Coaching Teens Part 2 - Do The Right Thing

Establishing A Just Cause Can Orient Your Program

I am convinced that one of the main reasons for establishing an esports program is to give more young people exposure to coaching and coaches. I am a huge fan of mentoring. The idea here is that people help people mature, not only emotionally, but also in capability. I believe it takes people, who see us and know us to help us achieve our potential. As Jean-Paul Gonzalez said, "It was not a celebrity or an athlete that changed my life. The people who changed my life were the ones who cared enough to be in it."

A healthy recreation program creates those kinds of opportunities. If you are fortunate enough to have that opportunity, to coach, and you are well on your way to the internal work, what are some guiding principles you can use when working with players? I believe there are four principles:

1. Strive to do the right thing
2. Act with compassion.
3. Be a source of comfort and inspiration
4. Make peace

What are you aiming for?

I like to say that the absence of illness is not the same as good health, or even optimum health. If we are going to create a program or run a program that is going to help young people achieve even a fraction of their potential, we need to develop a vision for what that could look like. I wish I could give you a clear and concise answer, or check list formula, or a set of standards. However, I do not believe I could ever give you the answer. What I can do however, is give you the tool to find your answer.

Simon Sinek, in his book The Infinite Game, created one of my favorite tools for uncovering what I call "Doing the Right Thing." To me, this goes beyond your why. This goes to establishing a vision for the good you want to make in the world. He calls it a just cause.

The five attributes of a Just cause:

1. For something
2. Inclusive
3. Service oriented
4. Resilient
5. Idealistic

When you walk through these five elements, you see that you want to create something optimistic and positive. You want your vision to be open to anyone who wants to help you make it. It should serve others. It needs to transcend small barriers, and ultimately be so big and bold that it ignites people to move

The best example of this in my mind is the pre-amble to the declaration of independence.

When the Founding Fathers of the United States declared independence from Great Britain, for example, they knew that such a radical act would require a statement of Just Cause. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The vision they set forth was not simply one of a nation defined by borders but of an ideal future state defined by principles of liberty and equality for all. And on July 4, 1776, the fifty-six men who signed on to that vision agreed to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Now we are talking esports, and not the founding of a country, however, I do believe the tool is useful. The closer you get to fleshing it out, the more inspiring, resilient, and inclusive your vision will be.

The reason to do this is that it becomes the foundation for how you make your decision.

An Example

When we set about to create Bravous Esports we focused on creating the same kind of "on ramp" for gamers that traditional sports had provided for generations. During those lengthy discussions, I wanted a program that would be inclusive. No bench. Everyone plays. I saw the pained look from the boys who were cut from my son’s middle school baseball team and the pain it caused their parents. I also became ensnared in the drama that ensued when one of the parents had a relationship with the Super Intendent and angled to get the coach fired.

Yes. No joke. Parents take youth sports very seriously. It doesn't take a lot of googling to find videos of horrible parent behavior at youth athletic events.

We didn't want any of that. If everyone plays, that might not fix all the problems, but it would go a long way toward reducing a lot of problems. We called this, "Yes, you can play." Our policy, our "Just Cause" was that if you showed up, we were going to do everything we could to get you into a game, a tournament, an event. You would play.

This one single decision rippled through everything we did. Our Tournament Organizers became extremely efficient as setting up brackets. We researched and deployed competition formats that allowed us maximum flexibility in setting up competition pools. We even created our own competition format to facilitate maximum participation and play through.

Our "do the right thing" was focused on maximizing inclusion and participation for the majority of people at an event. That became our Just Cause.

Orient Toward the Just Cause

I share this with you because, in many ways this is what seeking to do the right thing is all about. You create a vision for the improvement you want to see, then you dive in and crash into all the problems this causes you. Like students failing to show in the discord on time, or players showing up with wireless controllers that are almost impossible to disconnect from the tournament consoles, or players that spend an incredible amount of time adjusting the game settings until it is just right.

There were definitely times when I felt like saying, "Just get on with it! Let's move, we gotta go here people!" But each time, I had to come back to principles. "What is the right thing to do here?" And always for us that answer was, let them play. Get them in a game and let them play.

The secret about striving to do the right thing

If you pick a Just Cause you really believe in - If your "right thing" really resonates with you, there is one extra surprise. In every instance where we chose a vision of the future we believed in; enormous creativity energized nearly everything we did. When you pick a path that is authentic, and resonates with you and your team, you may find answers to problems in places you never expected to look. Going back to Bravous, when we decided to focus on inclusion, instead of competition, it freed us up to experiment with other tournament formats. At GameTruck, the innovations were piled on top of each other, from the flat screens all on the same wall, to the AC units turned 90 degrees to put the cold-air where you really want it - on the gamers and the heat generating electronics.

The desire to "do the right thing", is not simply a goody two-shoes ideal, although I admit it sounds like one. It is much more about developing the integrity to do the hard things you will be required to do to implement your vision. If equity is important to your program, you may have to get creative with which games you pick and which platforms. If you lean into that approach, you may find yourself on the leading edge of something fantastic.

Summary and Takeaways

Once you start working with teens, the choices you make and how you act will shape your entire program. The first principle to keep in mind is to do the right thing. While this might sound overly simple, you want that "strive" to be aimed toward your "just cause". A Just Cause, as defined by Simon Sinek, is about creating long term alignment for you and your team. This is the "right thing" you are leaning into. A program can't say, "we put players first", then put the players last in every decision. That is not seeking to do the right thing. It's the exact opposite. Committing to a Just Cause not only can unleash creativity within your program, it also shows others how they can come along side you and help. The vision, and your actions generate alignment.

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References

1. Sinek, S. (2020). The Infinite Game. Portfolio Penguin.