The Tale of Two Coaches

When you spend time both as a Coach at work and as a Coach at kids' sports, there's many similarities and a few key differences.

Two weeks and a few posts in, I got some great feedback from my wife. She said, and I’m paraphrasing, “this site is called Indian Dad but you haven’t written anything about being a Dad”. For the 12,345th consecutive time, she was correct.

So I got to thinking. I have 3 daughters. They are awesome largely because they are like their mom (see above). I’ve been coaching soccer for my youngest two for the last few years (I coached my oldest one for a year as well, but now she plays basketball and badminton…trying to not take that personally).

Our CEO at ZayZoon (and my boss) Darcy Tuer, is always telling me to operate more like a “coach” at work, so I thought it would be a good idea to compare and contrast coaching U11 soccer and coaching a team at one of fastest growing tech companies in North America.

First a little quick background:

• I’ve been coaching the girls on this U11 soccer team for three years now (7 out of the 13 kids have been on the team all three years)

• I played soccer growing up through high school

• I have an amazing co-head coach who’s daughter is on the team as well. She played competitively through university

• I’ve been at ZayZoon for 6 years

• 7 of the 9 people that were at ZayZoon when I started are still there (and one just left)

• We now have almost 200 people

• We have about 100x the customers and revenue that we did when I started

• My current role is to run strategy and new market expansion

What’s similar?

Team Chemistry Doesn’t Guarantee Success, but it Sure as Shit Doesn’t Hurt

The kids on this team are unlike any other team I’ve been around. I played soccer competitively for over a decade, and played a number of other team sports growing up (not nearly as well). I’ve now been part of three startups/scale-ups.

I have never ever seen a team that picks each other up like these kids. Literally. Someone goes down, four of them will run up to help them up. Someone is upset that they let in a goal, all six of the other players on the field are surrounding them in a group hug. Someone scores a goal, it’s a team hug. Honestly, they are a god damn inspiration. And this all started early. Half of them have been playing together for 3 years now. And you can draw a direct line to their improvement and team success from how much they care about and pick each other up.

So while their play (or product) has gotten better, that’s only half the story. They’ve outperformed teams with higher skill level (better product) because they have an amazing team dynamic.

How did this happen? Was it coaching? Probably not. We were fortunate with the group of kids that came together, and now the way they treat each other is a team norm. So as new players join us each year by the first game they realize that there is a standard to which teammates support each other.

There’s obviously a direct parallel to building successful teams at work. The one thing that’s slightly different is that you can build your core team at work so it should be even easier to build a supportive team culture. Then as a leader at work you have to model the right behavior (if someone is struggling, you make the first offer to help out) and ensure that as you grow and recruit, you preserve that team dynamic. I mentioned we have 200 people now, our founder, Tate Hackert, still to this day meets almost every hire before they start. This helps reinforce this team first expectation with all new hires.

Have Core Values

At ZayZoon our core values are Hustle, Trust, People Driven and Mastery. We don’t use the term “core values'“ on our soccer team, but the truth is that these we focus on these same four things.

Hustle = Effort. I’m fond of saying at work, “You can’t make a motor, but you can coach one ”. I think at work it’s very difficult to create “effort”. If someone professionally lacks hustle/effort, it’s probably time to move on. When coaching young kids in a sport, I believe you can coach effort. And the way you do that is to set expectations, and then run drills and practices at a high pace. The thing about kids this age in sport is they all don’t necessarily realize what effort actually looks like, so you need to teach them. One big similarity? Soccer teams and companies can outperform their peers if they outperform on effort.

Trust = Trust. You’re a D making a run up the wing? The same side midfielder should know that they need to hang back and the far side D knows they need to slide over a bit. You can’t make plays if you don’t trust your teammates. I remember once at work a board member suggested removing Trust as a core value because it was table stakes. I disagreed. You only have to work or play on one team that lacks trust in each other to realize it’s necessary to call out.

People Driven = See the above paragraph on team chemistry.

Mastery = Habits + Repetition. Even at this age, the kids who get better are the kids who practice at home every day. Even if it’s 5 minutes. But they have to want to get better.

I’m a big Atomic Habits guy (unfortunately I didn’t really develop this daily discipline until I was in my mid thirties). I try to communicate this at work, so that folks can develop these professional habits much earlier than I did. What are the things you are doing every day that’s moving your outcome and the company outcome forward? What’s the first thing you look at each day in the morning? Your successful outcomes are a collection of small, disciplined inputs.

