The Barefoot Coach

by Paddy Upton

When a light beam starts going forward, one can think of a little bit of electricity being produced, and then as the electricity moves forward it powers up a little bit of magnetism, and as the magnetism moves on, it powers up yet another surge of electricity, and so on like a braided whip snapping forward. The electricity and magnetism keep on leapfrogging over each other in tiny, fast jumps—a ‘mutual embrace’. (Albert Einstein) began to explore the leapfrogging of light waves (…) If light was a wave like any other, Einstein mused, then if you ran after it, could you catch up? (…) Light is not like that, however. Light waves keep themselves going only by virtue of one part moving forward and so powering up a next part. (The electricity part of the light wave shimmers forward, and then ‘squeezes’ out a magnetic part; then that magnetic part, as it powers up, creates a further ‘surge’ of electricity so the rushing cycle starts repeating.) Whenever you think you’re racing forward fast enough to have pulled up next to a light beam, look harder and you’ll see that whatever part you thought you were close to is powering up a further part of the light beam that is still hurtling away from you.2 There is no point at which you can say, ‘I’ve got it’. Always and forever, mystery gets you … Our role as coaches is not to bring our players to where we are, but to bring them to a place and point where they can surge ‘ahead of us’ by virtue of our own magnetism powering up new bursts of...

The knowledge era requires knowledge leadership, which has fundamentally different requirements for how leaders lead and others ‘follow’. Authority is granted to the person with the best answers, or access to the best answers, whilst the designated leader is required to be a facilitator rather than an instruction-giver. By relinquishing power and authority, the leader gains influence, which has become the ‘new’ power.

Who would you invite? These people do not need to be alive, or even real. You can have Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Elvis Presley or Mickey Mouse, if you wish. This is how the exercise goes: Write their names down. Next to each name, write down words to describe what makes them so special to you. When you’re done, make a list of all the different words you have used to describe these individuals, without repeating a word. Next to each word, score how important that quality or characteristic is for you, in your life. (1=not important, 10= extremely important). Make a note of the top five rated words, with the highest rated on top. These are likely to closely represent your personal values. Next to each of these five words, write: a) What happens in your life/relationships/ sport when you are like this? b) What happens when you compromise on this? c) In what ways is this value important to you? Reflection. Write down your main takeaway from this exercise.

On leadership and Socrates, Karl Popper wrote: It is not unlikely that (Socrates) demanded (…) that the best should rule, which would have meant, in his view, the wisest (…). And we should realise that, if he demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was sceptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers of the past or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realisation: how little do I know! (…) The true teacher can prove himself only by exhibiting that self-criticism (…). ‘Whatever authority I may have rests solely upon my knowing how little I know.’ (…) Socrates had stressed that he was not wise; that he was not in the possession of truth, but that he was a searcher, an inquirer, a lover of truth. This, he explained, is expressed by the word ‘philosopher’, i.e., the lover of wisdom, and the seeker for it, as opposed to ‘Sophist’, i.e., the professionally wise man.1