Last Updated on Tuesday, 13 August 2013 09:47
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
Anyone who reads my columns in Let’s Play Hockey has a pretty good sense of the kinds of topics I like to write about. I like to write about the basics of why we play and the difference forces that affect the game we all love. I rarely write specifically about how to coach. I think coaching specifics get covered by many qualified coaches. I believe that most times I can better contribute to the conversation in other ways.
This post, however, is going to follow the lead of many coaches out there and offer something specific to coaching. While I consider this a higher level concept in coaching, it is also a concept that can help many of us and not just as coaches, but also as parents, teachers and mentors. I hope that this little coaching tip may help you see things or recognize things through a different prism.
Recently my daughter Whitney bought a Honda Element. It is a unique box-shaped, spacious but smaller sized SUV. This vehicle serves my daughter’s outdoors-with-two-dogs lifestyle quite well. I had never seen a Honda Element before she bought hers. It would be more accurate to say that I had never recognized a Honda Element before Whitney bought hers. Now that Whitney bought her Element, I recognize them and see them everywhere. Once you see one, you will likely see and recognize more. Most of us have had this experience with cars, or household items and for sure in individual behaviors.
Pattern recognition is one of the things that make us smart. We recognize patterns and from there, we know, or think we know what to expect the next time we see such a shape or pattern. An IQ test has pattern recognition as part of the test. The first ones are easy. It might go like this: 2-4-6-x. What number would you expect x to be? Of course the answer is 8. Then each pattern and predicting what one would expect next gets harder. The really smart people can solve the more complex pattern recognition problems.
While recognizing patterns is part of what makes us smart, sometimes this skill serves us poorly in our coaching, parenting and teaching. Sometimes, and this is the point of this coaching lesson, we have to know we are recognizing a pattern and consider whether or not we should discount it.
If a child or player has a habit of doing the same irritating thing periodically (a recognizable pattern), a coach/parent often recognizes the behavior. Sometimes, they recognize this pattern as if it is a more frequent happening than it really is. Sometimes the teacher or parent then ignores many other positive behaviors and comes back to a focus on that one or two irritating patterns. Like when a son or daughter too often leaves their garbage on the coffee table. Or not being on time. It could be a hockey player who at times gives up on the backcheck. When you see it you know you don’t appreciate it and this pattern recognition has a strong effect on what you see and remember. The child or the player may do 95 percent of most things correctly, but that one behavior “hits you right between the eyes” each and every time you see it. You can’t avoid seeing it. It is too obvious … to you!
This last year as MaryBeth and I traveled about, we watched many college hockey games. In one instance visiting with a coach on an elite college team, we discussed the role of one of my former players. This coach told me how the young man has struggled at times with his skating (keeping up in a high-paced game) but was working into a more prominent role especially with the penalty killing team. This player is a high-end scorer but I thought then that their staff was focused on what he couldn’t do well at times. They allowed that to overshadow his true skills which is in a scoring role. I responded as such to this coach with a, “If you focus on his occasional lack of giddy-up, you’ll be missing his true skill sets which are scoring.” I have no doubt that this year, his senior year, if they play this young man on a top two line role, he will be one of their top scorers. I am convinced that their staff has a pattern recognition problem with the young man.
As a coach and a parent or teacher, we have to check ourselves on our pattern recognition. While pattern recognition is part of what makes us smart, it can also mislead us in our efforts to teach and parent. It isn’t that we shouldn’t try to fix these flaws; it’s just that we cannot let these flaws over-ride what many times is a whole bunch of other good behaviors. Our students may also recognize this flaw in their life or their game, but they likely also recognize the other 95 percent of what they are doing well. When we coaches and parents get overly focused on those one or two flaws of our students and children, they can become resistant to us. It seems to them that we are way too focused on these one or two flaws. We are being negative. Ever heard of a coach or parent being negative? Often our students are right. It is easy to become too focused on the flaw.
We can be guilty of this in all of our relationships. It is our ability to recognize patterns that gets us into this trouble. We simply need to check ourselves from time to time. We need to step back and ask ourselves, “Is this flaw detracting greatly from the overall effort?” Can this flaw be handled as what it really is, a small flaw? If we allow ourselves to focus on the flaw too much, we minimize the many good things our students are doing and accomplishing.
A teacher and a parent must address the flaws of the team and the individuals within the team. But it also needs to be done in proportion. Proportion! Unfortunately for us all, we have been given good recognition skills that too often take us to a place that is not proportionate.
I suspect I don’t see Honda Elements all the time now, I just think I do.
