There is a joke in Germany that the hardest job in the country is the head coach of the national football team. Every time the team plays a match there are 60,000+ people in the stadium all of whom think they would do a better job. Something similar applies in sports, and not only among spectators and fans. Officials and management within various sports do too. I have heard word for word from one club director that they could do a better job then me. I have sat across from one who was literally shaking with emotion utterly convinced I was completely wrong and they knew better. The ones who have been coaches are often the worst. Although I did work with one ex-coach who was conspicuously different, i.e. supportive. When I asked why, they replied that they knew exactly how hard it is to be a coach.
At the professional level coaching entails managing so many different areas that what is ‘right’ one day can be ‘wrong’ the next. And a ‘good’ coach in one club can be a ‘bad’ coach in another. As Jonathon Wilson, the prominent football journalist, recently wrote, “It’s horses for courses but the course keeps on changing.” My favourite story about the paradox of coaching is a quote from Carlo Ancelotti:
“They hire me to be kind and calm with the players and then at the first sign of trouble along the way that’s the very characteristic they point to as the problem.”
Of course most working coaches don’t have the same issues as coaches in professional sport. Many of them ‘just’ have to organise a practice that helps their team and players get better. Pick an appropriate drill, give appropriate feedback and Bob’s you’re uncle, not that hard at all. Learning styles may (or more likely may not) be a real thing, but what is indisputable is that individuals have preferences on what makes them feel like they are learning and improving and preparing themselves for performance. Many of these preferences are based on past experiences, and may not be research based, or even rational. A coaching colleague recently sought feedback from their team on how to improve practice. From within the group they received two different sets of recommendations that were directly contradictory. One player suggested one thing, another player suggested the exact opposite. Now that coach has three options; make one player feel unhappy and unheard, make the other player feel unhappy and unheard, or some form of compromise that potentially makes both players feel unhappy and unheard. Coaching is hard.
Coaching is hard because there is no recipe. It involves constant toggling between theory and practice. There are courses, and seminars, and influencers and bloggers who will tell they have a recipe, but anyone who tells you that is lying. Or trying to sell you something. The dirty secret of coaching is that no one knows what the right thing is until after the event.
About Mark Lebedew:
Mark Lebedew authors the At Home on the Court Blog. He coaches professionally in Poland, from january 2021 with eWinner Gwardia Wrocław, in season 2019/20 with Aluron Virtu CMC Warta Zawiercie and in the period 2015-2018 with KS Jastrzębski Węgiel. That follows five seasons Germany where his Berlin Recycling Volleys won three straight league titles and a CEV Champions League bronze medal. He has prior professional experience in Belgium and Italy. Mark was also Head Coach for the Australian Men’s National Team. From 2021/2022 until the end of the 2023/2024 season he was at the helm of VfB Friedrichshafen, while in 2022 he led the Slovenian national team during the Volleyball Nations League. In the 2024/2025 season, Mark Lebedew takes charge of the Netherlands’ team, Nova Tech Lycurgus. Starting from the 2025/2026 club season, he took charge of the Polish team PSG Stal Nysa S.A.
Mark partnered with his brother and father to translate and publish “My Profession: The Game“, the last book by legendary Russian coach, Vyacheslav Platonov.
With John Forman, he is behind the Volleyball Coaching Wizards project (link http://volleyballcoachingwizards.com/) which identifies great coaches from all levels, making their experience, insights, and expertise available to people all over the world. The project has produced multiple books, a in e-book format available here ( link to http://bit.ly/34yakou ) or at Amazon here (link https://amzn.to/2JRqTE6).
In 2021, he launched project Webinars and Presentations on Demand. If you are interested for coaching presentations and webinars available on demand, click here.