With the kids, it’s same thing. We give them little drills they can do every day. The kids that do them every day improve very quickly. You can see the kids who maybe aren’t as naturally athletic or co-ordinated improve and close the gap on those who are but don’t have the daily discipline.

When it comes to team game, you have to continuously repeat the same positioning and same drills so that the kids can start to read the game. Simple things to start (D always play the ball wide) that get more complex as opponents and skills improve (D always play the ball wide, but before you do put your head up to see if an opponent is reading the play, then give yourself another option). This is exactly the same at work. You want to change how teams work and interact with each other? Set norms, repeat yourself, and call out when those norms or practices aren’t being followed.

Here’s an example. Say you want your team to be more data driven. On every 1-1 a manager does, ask them to have their team member start by reporting on their most important leading indicator, their most important lagging indicator, the R/Y/G statuses of both, and the next action they are taking to mitigate a non-green KPI. Then do the same. Every time you do a team update or a town hall, have each ELT member model the same behavior. Whether it’s personally, professionally, kids or adults, habits change behaviors.

You Should Own this Book

Your Top Performers are Your Top Carers

When the kids care, the team gets better. This is just like at work, if you are a company of 200 people, and you have a top performer group of 50 people who are genuinely invested in the mission of the company, your company is far more likely to succeed.

Last year, our U11 team won 7 games in a row and then had one final game against their “archrivals” – their words, not mine. We lost that game on a late goal. Half our team was crying. As a parent, and as someone who has known most of these kids for years, it was pretty tough to see them so upset.

On the other hand, I definitely appreciated that they had such a high level of “give a shit”. We had a great talk about inputs and outcomes, and what we can and can’t control (see below). The whole talk was just a reminder for them about how far they came and that winning and losing isn’t the goal, it’s just to be better. And they had gotten so much better. Still…quietly, there was a part of me that was proud of how much they cared.

I equate this to the team of people I want at work. It’s easy to find people who want to win. Give me the people who absolutely fucking hate to lose. Those are the ones you can count on to take you to the next level.

This is from Moneyball. Read the book. And also watch the movie.

The Troughs of Despair

Scaling up, we’ve all seen this before. Basically you climb a mountain, and you run into a whole suite of new challenges. In the scale up world we often use the term Valley of Death.

From Verne Harnish: Scaling Up. Not one of my favorite books but this graph is illustrative.

Take this graph, and apply to your kids teams at each successive level that they move up. In their second year in an age category, they are generally the strongest players and the strongest teams. Then they move up. And you’re building up all over again. Sometimes it’s new skills, new schemes, optimizing for positions. And sometimes the whole game changes. You go from 7 players aside to 11 players and all the thoughts and ideas and strategies that made the team successful in the last age group (or phase) no longer hold up.

This feels almost exactly like the journey we’ve gone through at work. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons here, is at certain points or levels you may no longer be the right coach. That’s when you may need to go add senior leaders who’ve been through it before.

Managing External Stakeholders

Parents = Board.

Simple. Supportive parents who are always willing to help you out are awesome. Parents who want to coach, start giving direction and getting too hands on are not.

Enjoyment of coaching kids soccer is first about the quality of kids you get, but a close second is the quality of parents.

Put Players in a Position to Succeed

My general rule of thumb is that 80% of the time put people in a spot where they are comfortable, and 20% of the time make them uncomfortable.

I believe this strongly at work. Why? People get confidence when they are good at things, but you also want to see them stretch and grow.

At soccer, as they get older, you start to put them more regularly in positions. Why? Two reasons. One, they start to develop certain specific skill sets. Maybe one player isn’t the fastest, but has a strong kick and good awareness on the field. Means fullback/defence is a great spot for them. BUT, you also want to see them develop their other skills, so rotate them up to forward or midfield a third of the game.

One possible exception here is goalie. Nothing ruins a kids confidence more than being in goal while the other team just rolls shots by them over and over. So this is one area where you might only see some of the kids playing. I sort of equate this to the legal or risk function at work. Too much downside for putting someone in that spot who struggles in the role. In soccer it’s not downside in terms of wins and losses, it’s downside for their enjoyment of the game.

P&L = Offence/Defence

We spend a lot of time telling the kids, and reinforcing positively, that a strong defensive play is just as important as a great offensive play. So you’ll see and hear us as coaches sometimes yelling as loud in support of a strong play by a defender, as we do a goal.

