Lessons In Coaching And People Management

I coached youth basketball for years and have a good feel for it.  However, all the experience coaching youth doesn't prepare you for working with adults.   I've been a captain / coach in various adult leagues for many years.  However, early on, I lacked confidence in dealing with certain players. I was great with the low key folks who just followed my directions.  But on every team, you have guys who are outspoken and want to do things their own way.  

However, in recent years, I've started to tighten up as I know what I like and don't like.  I had an interesting situation tonight where two players were getting into it.  Our team was down 22-13 as well and there was some heated discussions.  I even got into it a bit with a few people because there was just a lot going on. 

Ultimately, I made a choice to sit a couple of players down to let them cool down.  We fell behind 29-13 but somehow came back to win 54-52.  Did my choice to bench people have something to do with it?  I don't know but it was a sacrifice I made.  If we lost the game then so be it. 

Sometimes I don't think people realize that coaching a team is basically like being a manager at a job.   Basically you have to coach people to play a game and work with their "personalities".  I didn't do the best job today but I learned a lesson in how to manage situations for the future. 

Some people shouldn't be driving......

After work Friday, I headed to the mall to walk around a bit. It was less for shopping and more to get a little exercise in. I've been doing the 10,000 step a day program for a while and I go to the mall to stroll around a bit as part of my steps I take during the day.

At the same time, I was talking to a friend of mine. After I had done some walking around, I returned to my car as I continued to talk to my friend. As I sat in my car for a few minutes, I witnessed an interesting sight.

At the particular mall I was at, the parking spots were slanted in the direction you should be driving, though there are no arrows on the ground to direct you. However, if you use some common sense, you usually can figure it out.

Well, there was a lady in a Mercedes driving around. She was already driving in the wrong direction to start with and switched over to another parking lane, still in the wrong direction. She finally switched into the parking lane I was in (still facing the wrong direction) and tried to park. When your car is not in the direction of the parking space, that makes parking a little more difficult but it's not impossible.

Well, the lady tried for a few minutes to spin her car into the right angle to park. I was surprised to see a few minutes later that the lady HAD GIVEN UP and once again was headed down a parking lane in the wrong direction.

She made a turn to go down yet another parking lane in the wrong direction. Up until this point, the lady had been lucky. There had been no cars in any of the lanes she had driven through. Her luck ran out though, as there were TWO cars coming at her. Fortunately, nothing bad happened though I don't think the lady had any clue she was doing a lot of things wrong and endangering herself and others.

The lady finally got a parking spot that she could get into. I was tempted to run over to her and scream: "What the heck were you doing?" I'm sure my friend most have loved me as I commented on the driving abilities of the woman as we talked. :)