The Coach on the Sideline is Either the Thermometer or the Thermostat

Issue 145- Jason Payne, CMPC

The Coach on the Touchline

The camera cuts to the manager twenty times a game. Maybe more in this World Cup. FIFA loves the super-slow-motion shots of fans and managers.

Some project calm. Even though they aren't calm. They handle the ups and downs of the game evenly. They sense the emotional temperature of their team and adjust accordingly.

Others give off very frenetic energy. Everyone in the stadium, maybe the whole world, knows exactly how he feels. His players do too. He isn't setting the emotional temperature; he's reacting to it.

Millions of people are watching, perhaps billions as the tourney gets closer to the final. But most important, his players are looking to him to see what their environment looks like. Is it safe to make an error? Do I trust my manager to make the right call in this game?

I have never coached at anything close to this level. Neither, probably, have you.

But every one of us has stood on a sideline during a game that mattered more than we wanted it to matter, and every one of us has looked back at that game and realized the version of ourselves that showed up was not the version we thought we were coaching from.

The World Cup is the world’s most-watched identity test.

For five weeks, the best coaches on the planet are on a stage where every micro-reaction is recorded, replayed, and dissected. Some of them keep their heads. Some of them lose their composure by the round of sixteen. They are trying to be the coach on the touchline that their players need them to be, in the minutes those players need it most. Same goal, many different ways to accomplish it. But the pressure is clearly getting to some of them

I have written before about the thermostat and the thermometer. A thermostat sets the temperature. A thermometer reads it.

A coach who is a thermostat under pressure keeps their team focused on the solution rather than getting lost in the problem. Adjusting their intensity in a manner that allows them to influence the environment in a productive manner. Bringing intensity and emotion when energy is low, exuding calm when the team is too hyped up.

A coach who is a thermometer mirrors the emotional charge in the air and adds their own. They are emotional when those around them are emotional, or have low energy when things are hard.

Both are working hard. Only one is helping.

The World Cup makes this visible.

Some of the managers are stoic, handling the match's intensity and importance as if they were watching people play in a park. Others are fiery and emotional, living and dying with every call, every missed opportunity, as if their lives depend on it. Both are fine so long as they are controlling the response and it is what their team needs in the moment.

Watch the managers in a knockout game. The information you get in ninety minutes is the same information the players get across an entire tournament, compressed. You will see which coaches have done the inner work, and which ones have not.

I have been thinking about my own coaching arc through this frame. I have had years where I was a thermostat all the way through the season. I have had years where I could feel myself becoming a thermometer by mid-January and could not seem to stop it. When I look back at what separated the good years from the hard ones, it was neither the roster nor the schedule.

It was how I was handling pressure.

The tactics were the same. The relationships were the same. The version of me my athletes were getting was different.

The World Cup manager who looks composed at the eighty-eighth minute of a knockout game has done work most people never see. They have named their values. They have rehearsed their responses. They have decided ahead of time what they will and will not do when the ball ricochets off a post, and their striker misses an open net.

Composure is not a personality trait. It is a discipline. And it is trainable.

Three moves for this week.

Pick one manager and watch them for a full game. When the camera cuts to their face, write down what they are communicating to the world. What would you be learning about that manager if you were a player watching from ten feet away? That is the same information your athletes have been collecting about you.

Training a camera on you during a game takes this to the next level.

Ask three former players what you looked like in your worst moments. Or ask your assistants, or your spouse. Someone who has watched you coach under pressure and will tell you the truth. Their answer will surprise you. It will also be more useful than any book you read this year.

Name the specific moment where you tend to lose it. For me, a lack of effort was a trigger. Or when I could sense a game slipping away and felt powerless to change it, that became the moment I knew I needed to adjust the thermostat. And I had to fight hard not to simply react. For you it might be different. Name the situation, name the reaction, and write down what you want to do instead. The next time it happens, you will have a plan. That is what makes composure trainable.

The manager on the touchline is not born composed. They chose it, over years, one game at a time.

You get to make the same choice.

spon

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