If you can focus only on offence (acquisition) but you’ll be cheating on defence (inefficiency, risk). I kind of equate this to the growth at all costs model, versus building a growing business that has a chance to be profitable. Keep an eye on Revenue Efficiency from an early stage.

The Value of Spite

We talk about this all the time at ZayZoon, spite is a hell of a motivator. At work sometimes, we use that as fuel. Competitors misrepresenting us, investors passing on us, board members questioning our approach. Successful teams love spite.

So, 10 year olds are not naturally spiteful. This year, our kids discovered the motivating power of spite. I mentioned their “archrivals”. They were for two reasons. One, they were the other really strong team in our league. Two, they liked to trash talk. When our girls first were trash talked, truthfully they wilted a little. Then our other coach, she did the greatest thing. She taught them to use that trash talk as a motivator. Not to talk back, but to fuel an increased level of effort and “feistiness”. And boy did it work. “GET FEISTY” became a bit of a team motto.

So at work, and at soccer, coach your teams to use spite. Not the kind of spite that makes other people (namely competitors) feel bad, the kind that is driven by the feeling of “I’ll show you”. It’s my favorite.

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What’s Different?

Inputs versus Outputs

The biggest difference between coaching kids soccer and leadership in a scaling company is the focus on inputs versus outputs.

At work, I only want people to show up with their targets, and where they are relative to their targets. Outcomes. I don’t really want to know the details UNLESS they are regularly missing targets. The only initial question I have is “Are you on track?”, if yes, then conversation over. If “no”, or ESPECIALLY if “maybe”, then we are going to have a much longer talk.

Coaching kids’ soccer is the exact opposite. The first game my middle daughter’s team played in U11, was the first time they played seven aside with positions. They had come out of U9 where they basically ran the table in four aside games. The first half of their U11 debut was not going very well (trough of despair). They were getting dominated all over the field and were down 3-0 before the half. At halftime, I had a group of 12 girls who were absolutely despondent. “We don’t even have one goal Coach!”. That was the first time we had the “inputs and outcomes” conversation. It went something like this:

• Goals are an outcome

• We actually can’t control if we score goals

• Here’s what we can control

  • Effort (Hustle)

  • Giving out teammates space to move (People Driven)

  • How we cover for our teammates (Trust)

  • Practice (Mastery)

• We finished the talk emphasizing that the only thing we were going to focus on in the second half was to be better than we were in the first half. “If we do that, I’ll be happy, and you should all be happy. “

We lost that game 4-0 but the improvement from the first half even to the second half was marked. Now, before you think this “Lasso-like” speech solved everything, I should tell you that my daughter cried the entire way home. But the focus and the theme remained the same throughout that first season in U11. “Just get a little bit better each game, the results will come”. They grinded and finished the year .500.

From Benjamin Spall

Patience

We talked about Respectful Impatience in Part 2 of the Growlar System. Impatience is absolutely not a quality you can display when coaching ten year old kids. Its maximum patience, all the time.

Winning isn’t everything

The goal at work is to win. Win the market, grow faster than anyone else, serve as many clients and customers as possible in order to satisfy the mission. Yes you want to create a great culture, build neat things, and enjoy the ride. But you HAVE to win in order to have all those things.

When coaching kids sports, certainly at the age that my kids are, the ONLY goal is “Do the kids want to come back”. That’s it. Next game or next season, do they want to play again.

Winning and being successful as a team is one of the things that makes them want to play more, but it’s just one of the things. Ultimately, it’s how they get along with their teammates, how much fun they are having, and how much confidence they are gaining are the things that bring them back. As a coach, your only numbers that matter are Player NPS and Player Net Retention score.

Wrap-up

• Being at ZayZoon has been my most rewarding professional experience, but it pales in comparison to the experience of coaching this team and getting to know their parents over the last 3 years

• Ten year olds can teach you a lot about life, and managing personalities at that age is not completely different from managing the personalities of fully formed adults

• Peers on your executive team are everything. Our other (better) coach is amazing.

• Are you a kids soccer coach? Use ChatGPT to create practice plans. It’s been very helpful.

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*To everyone who made it this far, I wanted to extend a quick personal thank you as we crossed the 100 subscriber barrier!! Thanks for subscribing and referring. Next stop…1000.