I said we’d be back when the kids started school again and my kids started school today, so here we go…

I got the opportunity to coach my daughter’s soccer team at a recent tournament because none of the other more qualified coaches could make it. Yet I jumped at the opportunity to do so because it’s a good group and they had a chance to win it all.

The team’s core value, which they break their huddles with, is “Work Hard Have Fun” (comma intentionally omitted). I like this because it’s recognition of the idea that you need to work hard to succeed but that you also need to have fun while doing so in order to be able to sustainably work hard.

Yet as we prepared for the tournament together, we adopted two more:

1. Set others up for success.

2. Love rebounds.

“Set others up for success” came about because our shooters during drills were struggling to finish chances. As I watched, it occurred to me that this wasn’t happening because they were bad shooters (they finished the passes I played to them), but because our other players weren’t making great passes. The balls the shooters got were bouncing or inaccurate and so the outcome was not their best. 

We stopped the drill and talked about how one of the most important things you can do in sports or anywhere really is to set someone else up to succeed. In this context, and even though this was ostensibly a shooting drill, this meant being thoughtful about your pass in order to make it as easy as possible on the shooter. In business, it means removing blockers for people so they are unimpeded in their ability to add value to an organization.

We adopted “Love rebounds” for a similar reason. When our players took shots, they seemed to assume they would either go in, get saved, or go out of bounds and therefore thought the shot was the conclusion of the opportunity. But the most frequent outcome was that shots bounced off of the keeper or the post. 

In other words, rebounds! 

Rebounds are great. They are a missed opportunity that immediately results in a new opportunity that’s likely even better than the original opportunity. So we talked about loving that and being in position to take advantage of that new and unexpected opportunity when it presented itself.

This all paid off in the championship when a midfielder played a nice pass to a forward who got a good shot on goal. The other team’s keeper saved it, but it deflected to the far post where a wing ran onto the ball to score. “Love rebounds!” the bench yelled.

The world is an interesting place because it is full of opportunities, but opportunities come in all shapes and sizes. There are those you create for yourself, while others fall at your feet. What’s ironic, though, is that taking advantage of the first type requires structured planning, while the latter requires being unstructured so you can react fast.

So plan but don’t, work hard have fun, set others up for success, and love rebounds. 

Welcome to Season 2.

– By Tim Hanson

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