The Importance Of “Adding Value” In Sport: But Does It Always Happen In Your Team, School Or Business?

“The single and only aim of any teacher, coach or manager is to “improve” the cohorts of people you serve, in every facet of development. You cannot be judged on promotions, relegations and trophies” – Steve Sallis, Solutions Mindset

I am proud of the above quote, and am happy for you to steal it, share it and use it for future use. We often say to athletes who are involved in elite performance environments about a term called “controlling the controllables”, but what about the coaches following the same process?

Coaches at all levels need to understand more that they can only control what they oversee. Often in modern society we judge a coach or teacher’s expertise by the “end point” of the player or learner’s development journey.

For example:

– Have they made it professionally after five years at the club academy?

– Did they get an “A” grade in their maths exam?

– Has an Olympic sprinter achieved gold?

– Did they make a test match debut in cricket after years of potential as youth athlete?

– Did the team win the league?

Do you feel the above questions are fair and justified for those of us in charge of an athlete’s development, at the various levels we work at?

If so, I pose this question to you: Is the manager that wins the Premier League with the biggest budget the best manager?

In contrast to the above question: Is a reserve team manager that produces five “first team standard” players per season, but fails to win a game all season a failure as a coach?

Sadly, in both cases the “untrained eye” will see both scenarios “literally” and without looking into a deeper level of understanding of what is true and pure “player development”.

I joined Hastings United as Assistant Manager in October 2017 when they were 19th in the league. Five months later we were 9th when I left. We were not good enough for promotion, so all we could do, and were in control of, was to improve and, as I used to bore the players to death with, “get the process right”.

Often a coach or manager’s career can get tarnished before they have even started, and with this ridiculous short-term mindset the football industry adopts, which includes a lack of understanding from many board members, media or people outside the confines of the training ground, and this can often be catastrophic for the coach in charge, as people who know nothing about football are put in charge of football decisions.

I am aware that 70% of first-time mangers that get sacked in the English Football League do not get another job after their first role. From experience, this isn’t because they know little about football, it is because many know very little about everything else that’s needed. I have always said there is a person behind that player, therefore understanding people is a priority. And how does one go about understanding people? Go and work in a school! That will test you.

I believe you cannot always judge an athlete or an academic journey on the same outcomes and parameters as another. Comparison is not always healthy. Life, education and sport pathways are not always as straight forward as that remember, but my below statement refers to my teaching days, and a dissertation I wrote about how to achieve effective learning outcomes for athletes:

“Individual athletes or teams should only be graded and assessed on rates of PROGRESS they have made as an individual or group, and not always the end point. Winning is not possible for everyone. The impact they have had on their own learning journey is the most important aspect to consider and how far they have travelled on that journey”

An important aspect to mention when assessing player development is this question: Did anyone monitor or measure the “starting point” of their learning journey?

As I mentioned before, when joining Hastings that makes it easy to measure. We were 19th and climbed ten places and would also like to mention creating the youngest team in the club’s history. Therefore, the legacy was producing a team that had growth rather than “overpaid names” that go from club-to-club season after season.

Being able to measure “accurately” how much progress your learners have made is vital for them and vital for you. The rocky road of teaching, learning, mentoring and coaching individuals and teams can be hard. I have heard many people from my past getting frustrated by the outcomes of their teams and “end points” of individuals. There is often an obvious unease and anxiety about their “teams” lack of success.

Think about what success is for you and the team? Be ridiculously aspirational, but realistic otherwise you will drive yourself mad. Every team or athlete has a ceiling, remember. You just need to know where it is and make sure you get them there.

When I refer to the outcomes, I mean the end point whether that be:

– Failure at an exam. or

– an opinion on whether the lad is good enough/not good enough to make it as a professional footballer, or

– a sprinter that finishes 4th in an Olympic final and perceived as failed, or

– not picking up three points on a Saturday with a victory

Simply all the above have a context. Failure and success are all relative. 

I would be lying if I said I do not get frustrated with players I have worked closely with who failed to “make the grade” but who had so much talent. Talent, remember, is 25% of an athlete’s portfolio.

Myself and so many of you reading this are so emotionally connected to your players. I have now left Millwall Football Club, but if any of those players picked up the phone for help, I would be there. The same goes for all my ex-pupils; all 30,000 of them; I would try to help every single one of them. What else are we on this planet for? Selfishness or Selflessness?

