More often than not, sports clubs out there fall into the trap of looking for the Head Coach then expecting them to put in place the coaching team and structures that will take the club/organisation to the top, without any thought before doing this by the club/organisation as to where they want to go as a club both on and off the field. I call this a failure to plan becoming a plan to fail. We see this on a regular basis in my sport of hockey, where clubs/organisations fail to plan, thus set themselves up for failure.
All sporting clubs out there before appointing a new Head Coach should ask themselves the following question-
- Where do we want to be as a club/organisation on the field and off it in 2/5/10 years time?
They should also ask themselves these questions-
- What are our goals?
- What are our values?
Once they have done this, I believe only then can they truely start looking for a new Head Coach, there is unfortunately a danger that club/organisation sets its sight on finding the messiah the person who will lead them to the promise land. I have seen this in sport on countless occasions, Ron Barassi (AFL) when he went to Melbourne in 1982, Mick Malthouse (AFL) when he went to Carlton, Paul Roos (AFL) when he went to Melbourne. In each of these cases these clubs/organisations had been starved of success, and had fallen on tough times, and thought that they needed a messiah who would lead them back to glory on his shiny white stead, but they forgot that it takes much much more to achieve success, and if the club/organisation in the first place doesn't know where its going and what it stands for then success will never happen.
From the point of view of my sport of hockey here in Australia I have seen it all to regularly, where a club/organisation as instead of planning for success has instead gone out and found a messiah coach to try and lead them to the promise land, but has ended up pointing there club/organisation and new coach towards failure.
So what should a club/organisation be looking for when appointing a New Coaching team?
Well the first step is to ask themselves those question above, then once they know that, the next step is to set out a criteria of what they are looking for in a Coaching team and not just a Head Coach, because a Head Coach is only as good as the team of Coaching and support staff around them. This teams of coaches and support staff must also complement each other and work well together, if they dont then that is going to be a real problem.
From experience when I am surrounding myself with my Coaching and support team, I am looking for people who as I say compliment me, who make up for my weaknesses in there areas of strength, I am also not looking for yes people, those who will agree with me even though they know full well I am wrong. I am constantly looking for people who challenge me to be the best I can be as a Coach, and who will offer their own opinion. I often say to other coaches when they say something to me, know I dont what to hear what you think I want to hear, I want to hear what you actually think.
Clubs and organisation should also be prepared to be challenged by there new Head Coach and Coaching team, and should never ever be afraid of constructive feed-back, if they are then all I can say is again you will end up failing.
The other thing I also say to all coaches out there when they take on a new role, is that you must and should always leave the club/organisation in better shape than when you found it, and that you should all the time be creating and developing many different people to take over as Head Coach when you move on, and as Coach you should never feel threatened by this, otherwise you need to stop coaching because you ain't to good.
So in conclusion you should always be planning for success, because if you dont then you are simply planning to fail.
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