Leadership Lessons from the Baseball Diamond: Don’t Blame Others
Baseball provides an outstanding metaphor for life, and many lessons in success and leadership can be found on the baseball diamond. Regardless of whether the game and its players are kids or adults, or whether we are participating or spectating, there are plenty of lessons to mine. Youth baseball tournaments are especially fertile ground, because typically there are many teams with many different levels of coaching skills and styles. The next time you’re at a baseball tournament, or any other athletic tournament, watch and pay attention to the coaches and how they conduct themselves and lead their teams.
Here’s a great one that struck me recently: Don’t blame others.
I saw this particular sequence, and I’ve seen it dozens of times, and honestly I’ve fallen victim to it myself:
- Coach doesn’t like some calls on some of the pitches. He thinks that low and outside pitch is not a strike, and starts grousing at the umpire. At first with just some body language, but after the 2nd strikeout on that pitch, he gets a bit vocal
- A 3rd player strikes out on that low and outside pitch, and regardless of the actual location, he labels it a bad call, and starts moaning on the way back to the dugout. The coach validates the player’s response and gets a bit louder with his protests.
- It happens again, this time the coach throws his hands in the air and starts overtly yelling his protest at the umpire. The players from the bench do the same. The fans join in.
- The next batter hits a ground ball to deep short, the shortstop makes the grab, and the long throw to 1st is just in time (or was it?). Umpire yells, “Out!”
- The 1st and 3rd base coaches throw a rod, and verbally abuse the umpire (regardless of the actual validity of the call). Now the players on the bench and the crowd have joined in as well. The player who was called out throws his helmet when he gets back to the bench.
- Then the wheels fall off for the team. And this team is clearly more talented than their opponent. But the next inning in the field, they make errors, compounded by more yelling at the umpires, and they can’t stop the flood.
- For the remainder of the game, they can’t hit. They’re swinging at bad pitches, striking out, and everything they do hit is a weak grounder to the infield or a popup.
- Game over
- In the post-game wrap-up, the coaches tell the players that it wasn’t their fault that the umpires were so bad, and they deserved to win the game.
So what happened? Is the coach correct? Did the umpires cause them to lose?
Not even REMOTELY…even if the coaches were right and many of those calls were bad calls. What happened is this team beat themselves. And why? Well, it started with the coaches, who simply blamed the umpires, which is something they had NO CONTROL over. Then it flowed downhill to the team. Individually, and collectively, they were convinced that the reason they lost had nothing to do with their actual play. Certainly, as coaches you need to keep the officials honest, and you are well within your rights to question when poor calls are made. But there is a right way and a wrong way to voice your displeasure, and question the officials, especially as the leader. The right way keeps the team focused on what it can control. The wrong way distracts the players and has them thinking about and focused on things out of their control.
The leader, or leaders, of any team are responsible for the mindset of the team members. One of his/her main jobs is to keep the team focused properly so it can perform to its best. Regardless if we are talking about athletics, politics, business, volunteer organizations, or families. The leader must seek to control the mindset of the team members and keep them focused on what they can control. If they start to blame others, or they allow their team to blame others, then the mindset is all wrong for success.
The coaches in this case allowed themselves, and by extension the players, to become completely distracted by blaming the umpires. They led by example, and their team followed. When they became distracted, they couldn’t focus on the things THEY COULD CONTROL, and consequently, they couldn’t perform. And then, to sum it all up, they validated the collective cancerous thought process at the post-game wrap up. So guess what? Its going to happen again.
Here’s an alternative approach that the coach could have followed:
- Coach thinks that pitch is low and outside. At the conclusion of the inning, he walks over to the umpire and privately asks for clarification on the strike zone. The umpire confirms that he will be calling that pitch a strike.
- Coach gathers his team, and tells them that when they are at the plate with 2 strikes, to be aware of the low and outside pitch and they’ll have to swing at it to spoil it. He tells his pitcher and catcher that low and outside is where every 0-2 and 1-2 pitch should be spotted. He instructs his catcher to setup there every time on those counts.
- When a player strikes out on that pitch, he is visibly displeased, but the coach reminds him that they’ve been warned that that pitch is being called a strike. Try to get it next time.
- When the close play at first happens, the coach walks onto the field and asks the base umpire if he can ask for help on that call from the home plate umpire. The home plate umpire confirms the call of “out”. He disagrees (inside he’s seething, of course), but tells his players that they need to stop complaining because they can’t control that call. They can only control how they hit and how they field. Focus on those things.
- At the conclusion of the game, the coach acknowledges that some calls didn’t go their way, but that’s no excuse (he’s still quite pissed inside). The same umpires made calls for both teams. Sure they’re all disappointed, and maybe even angry, but next game they’ve been instructed to focus on how they hit, pitch, field, and run the bases. Learn from this game and come back strong in the next.
Ok…truth be told, most of us in the heat of the moment can’t keep it together that much. BUT…the more you can keep it together and keep the team focused on what they can control, the better they’ll be. Even if the coach does start out the game by blaming the umpires, he can pull it back together for the team by recognizing that his team is following his lead and starting to control his approach. By changing his own mindset from blaming others to focusing on what he can control, his players will do the same. I’ve lost it dozens of times, both on the field and in professional situations. I’m not proud of those moments, and its because of the effect I realize it had on the team. Maybe you’ve done the same. The good news is that you can turn it around starting right now!
As the leader, when we openly blame others, that gives our team the go ahead to do the same. The problem with blaming others, is that this is one of the biggest excuses that the Resistance uses to keep us from reaching our goals. If we allow ourselves to think “The reason we didn’t ________, is because of <name_here>”, then we are not acknowledging our own role in our own success. It’s just an excuse. Instead of blaming, we must inward looking for ways through, and how we can get BETTER ourselves. That’s the path to success.
Hopefully this was helpful in some way for you. If so, please share it and comment below. Please connect with me, I love to hear from you!
Have a great day!
