Your team has just won an important game and as you are walking off the floor and heading for your locker room, you see an angry parent coming across the floor to confront you. You get home from practice and the phone rings and at the other end is an angry parent who is more than willing to tell you how unfair you are. The day after a game you get an email from a parent who wants to know why their child is not starting. If you think these are all made up scenarios, you are either naive or extremely fortunate.
Hubie Brown former successful pro coach used to give a clinic presentation in which he stated their are two kinds of coaches. Those that have been fired and those who are waiting to be fired. I think you can apply this same concept to high school coaches, just change the wording slightly. You, as a coach, have already had to deal with emotional conflicts or you will! I operated under the false assumption before, I became a coach, if you ran a successful program you would not have any confrontational problems .... needless to say I was wrong.
You cannot function in the public eye without having to deal with confrontational people. Now before I go on, I want to be very transparent up front. I was NOT blameless in all conflicts and in several cases I had
to apologize because I was wrong. I grew up in a home where the only way confrontation was handled was with silence. I never learned any conflict management skills so I tended to maintain mostly negative memories
of these encounters for far to long.
In most cases, we (coaches) are not prepared or are taken completely by surprise by the confrontation. I have made many mistakes in these types of situations, but I have also learned somethings that I can suggest which may help others. Here are some thoughts ....
1. You are not going to "win" the confrontation so why try. I have let angry parents talk on the phone to the point where they finally ask, "Why don't you have anything to say?" The truth is, they are not interested in what you have to say, so why waste time defending your actions. No one is keeping score.
2. During our parent meeting at the beginning of the season I told parents three things I will not talk to them (parents) about: 1) Playing time ... (This is the biggest area of conflict between most coaches & parents) 2) Other players .... (Anything you say to parents about other players can and may very well be used against you.). 3) Game strategy .... (Could of, should of, would of, are not debatable topics.) This worked for me. You may want to set some boundaries with other things.
3. Try not to escalate the confrontation. Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away or be silent. Some of the most difficult parents to deal with are parents of the people you work with. In my opinion, a significant
(not all) number of parents, grandparents, relatives, etc. are not objective when it comes to evaluating their own relative(s). It is very tempting to be
defensive and even sarcastic but it will not make the situation less intense.
Try to remain calm. You have a TEAM you are responsible for they (parents)
have a child to be concerned about. Your job is to do what's best for the TEAM and that may or not benefit any one individual player.
4. Stay away from social media. Once you hit the send button you cannot retrieve it, rewrite it or delete it! Talk to your players about their use of
social media.
5. If you receive a critical email, letter, etc. and you feel the need to respond. Save the critical document(s) and your responses. If your critics push the issue you will have a hard copy of what has been communicated. Always try to respond professionally, if you feel you need to respond. Make sure you keep your A.D. in the loop. They do not, nor do they deserve to be, "blind sided" by an upset parent.
6. If you are confronted repeatedly over the same issue(s), I suggest you consider reaching a point of simply not responding. Sometimes de-escalation is caused by a cooling off period.
7. Resist the temptation to tell others how "unfairly" you have been treated. It is very tempting to play the "victim"s" role. Believe it or not, you are not the only person to have been criticized. Try to evaluate the critical information. Evaluate its validity. Then move on. If you need to apologize, do so without expecting a favorable response from your critics.
8. Life is not fair. If you have screwed up, admit it. Apologize for it and move on! Don't function under the assumption that saying you were wrong is a sign of weakness. Many of us teachers of the game, labor under the false assumption that we should be perfect. Of course we are not. We know we need to be patient with our players but we sometimes forget we need to bestow some of that patience on ourselves.
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