Running To Standstill

Hi Reader

I am a GAA head coach*

Actually, see what I did there? Years after walking away, I still say "I am", as if the role was something I am rather than something I did. That small tic tells you most of what follows.

For years, coaching was all that really mattered to me. Session design, how I spoke and what I spoke about, what I read and watched, which coaches in other sports I could borrow from. I couldn't wait for dinner to be finished each evening so I could get back to it. I talked about it on nights out, ad nauseam. Those demands built up a tab that my career & family life paid for.

A good few years ago we lost a big game that we should have won. I owned that loss completely and beat myself up over it. And then I did the thing that tells you how far gone I was. I went back at it harder. My confidence hadn't dipped an inch. Inside looking out, I was a full-time professional manager in an amateur role every single day. And because of that somewhere along the way it had stopped being about the club and become about me.

Nobody said a word. It had become normal for head coaches to live & behave that way, so there was nothing to say.

Thanks to this week's sponsor, Purpose.

I've since watched the same thing happen to a volunteer-leader, a club executive. He'd held the role so long it had become who he was. He carried the club in his heart, and he'd stretched that to cover for the support he needed and never got. In fairness, he never asked. I'm not sure he'd have known what to ask for. When he finally left the role, the club ran on systems only he understood, and his successor spent over two years untangling them.

And the successor? He'd put his hand up and won the vote, so everyone assumed he must be strong enough to manage on his own. Same story, new face.

The people who step into these volunteer-leader roles tend to be the most able people an organisation has. I’d call them thoroughbreds. And if you owned a thoroughbred, you'd surround it with the best support money could buy; someone watching how it trains and recovers, and spotting when it starts running itself into the ground.

But we don't really do that for volunteer leaders, do we? Yes, we give them a course, maybe a thank-you at the AGM, and tell ourselves that all the required and relevant supports are in place. Then, when they start to go backwards, we reach for the usual explanations: time usually, and then burnout if it's gotten bad. Sometimes we offer them perks & incentives.

Those are the symptoms. Yet what is actually happening plays out quieter. The volunteer-leader’s greatest strength, the sense that this is theirs to carry, gets stretched so far it starts working against them. They run flat out just to stand still. And because they never say it, nobody sees it until the invoice arrives.

It took me years to reverse out of overplaying strengths, and I'm grateful I did. The funny thing is that it doesn't take much to catch the issue early and nip things in the bud. It’s simply about having one person whose job is to notice, listen and do something about what they see.

Who in your organisation is watching your thoroughbreds?

And if one of them were running to standstill right now, how would you know?

*The GAA in Ireland is the world’s largest volunteer-led sports organisation

My line of work is helping volunteer-led or dependent organisations keep the people who hold them together. It starts with confidential conversations that show where the pressure is landing, early enough to act on it. If recruiting or keeping volunteer leaders is a live issue for you, just reply to this newsletter and drop an email to paul@theleaders.coach or visit www.paulclarke.ie

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