When a car is designed for the German market the focus of both maker and consumer is primarily on technical requirements, features and overall performance.
A Volkswagen, for example, is not an Alfa Romeo. Functionality is more important to Germans than beauty and elegance. Sachlichkeit – dispassion, objectivity, relevance, practicality – trumps emotions. As the Germans would say: Ordnung ist das halbe Leben – literally: order is half of life.
German children learn at an early age, in grammar school, that a presentation should be objective, unemotional and topic-oriented. They should speak in an even tone. Be objective, not emotional. The agenda and structure should be clear.
The German understanding of order is taught early, reinforced throughout one’s life, and then passed on to the next generations.
In order to coach at the highest level of German professional soccer one needs a license, which is obtained after completing rigorous theoretical and practical training. Once obtained, the professional soccer coach is granted the official title of Fussballlehrer, literally soccer teacher. Not coach. Instead teacher.
Like a school teacher who has given a test, the soccer teacher (the Germans use the term Trainer) has very few levers during the match to influence its outcome. He must hope that his players apply during the match all that they learned and practiced.
The coach (formally Fussballlehrer, informally Trainer) and his staff work with their players on technique, practice specific strategies and set plays, try out different formations. But once the match begins the coach can make only three player substitutions, can to a limited degree yell certain instructions to the players, has only a few minutes at halftime to provide instruction. In the end, therefore, it is the players who have to know how to react to the opposing team.
The coach is practically a bystander. In fact, the rules of soccer prevent too much communication between coach and players during the match. Again, the coach is like a school teacher, who can only hope that his students have paid attention in the classroom, have done their homework conscientiously, and will apply during the examination what was taught to them.
Steve Krah of the Elkhart Truth (newspaper in Indiana) wrote online: „More and more, catchers at the college and high school levels are seen peeking — or even staring — in the dugout to get the sign from a coach.
While some programs let their pitchers and catchers manage their own games, many others — especially NCAA Division I schools — take that off the battery mates’ plates.
Notre Dame pitching coach Chuck Ristano calls nearly every pitch as well as pick-off tosses and pitch-outs and sets the defense for the Irish.
`I want (the pitcher and catcher) to have some element of ownership in the game, but the reality is we have access to a lot more information than the kids do (like tendency and hitter spray charts),’ Ristano said. `We just want them to focus on executing their pitch.`’
Notre Dame employs a numbers system that is flashed to the catcher, who then consults a wristband chart that suggests which pitch and part of the strike zone to throw the pitch.“
„Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James says head coach David Blatt wanted him to inbound the ball on the final play of Sunday’s Game 4 but he overruled the coach. Instead, James hit a game-winning jumper as time expired to give the Cavaliers an 86-84 series-tying win.
`To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it,’ James told reporters. `I just told coach, Give me the ball. We’re either going to go to overtime or I’m going to win it for us. It was that simple.
`I was supposed to take the ball out,’ James continued. `I told coach, There’s no way I’m taking the ball out, unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in. I told him, Have somebody else take the ball out, give me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.’”
The 2014 Soccer World Championship. Prelims. Germany vs. Algeria. It’s a nerve wracking game, but in the end Germany wins 2:1. It was a tough game for the German team, but in the end they prevailed. Grounds to celebrate, one would think.
Boris Büchler, however, the ZDF television reporter who interviewed center back Per Mertesacker directly after the game, saw things differently. After a short “congratulations” he went straight to his criticisms: “What made the German players so sluggish and vulnerable?”
Mertesacker, already slightly annoyed, emphatically stated that the victory is all that matters: “I don’t give a ****. We’re in the final eight and that’s what counts.”
But Büchler won’t back down: “But this cannot possibly be the level of playing at which you expected to enter the quarter-final? I think the need for improvement must be clear to you as well.”
Mertesacker can no longer keep his cool: “What do you want from me? What do you want, right now, immediately after the game? I don’t understand.” But Büchler stays firm, and repeats his criticism: “Firstly, I congratulate you, and then I wanted to ask why the defensive plays and turnovers did not go as well as one would have liked. That’s all.”
Mertesacker: “Do you think think there is a carnival-troupe (meaning a bunch of clowns) amongst the final 16 teams or something? They made it really hard for us for 120 minutes, and we fought until the very end to prove ourselves. It was a real back-and forth Of course we allowed a lot from them. But in the end our victory was well deserved…”
Mertesacker once again emphasizes how the German team won, in spite of his concession that not everything went as one might have hoped.
But not even this was enough for Büchler: “An absolute show of strength. A high-power performance. Do you think that we will see the same sort of wow-effects again that we saw in the 2010 World Championship, so that the team’s game will improve?”
Mertesacker: “What do you want? Do you want a successful World Championship, or should we just step down and call it a game already? I just don’t understand all of these questions.”
Germany won 2:1. But there will always be something left to criticize. In this case: Just because you won does not mean that you played the game well.
To be coachable means to allow yourself to be coached: accept criticism, want to improve, do the necessary extra work in order to perform better, listen to the coach. Critical feedback – regardless of how clear, fair, diplomatically communicated – is only helpful if the team member is willing to work with the coach.
