The Invisible hand, the Trojan horse & the edge that separates!

Emotional intelligence: The edge that separates.

No two athletes should be trained the same.

As coaches, emotional intelligence is key because the same approach does not work on two athletes the same way. Understanding the psyche of the athlete—their traumas, desires, drive, passion, and, most importantly, their “why”—matters so much more than mere metrics. This is precisely why performance psychology and sport psychology should be a key element for every coach. All best performers have elite mindsets, mindsets unique to them and as coaches it’s paramount that this is helped with. I’ve been a part and also lead teams who were a bunch of athletes with few “star qualities” but had elite psychology, elite mindsets, this made all the difference! We beat teams that were deemed unbeatable or “star packed”. What made us special was, one thing and one thing only, the mindset, honed by legendary coaches! These people made all the difference! They were more than coaches!

The Importance of Interpretation

Yes, metrics inform, and data provides insights. But how you define and interpret that data is far more important than what it says on the surface—especially when factoring in the most critical variable: the athlete in question. The same metric and data point can mean entirely different things for two different people. As a coach, how you decipher this makes all the difference. 

 One thing metrics don’t tell you is, who performs when the chips are down, the deck is stacked against you, this sets off flight or fight response and the best performers fight when pushed and cornered against a wall almost as if it was indeed needed to activate their flow state, I’ve been that athlete and I know and train athletes similar, underdogs, athletes who require unconventional and beyond the limit stimulus, much than the norm. As coaches how do you identify them, better yet, how do you activate this? That’s the key, how do you activate this and make this the norm? How do you help athletes tune into this frequency or flow from get go that turns them into dominant athletes! Great coaches do this with ease, with little to no reliance on technique, practice or anything else. 

Some of the best advice I’ve gotten was from a friend I so fondly called ‘coach’, who went on to be an officer of the army. 

He said, “ you are complicating this more than it should be, you play all the shots in the world, yet on game day, you don’t play any of it, you become to technical, you think about the process, but on practices, you do the opposite, no one can bowl to you, you don’t get out, so why do you on match day, do anything different? Play all your shots, and if you get out but I assure you won’t!” 

I must admit, I didn’t quite get the psychology behind it, but the key was to uncomplicated all this! I was at that point not getting a run, so I was more receptive to any advice! 

We did something very simple, we drew boxes on a cement turf, and if the ball pitched on any of those boxes I would hit the shot specified to that box! Simple. 

The aftermath! The next 10 games I played I averaged 93! Got awards for best batsman, MOM multiple times! 

But how did he know exactly what to tell me? He had played together since we were 14 years old! He understood what sort of an athlete I was, my mindset and how I approached the sport, when I was doing well and not so well! 

The Problem with the “new-traditional” Approach

More and more athletes—and people in general—are being forced into the same one size fit, the factory method, “new-traditional” framework, hoping to replicate or duplicate high-performance individuals. It’s no surprise that this never works. This is the part that shouts insanity. And yet, the same results are expected. It’s like asking someone to bang their head against a rock, expecting the rock to explode.

The Greats and the Outliers

Is it surprising that, in most cases, it’s the outliers, the outlaws, and the unconventional thinkers who have gone on to make the most difference in the world? The greats. And when you look at the people who made these individuals great, they were people who understood them on a deeper level—far beyond data, metrics, or even talent.

How many of those unconventional people were just very ordinary in the beginning? And how many extraordinary and special individuals ended up as bright flames that crashed and burned without lasting impact?

The Trojan Horse

Almost always, these special individuals were destroyed from the inside—knowingly or unknowingly—by coaches or people within their support system. I like to call this the Trojan horse. It looks like a gift from the outside, but what’s the real reason behind it?

Coaches trying to be great? Piggybacking on an athlete’s shoulders to reach stardom? Bragging rights? Over-coaching? Over-reliance on theory, metrics, and data? What is it? I think it’s a combination of all of it.

High-Performance Coaching: The Invisible Hand

High-performance coaching is the hand that isn’t seen—or at least, it should  be the invisible hand. It’s a high-performance sport on its own but it isn’t a spectator sport, at least it shouldn’t be. It’s the sport of impact. Hidden. Invisible. But life-changing for others and for you.

Because at the end of the day, you get to go home knowing you made a difference in someone else’s life because when it’s all said and done, metrics don’t build greatness. Numbers don’t tell the whole story. The difference? The invisible hand, may not be the only element but a variable that massively influences the course of greatness.