What I Learned From Coaching

March 29, 2011 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” — Eddie Robinson

Coaching has been one of the more rewarding activities I have ever participated in. The ability to teach valuable life lessons in the relatively controlled environment of an athletic season is a powerful experience.

My basic philosophy of coaching is simple. Learn as much as you can, then provide the skills and information necessary to allow an individual to experience success. As a leader, it is your responsibility to demonstrate the values that you feel are important. If you say being on time is important, then you had better never be late. If hard work is important, than you had better demonstrate that in the way that you approach your task.

As a young coach, I always put so much into developing practice plans, building skills, and forming game plans that I always took the failure of a player or a team too personally. It is a mistake that is easy to make. Instead of keeping my focus on the big picture, the team, I dwelt too much on the mistakes that were a natural part of the process. In life, mistakes are opportunities for growth and that is no different in the realm of athletics. As a more experienced coach I found that unfortunately mistakes will happen, and the best you can do is to make them teachable moments and learn from them. What I found was that individuals, given the ability to experience this became more proficient at whatever they were trying to accomplish.

Coaching also taught me to be more patient with people. Nobody is trying to fail or make a mistake. Giving them the proper feedback and tools to do something right without belittling them or destroying their self-esteem is the job of any coach. I watch some coaches who just berate a player almost mercilessly for an error made on the field or court. I listen to them yell and scream. I wonder how well they would perform at their job if they were treated in such a manner.

Coaching also taught me that it is important to realize that you are working with the team and they are not working for you. You are all committed to an activity to reach a common goal, winning. It isn’t about you and what you are recognized for, it is about the accomplishments of the group. Which in the end are far more satisfying than individual accomplishments. The experience of being part of a cohesive group that can achieve it’s goals is one of the most rewarding things I have experienced.

Some of the life lessons I have learned from being involved in coaching are:

Bad calls are part of life, often times things happen that do not seem fair or just. The ability to overcome these obstacles and still experience success is possible in almost every circumstance. It is easy to look at a bad call at the end of a game which seemingly costs a team a victory. However if you look at the whole contest you can always find many things that you had control of and didn’t do which allowed the game to come to that situation. A recent example happened in the NCAA tournament when Butler faced Pitt. Pittsburgh was called for a foul with virtually no time left to lose the game. The focus should have been on the free throw they missed prior to that that would have virtually iced the game for them. If you focus on what you can do throughout the game and in life you will find, bad calls or tough breaks will more often than not go your way.

How you practice, so you play

The way that you approach every practice, every day will directly relate to your performance and the quality of the finished product. If you are lazy and take short cuts when the opportunity presents itself, you will often lack the work ethic and determination required when things get difficult. In life you have to strive to do your best in anything that you do. It may seem extreme, but if you put your best into everything, always, success will come when the chips are down, and the pressure is on. Putting all of your effort into a practice to make yourself and your team better, will allow you the ability to put all of your effort into your job, everyday and make yourself and your company more successful.

Failure to plan is planning to fail

If you don’t have a plan and prepare your team for the circumstances they might face, you can’t very well be upset when those situations do occur and the team doesn’t handle them.

For me as a coach, practices were always split into three parts, physical, technical, and tactical. The physical in being capable of performing whatever task or challenge you are facing. This includes fitness and conditioning. The technical involves teaching the skills necessary to be a success. Skill development should never stop as all individuals have the propensity for growth, always. Then there is tactical, that is where you prepare your team for whatever situations they might face. This could be generic clock management in any basketball game, 30 seconds left, down two your ball, what do you do? Or it could be relaying a scouting report, what you know about an opponent, plays they run, defenses they play, how to best find success against them. I have found this approach helpful in life. Developing the physical skills needed to effectively do your job is vital to success. If you don’t take care of yourself physically, you will miss time from work and be unproductive. Strive to be proficient in how to do your job. Take time to develop your skills and continue to develop your skills to continually improve. This will allow you to achieve success and to feel a fresh approach about your job and not feel “burned out”. Thirdly, master the tactical aspects of your job. Know the situations and duties you have to perform and understand them in the context of what you are trying to accomplish. If you are prepared for what might happen you will succeed when it does happen.

Your either getting better or worse

In athletics and in life every person, every day is either getting better and improving or you are getting worse or diminishing. There are not many instances where you stay the same. The positive thing about this I learned is that you have almost total control over what type of person you are. In athletics, a player who doesn’t continually practice properly will more often than not regress as a season progresses, while an athlete that continually strives for improvement, will almost always get better. It seems simple, but if you implement that into your daily performance, how would you stack up? Are you continually trying to improve your game? Or are you satisfied with your place in life? You are either getting better or worse, you decide which.

Your past does not define you

Work History

Working At The Moosehead Messenger

March 23, 2011 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

[cincopa AECAmr6DEqIv]Skills I developed working for the Moosehead Messenger. Time management, graphic design, meeting deadlines, people management, relationship building, teamwork, dealing with deadlines, advertising and marketing, customer service, and website development.

“Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” – John Wooden

I think this quote is applicable to my time working at the Moosehead Messenger because I know I did my best to make the Messenger a success and serve the area in a positive way.

