Coaching the Millennials
Generation Y Me?
Sometimes known as Generation Y, this group of people are the ones coming into the workplace since the Millennium.
A bit different from the Generation X “slackers”, the Millennials have been hot housed, nurtured and been led to believe that they can achieve anything.
Massively full of self confidence (or something) they have yet to fail at anything in their life. They expect to be able to run their social life through work or through their sport.
Well, welcome to sport. Failure is a part of it, as is hard work, as is realism. If you are unaccustomed to failing and working at something to improve, then the first time you get a B- or are unable to get it right straight away- it is a massive shock.
Two things happen here- they quit, or someone else is to blame. The problem with super high self esteem is that in order to protect it, you can apportion blame elsewhere. This is a poor starting place for performance improvement.
The other side is mixing the social life into work and sport- well it is alright being best friends with everyone in the squad, but you are competing for places with them.
The Millennials in team sports appear to be more worried about the social than the performance- and I am talking about funded players here.
My 3 tips are:
- Be a bit more forgiving in attitude: introduce adversity training gradually.
- Allow time for social engagement at the start and end of the session.
- Set guidelines on how to interact with each other: no phones in the session or at meal times!
However, this is still a work in progress!
Further reading:
Getting teenagers to take charge of their sporting preparation
Great insights and a very timely message, James!
As George Leonard points out in “Mastery”, there is the Dabbler, the Obsessive and the Hacker.
We now also have the Blamer, who is as you say especially prevalent in team sports.
I always remind players of Jim Telfer’s summing up of rugby players – “There are 2 types; the honest ones and the rest.”
Oops-sorry. Should have signed my post!
Peter Wright
Especially true of teenage boys, rugby players in particular. Their expectation is that simply turning up to training sessions will bring them success, yet hard work and commitment seems to scare them.
I have started to be a lot more strict on how my athletes approach the training environment, e.g. no phones, silly hats, inappropriate footwear. Punishments are given out with rule breaking, the key to this working though is the team/athlete setting up the standards/guidelines and most importantly the punishments that go with them.
Brett Richmond
Its funny sin’t it? You start off thinking I sahll be quite relaxed, then you realise that people need structure/ routines and guidleines.
In the short term this can cause friction, in the long term it solves a lot of problems.