Written by In the course of reviewing titles for my school library, I have come across a book written by Darrin Donnelly called “Relentless Optimism” This little gem tells the tale of Bobby Kane and his encounter with the legendary and inspirational coach Wally Hogan.
As an Australian, I’m not very familiar with these men but in the course of my work at Culture in Sports, I have learned much about US professional athletes and coaches. And in the course of my studies, I’ve learned much about leadership.
Donnelly uses the story of the relationship between these men to highlight the dangers of self-doubt and pessimism, and the power of positive thinking in the creation of resilience and optimism. More than just thinking positive thoughts and pinning hope on fruitless platitudes, ‘positive thinking’ is a lifelong attitude change that eliminates the voices of fear and doubt. Positive thinking propagates positive outcomes and promotes longer, healthier, more successful, and productive lives. Needless to say, optimists are much happier than pessimists.
Blessed then, it seems, is the athlete that is fortunate enough to be under the mentorship and guidance of a coach that is equipped with a positive mindset. The skills that are necessary to impart optimism and help develop resilience are a much-needed asset for the effective coach.
Professional baseball is an antagonistic sort of sport, where the natural order is for even the most successful batters to effectively fail 70% of the time, and common for teams to suffer 60 or more losses per season. Success then is learning not how to avoid failure, but how to quickly to recover from it with perseverance. The father of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman developed the tenets to optimism and has tabled that optimists are, among other things, much more successful athletes than pessimists.
Not only will the well skilled coach hone a crack team of resilient optimists, he will have the foresight to recruit with consideration of suitable intangible qualities in new players as well. Curating a team of athletes that ‘fit’ together in an organizational culture and emotional intelligence sense can perhaps be more important than recruiting purely for sporting prowess. What good is a brilliant player with a poor attitude? Theo Epstein, President of Baseball Operations for the Cubs, was awarded pole position on Fortune’s 2017 World’s Greatest Leaders list for having the foresight to champion character and to focus and develop healthy attitudes in his players.
That’s what being a good coach is all about.