A lot of good ideas have been around in the world for a long time. Periodically, they cycle back around. They pop up in different forms. We apply new perspectives for whatever the current generation needs. The packaging may change, but the underlying idea remains.
I wrote about one of these ideas a while ago. It’s the concept of becoming progressively unnecessary as a coach. I don’t take credit for that. It came from John Kessel. He himself picked it up at a USA Hockey seminar. There the presentation suggested it came from teaching.
Let’s really wind things back, though.
Here’s a quote attributed to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
Lao Tzu lived during about the 5th century BC (assuming he actually existed). That means this concept is around 2500 years old. I don’t think it’s very likely Lao Tzu (or whoever) thought of it all by himself, though. Leadership in human endeavors goes back much further than that. No doubt someone else before him in ancient history thought the same.
Consider this when you come across a shiny new idea in coaching. Training ugly, the game teaches the game, mindset, and all of these related things are tossed around in our discussions. I’m not knocking any of them. Instead I’m saying they’ve been around for a long time. They maybe had different terms associated with them, but the concepts are nothing new.
My point in all this is that we don’t need to look for some new concept to become better coaches. Most of the best ones have been around for a while. We should definitely keep up with the research, but we should also not brush aside “old” ideas. There’s a good chance tomorrow’s new latest thing will be a repacking of a well-worn idea of the past.
Just look at the movie business! 🙂
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