I started playing hockey when I was two years old all the way through college and still play when time allows. Over the years of playing for many different teams I saw some strategies that worked and some that didn’t, and I have always wondered what made a coach a good leader. If you have ever played a sport or been part of a team you know that the coach has to be the leader and have a good game plan with a disciplined team in order to succeed. When in college I had the pleasure of being coached by a leader with qualities that I know now as the dark side of personality. (PSU WC, 2016, L. 2, p. 6) He had traits from the dark side of personality that kept the team from performing to their full potential.
While in college my team did not have the success we were capable of. Not because there wasn’t enough talent on the team but because we lacked leadership. Our coach was a spectacular college hockey player in his own right, still holding his schools leading scoring title. Those playing skills did not transfer over to coaching. Leaders in one situation do not automatically transfer into being a good leader in another situation. (PSU WC, 2016, L. 27, p. 3) He had a hard time teaching his players the skills that came so easy to him. He thought that by showing us a play once meant we should have mastered it right away. Since he was naturally a good player himself he couldn’t put himself in our shoes to see where we were coming from. (PSU WC, 2016, L. 8, p. 6)
The team thought that over a couple years he would learn from his mistakes but that just never happened. There were times we would play well but still came up short by losing a close game. Instead of communicating to us what went wrong by being a good leader, he would skate us the next practice for an hour and a half. Never actually fine tuning the little mistakes that were made that lost the game. Nothing was ever his fault it was always on us.
He would constantly fall back on the same game plan that never worked because of his fear of failure. According to the dark side of personality traits, the fear of failure is “leaders who dread being criticized. They tend to be overly cautious and reluctant decision makers. When forced to make decisions, they often impose old solutions to problems even when it is obvious they will not work” (PSU WC, 2016, L. 12, p. 6). He did not like to be criticized when we would approach him with a different tactic. He always said he would think about it, but we all knew that meant he was shutting us down because things didn’t change.
Playing on a team for someone with the traits from the dark side of personality was one of the hardest things to do. Everyone on the team knew that changes needed to be made but it was impossible to make them without the main leader being on the same page. It is important for a good leader to have qualities that when something isn’t going as planned to make changes for the better of the group.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2016). PSYCH 485 Lesson 2: Trait Approach.
Retrieved June 20, 2016 from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/su16/psych485/002/content/02_lesson/01_page.html
Andrew Natsuki Nardella says
This coach also sounds like he is using transactional leadership. He does not individualize the followers needs or assist with personal development (Northouse, p. 171). These types of leaders are influential and followers do what the leader wants because it is in their best interest. The two transactional leadership factors are also present in this example of your coach. The first being a contingent reward. A contingent reward is when the leader and follower work towards an identified goal for a specific reward (Northouse, p. 171). The coach gets the players to agree on what has to be done and then the payoff is winning a game. The second factor is management-by-exception which involves the corrective criticism, negative feedback and negative reinforcement (Northouse, p.171). The coach did this when he made you skate for an hour and a half during practice after a lost game. This is a passive management-by-exception by waiting for things to go wrong before taking action.The expected outcomes of winning games did not occur with this style of management. The was no reward for the team as well as the leader. This is a very common type of leadership but it did not work well in this situation.
Northouse,P. (2016). Leadership theory and practice(7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, California. Sage Publications.
sam6428 says
Working with a coach like that had to be frustrating to say the least. I agree that just because someone is skilled at a sport it does not necessarily make him or her a skilled coach.
Your coach seems to have several of the six dark-side personality traits. “He couldn’t put himself in our shoes,” is a perfect example of interpersonal insensitivity. His narcissism was evident when he clearly overestimated his abilities as a coach. And, his high standards and inflexibility caused him to abuse your team rather than “actually fine tuning the little mistakes that were made” (PSU WC, 2016, L. 2, p.6).
Reference
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2016). PSYCH 485 Lesson 2: Trait Approach.
Retrieved June 20, 2016 from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/su16/psych485/002/content/02_lesson/01_page.html