Generally, though, the many athletes that didn’t fulfil their potential had let themselves down over the time we had worked together. Often, they had the talent but struggled to take on board all of the various technical, tactical, physical, psychological and educational advice and information they were given by highly experienced and supportive staff. They won’t be the first or last teenagers to get lazy of course, and on balance, not everyone can succeed in sport, business and education, “but… everyone CAN make progress and improve!”

I have come to learn over the years that some educators and coaches have greater a “moral conscience” more than others. Some I know do not lose any sleep at night knowing they have done everything within their power to “add-value” to the player or learner they serve.

To put it simply, make them better in life and their chosen sport. If this is achieved, I am far more secure and confident both morally and ethically that we have fulfilled our obligation to the players as coaches and educators.

Larry Macavoy, Kenny Brown, Seb Barton Dan Mlinar, Paul and Dean Palmer are guys who really stand out in professional football. Not only are they football coaches, but they are taxi drivers, mentors and support systems to these players. These guys truly care. Often, we forget that behind the player is a human being. So when I say the words add-value.

What exactly is add-value in? My answer is simple… everything:

1) The person

2) The performer/learner/athlete and

3) Ensuring we correlate and synchronise the two to ensure “holistic success” has occurred. 

Simply, for long-term success to be achieved you cannot have one without the other in my opinion. The career is destined to fail at some point otherwise.

So, to give you some context; has the player’s schooling and academic grades regressed or progressed since the time they have been with you? Would you even know? Or even care?

Kids want to know that you care about this aspect of their “life” development, trust me! So instead of starting your session with talking about passing and shooting, start it with asking them about their day at school, favourite lesson or the best teacher that has that day. That is truly holistic. If you are the type of person that hated school and someone that sees education as holding no value in your life, that doesn’t mean they will be the same.

Has the athlete’s performance got worse or better under your supervision?

Is the athletes “lack of form” (and as managers often say) and “they’re not doing it right now” down to them? Or YOU? Are your poor tactics, training methodology and manner of approach to them making them worse?

If the rigour of detail above is achieved, then morally you are in a good place as a practitioner. The ex-Brentford, Glasgow Rangers and Nottingham Forest manager Mark Warburton has been interviewed many times in the last few years in the media. I regularly hear him use the words “Adding Value”.  The use of this type of language I am certain would have been influenced from his time working in the City of London in his previous job as a trader. Many times, he has been quoted in the media as saying:

“yes, this player will add-value to the current group of players we have”.

“I don’t know one company in the world that is successful working for two hours a day”

The statement above implies that modern day athletes and staff have to do more hours in the day order to succeed, compared with the old fashioned footballers life, which literally did consist of two hours a day before they went off to the snooker hall or golf club.

Have you ever really thought what the saying “adding value” means and what it should be interpreted as in terms of your role at work? I have regularly interpreted it as, the staff helping the players and people achieve by “adding value” to:

“EVERY SINGLE FACET OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS”

Yes you heard it, “the process”. Simply….JUST GET BETTER! So therefore, what is the process in terms of development for athletes? Is it merely as simple as playing games on a matchday? Or is it about the bigger picture and contributing to all the nuances of what elite teams and athletes need to do.

These include:

Train hard

Be a good person

Get better every day

Work selflessly

Follow instructions

Manage themselves to be effective

Behave well

And be coachable with a growth-mindset.

In layman’s terms be a: “Cohesive part of the “performance wheel!”

In summary, players should uphold what a big influence of mine Sir David Brailsford calls CORE values. These are:

– Commitment

– Ownership

– Responsibility

– Excellence

It is well proven that if you instil this sort of independence and most importantly, “ownership” early into athlete’s lives for them to adhere too, then success is far more likely for them. However, I should mention that the late teenage years are often too late. Habits are formed by then, and then we get into the complex development I call “unlearning”, and that will confuse you.

Helping athletes achieve is a priority for all coaches and teachers. A common educational term called a “scaffolded learning” process is a key ingredient for success. This means helping the athlete “access and understand” the learning and knowledge you are giving them in good detail. This is vital and if you achieve this skill in your coaching you really are “Adding Value”.  As a final example, and something for us all to question, is this scenario:

If your team finish fourth from bottom of the league one season, and fifth from bottom the following season and achieve more points, then to put it bluntly you have “added value”.

However, to throw a curve ball into the equation about how you should accurately “validate success”, I will get you to think about this hypothetical question: Claudio Ranieri, who was the Leicester City manager who won the Premier League in 2016. Would he have “added value” following their Premier League title winning season if –

He had achieved more points but, did not win the league?

Tricky question and I’ll let you decide… The subjective nature of sport and the variables of opinions, emotions and outcomes, is not always clear cut.