When judging talent American sports coaches look carefully at the willingness and ability of a player to be coached, their coachability. American managers are no different. The ideal player (employee) is one who is self-critical, identifies their own weaknesses, takes the initiative by looking for ways to improve, and communicates all of this to their boss.
American team members want a team lead who can coach. American managers want employees who are coachable.
Americans expect to be coached by their team lead. If the team lead has accurately identified weaknesses in a team member, and has communicated them clearly, fairly and diplomatically in a feedback talk, then it is expected that the team lead then coach her „player.“
Just as a basketball coach will take extra time with a player after practice to work on dribbling or shooting skills, so too a good manager in the American business context will take the time to explain to the employee how to perform certain tasks better: give presentations, write reports, perform calculations, attach the part to the machine, handle customer issues, work with external suppliers, and manager their own team. The list is endless.
If the team lead, however, is not in a position to coach her player directly – due to time constraints or perhaps she is not a master of the skill herself – then she should, at a minimum, know where to send that team member in order to be coached, taught, instructed, advised.
Coach. Player. Americans want to be coached. American sports coaches are deeply involved in how their players play.
Berlin, 1936, the Olympic Games. The great American track and field athlete, Jesse Owens, wins the gold medal in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the 4×100 meters, as well as in the long jump.
What many people don’t know, however, is that the silver medalist in the long jump, the German Carl Ludwig “Lutz” Long, had given Owens the kind of advice that only a true colleague, and friend, would give.
Going into the 1936 games Long had been the reigning German champion and holder of the European record. The Nazi hierarchy – and the German people – had anticipated gold for Germany.
In the qualification round Owens had fouled twice in a row by stepping on the white board delineating the jump-off point. A third foul would have disqualified him. Jesse Owens would have failed to advance to the final round. The crowd, the millions listening by radio, and especially Owens himself, were unsettled.
After that second fault, Lutz Long walked over to his competitor and advised him to simply imagine the foul line to be located one foot closer than it actually was, saying that he just had to avoid fouling a third time, and that his third jump would easily be enough to advance to the next round.
Some sources claim that Long went so far as to lay down his white towel marketing where Owens should leap from, ensuring that he would not foul a third time.
Jesse Owens took the advice given to him by that German, advancing to the final round, and then setting a record which would hold for decades. Lutz Long took the silver.
Immediately after the medal ceremony, when Owens and Long stepped off the podium – and in full view of Adolf Hitler and many of the highest ranking National Socialist officials – Lutz Long, the German, smiled, shook hands with Owens, then hooked Jesse’s right arm into his left and proceeded to walk with him around the track, smiling, talking, congratulating.
1936. Tensions in Europe were very high. The German regime was espousing a crude racial theory. And in the United States, an African-American like Jesse Owens was treated as a second-class citizen, at best. With the world watching, and in conscious defiance of his own government, Lutz Long, a German, reached out to his archrival to give a small bit of helpful advice. Unsolicited.
Postscript: After the 1936 Olympic Games Jesse Owens was celebrated triumphantly in the U.S., only then to be forgotten for two decades, and to struggle financially, until the 1950s brought him a presidential appointment as American Ambassador of Goodwill by Dwight Eisenhower, and with it lucrative celebrity endorsements as well as a long, healthy, happy life. Lutz Long, his German friend, died in battle against the Western Allies in Italy at the age of thirty.
“You could melt down all of the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating for the twenty-four carat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment.” Jesse Owens
In this very brief video, Bill Walton, describes the coaching philosophy of John Wooden. In the sense of how Wooden coached during the game.
John Wooden coached men’s basketball team at UCLA – The University of California at Los Angeles. He was most likely the most successful of all coaches at the university level.
Wooden did not coach his players during the game. He gave some general instructions. Instead, he allowed to apply what he had taught them during practice.
John Wooden always referred to himself as a basketball teacher. By the way, the official professional name for a soccer coach in the German Bundesliga is Fussball-Lehrer, literally soccer teacher.
Bill Walton was one of John Wooden’s, and basketball’s, greatest players. His finest game was the 1973 collegiate championship in which he scored 44 points, make 21 of 22 field goals.
One of the greatest scorers in the history of NBA basketball in the United States. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, formerly Lew Alcindor. An intelligent, very thoughtful person. On and off the basketball court.
He, like so many other players at UCLA – University of California Los Angeles – who played under coach John Wooden, was greatly influenced by Wooden.
In this talk Abdul-Jabbar speaks about the great strengths of John Wooden. Not only in how he formed great basketball players and teams. But more importantly how he formed young men. And they were as players at UCLA young men between the ages of 18 and 22.
Why is this post listed under Germany instead of the USA? Because Wooden’s approach to coaching is more indicative of the German leadership logic than of the American.
Wooden did not coach his players during the game. He gave only some very general instructions. Instead, he allowed them to apply what he had taught them during practice.
John Wooden always referred to himself as a basketball teacher. By the way, the official professional name for a soccer coach in the German Bundesliga is Fussball-Lehrer, literally soccer teacher.
How to Be Like Coach Wooden: Life Lessons From Basketball’s Greatest Leader, by Pat Williams (2006, with David Wimbish): “He (Wooden) always focused on the details. He was a teacher who happened to be a basketball coach.”