Predetermined Decision Making
A standard you don't enforce was never a standard
Looking back, my heart got too big when I was coaching. I could rationalize poor behavior that I said I would not accept, because I cared for the kid and wanted to impact their life. If I am being more brutally honest, I think at times I rationalized most when the player was really good. Sometimes this was only an internal struggle. Other times I made decisions in a way that violated our standards.
It usually did not look like a decision at all. A kid I depended on would cut a corner on something I had told the whole team mattered, and I would find a way not to see it. I would turn to talk to another coach at exactly the right moment. I would decide I could not be sure what I saw. I gave myself the out before I ever had to take a stand, and I told myself I was being fair when I was really just avoiding the cost.
What I needed, and did not have, was a way to take the decision out of the moment before the moment arrived. During the process of writing this book, a colleague mentioned to me how the concept of predetermined decision making changed his coaching career for the better. By predetermined decision making, he meant that he knew when certain things happened, the standard of his leadership and program was that he would react in a certain way. And he would not give himself an option to change his mind. This is just what he would do. He used two examples.
He had behaviors that were not allowed at practice, or sometimes in the program. Language was one. If he heard a curse word, or thought he heard one, the player was told to leave practice for the day. Their standard was that language stayed appropriate, so even the perception of crossing it ended the day for that player. It made it simple.
He also held a hard line on being on time. Practice started at a set time, and if a player was late, he did not start the next game. It did not matter if the kid was his best player or had a good reason. The standard was that you respected the team’s time, and the consequence was decided long before anyone walked in late. He knew that if he left it open, he would talk himself into an exception for the player he most needed, on the day he most needed him. So he took the choice away from himself.
In each of these situations, you can find nuance. What if he was our best player and we needed him on the road? What if the kid did not actually swear? It did not matter. The decision had been made and communicated well before, so it did not give him an out to rationalize because of a misunderstanding or a fear of losing.
This is why you have to choose your standards carefully. A predetermined decision you don’t actually believe in is worse than not having one, because you will either break it and teach your team the standard is negotiable, or enforce it and resent a rule you never meant. So do not draw a hard line unless you mean it all the way down. But once you have chosen, that is exactly the point. You don’t get to relitigate it in the moment, with a kid you need, on the day it costs you something. You decided when it was easy to be honest, so you would not have to decide when it was hard.
I learned this the hard way, the one time it mattered most. We were at a super regional, a few wins from playing for a national championship, the closest I ever got as a coach. The night before we played, I found out several of my guys had been smoking weed a month earlier. It was a clear violation of our policy. And the easy thing, the thing nobody in that locker room would have blamed me for, was to say I didn’t know in time. It happened weeks ago. I was just told. I could finish the run and handle it after. The out was right there, and it was clean.
I sat them. It may well have cost us our shot at playing for it all, the best chance those players and I ever had. I have replayed that weekend more times than I can count, and I still believe it was right, because the standard was the standard before I knew I would ever have to pay this much for it. If I had built myself an exception that night, it would not have been a standard at all. It would have been a thing I believed in until it got expensive.
A predetermined decision is supposed to cost you something. If it never does, you didn’t have a standard, you had a preference. You find out which one you had on the day you most want to bend it, and by then it’s too late to decide. That’s the whole reason you decide early. Not to make the easy calls easier, but to make the hard ones for you, before you’re standing in the moment looking for a reason to look away.
Check out our book!
Things That Are Making Us Think
Really enjoyed this article from The Undefeated. Article: How Social Media Changed Youth Sports.
Thank you for sharing a great example of courage to do the right thing.