Key Examples Of My Dedication To My Job:

Moosehead Messenger Official Masthead

Worked Until The Job Was Done:

Routinely worked 6-7 days a week, in order to cover events and report them in the paper each week in a timely manner. The deadline day was Monday and Tuesday and many of the events of interest would happen on Sunday. Therefore, I would cover an event, return to the office and write an article, format pictures and write a cutline for that picture. Often weeks would put in 7 days to get the job done appropriately. If there was a local sporting event on Tuesday night, I would go to that event, return to the office when it was over and write an article about it and produce stats or whatever I felt the story warranted. Often times working until 12 AM or later to meet deadlines and produce the most up to date newspaper I could.

Attention To Detail:

When organizing a newspaper or anything else, often times it is the attention to detail that separates the quality of your product from someone else’s. For me that was true in developing a lay out for the paper. When I was responsible for the layout of the paper, we were always making sure that the eyeline of the page was straight. All of the columns and rows were even and matched up. I never realized what a great job we did, until that responsibility was given to someone else. Now our product had giant holes in the content that wasn’t appropriately lined up. It was o.k. but not excellent. You could clearly see that even though the content would be similar the quality of production was allowed to suffer to save a buck. That has continued as a practice at the Newspaper. Good enough is o.k.

Helping to build good will in the community:

A key factor to my success in the job of editor at the Moosehead Messenger was that I took being a part of the community seriously. I didn’t just try to make money from them, but tried to provide a service to them. A service that informed them about what was happening around the area. A service for advertising and growing their business. A service to promote events in the area for the greater good of all involved. I felt that I was just a member of this great community and it was my duty to provide them with a newspaper that reflected all of their endeavors, From sporting events at the high school to turkey pie sales at a local church, I endeavored to cover and promote all of these events and the people who participated in them.[cincopa AcGAZo6pEuK6]

A quote that describes my time at the Moosehead Messenger:

Working at the Moosehead Messenger

The short version: I returned to the town I grew up in to work for a few months selling ads and ended up staying for over a year. In that time I performed every job there was at the paper at one time or another, ending up as editor, where I was able to significantly contribute to community, by reporting on the events that the people wanted to read about. The most significant time for me, was from September 13 to October 31. During that period much of the production was done by me for the entire paper. With the help of the very capable Tara Heffner we worked a lot and produced the newspaper by ourselves. At the end of October the paper was taken over by Hometown Newspapers, who promised much and delivered little. From November 1 to March 11 I worked 50-65 hours a week to produce the paper that reflected the attitude and events of the area. I was let go on March 11 so that the paper could go in another direction.

Longer Story

I never imagined myself working at a newspaper, but there I was, the editor of the Moosehead Messenger. It was a job I never choose, but that seemingly choose me. I first came back to Greenville in January of 2010 to sell ads for the Messenger. I only planned on being in Greenville for a couple of months, to see what the town I grew up in was like now in 2010.

The first thing I learned was that I didn’t really like selling ads. I think it takes a special skill set to enjoy doing that on a regular basis. I found out that I did like getting to know all of the people in the community. That was the backbone of my success and enjoyment of my time at the newspaper. In June, my position was changed to include Office Manager and ad creation. I enjoyed this part immensely. I was able to be creative and write articles and create ads using graphic design software. I was also able to continue building my relationships with the community. In September, I was moved to the position of Acting Editor. This entailed me doing everything from laying out the paper using Adobe Indesign, writing articles, building ads and providing customer service to our many subscribers and advertisers. Throughout all of this time I enjoyed getting to know all of the people in the community. There is just something great about this small town that made me feel like a part of everything. Between putting the paper together and covering events, I was working 7 days a week and believe it or not really enjoyed it. There is a great satisfaction that comes from creating something that wouldn’t have existed except for you and your abilities. I knew I couldn’t keep up this hectic schedule forever, that is when things changed.

At the end of October there was a discussion about the Messenger being taken over by Hometown Newspapers. This is an organization which already produced several local weekly papers and felt they could make money with the Messenger. There was a deal struck and on November 1st the Messenger was under the control of Hometown Newspapers. My contact with the new management was brief but initially impressive. They wanted me to stay on as editor, and in fact told me that keeping me was a requirement of the sale to go through. I really thought that was probably half true and was proven right. We had a lot of discussions in the beginning about the direction of the paper and the community of Greenville and what they wanted in a paper. They came to town a day or two a week for two weeks and then they didn’t come back much at all. I was told to come up with content. How much? Where it would be placed in the paper? None of this was addressed. So I went about producing as much content as I could. Every week, going to Selectmen’s Meetings or School Board Meetings or school related events and then returning to the office to write about them.

I appreciate the opportunity that the Moosehead Messenger gave me to become a part of a great community. I also really appreciate all of the opportunities I was given to develop my skill set. Learning the technological nuances of producing a high quality publication was a definite bonus. Also being able to manage an office that was a positive place for employees, subscribers, advertisers and the general public was a tremendous experience. I would express my thanks to all of those who helped provide me with such a great opportunity.