instantly connect players to a high0octane fuel tank of motivation, which powers deep practice. What powers the players is a vision of their ideal future selves, a vision that oriented, energized, & accelerated progress. This motivation originates in the outside world. Another personal example: When I took over the Ranger football program, they had been to the playoffs once in 50 years & had never won a conference championship, ever. They had averaged 1.75 victories a year. It was where football coaches went to “die.” The first night I met with the Seniors & the team, I took those Srs aside & said, “Listen, there’s going to be all kinds of talk about ‘rebuilding’ & how things might be better for the Rangers in the future. That I said was bullshit. They would never hear it from me. This was their Senior year & I would do everything possible to make their Sr year the one they had been reaming about their whole lives – to dress down in the Ranger uniform & run onto the field inside the hedges.”  Long-term-commitment, right? It was fortunate that these kids were sick & tired of being tired & sick. They went to work. It didn’t hurt any that we went over to the 6^th ranked team in the sate and defeated them in the last 26 seconds of the game. That just made them work harder, and if it were not for a tipped pass in the last quarter of the last game of the season, they would have made the playoffs with their 6-3 record. The next year, because those Srs kicked opened the door of victory, saw the team go undefeated, conferences champs, & off to the playoffs which we were in every year after that. Coyle goes on: these kids were not born to be football players. Their wanting came from a distinct signal, form something in their family, their homes, their coaches, the set of images & people they encountered, certain primal cues that sparked an unconscious response that manifested itself as an idea – “a wanting to be.”

Being highly motivated, when you think about it is a slightly irrational state. One forgoes comfort now in order to work toward some bigger prospective benefit later on. Each signal is the motivational equivalent of a flashing red light: those people over there are doing something terrifically worthwhile. Each signal is about future belonging. 

Future belonging is a primal cue: a simple, direct signal that activates our built-in motivational triggers, funneling our energy & attention toward a goal. The ability to achieve is already there, but the energy put into that ability goes through the roof. It’s not strategic; we don’t think of it being useful because we are not even thinking of it at all. It’s an automatic response. Ignition is a hair trigger connected to a high-voltage power plant & is determined by a simple if/then proposition, with the then part always the same – better get busy. See someone you want to become? Better get busy. Want to catch up with a desirable group? Better get busy. Remember, the unconscious mind is able to process 11,000,000 pieces of information per second while the conscious mind can manage a mere forty. Thus making primal cues so very important; this disproportion points to the efficiency & necessity of relegating mental activities to the unconscious - & helps us to understand why appeals to the unconscious can be so effective.