HAVE THE TOUGH CONVERSATION

I have a hypothesis that athletes will perform better if they have the resolve to talk straight. Confrontation is an art that gets more refined when practiced. But confrontation has also become evil and that’s why the tough conversation is a rarity. It’s not really evil but it has the connotation as such and here’s where I’m going with this. It seems like we’re always one conversation away from clarity, away from preventing a misunderstanding and away from assuming that a rumor is well founded. So close and yet so far. When guys who know how to pass a basketball and shoot it suddenly can’t, I submit that the reason has more to do with non-basketball related distractions. In fact, I recently guessed that was the case when my own team struggled to practice with efficiency. As it turns out, my hunch was right and the boys needed to air some grievances face-to-face. I was merely the facilitator as these teenage boys proceeded to talk about “he-said/she said” banter within the school. There were things dividing the team that could have been resolved months earlier. But rather than resolution, there was distrust brewing and basketball became a weapon as one team member fired off critical remarks at another when drills went awry.

Chemistry is either volatile or synergistic. What’s the difference? By volatile, I mean that some chemicals don’t mix well and team members become toxic to one another when they refuse to address the sources of tension. Fear makes people avoid confrontation and postpone the inevitable sinking of the ship. On the contrary, synergy is the multiplied strength that exceeds the sum of the parts working together. That’s what a team should be and that is a chemistry often fueled by a willingness to keep lines of communication open. What’s more is that tough conversations expose ills in the team instead of letting them fester. Who wants a sore or symptoms to go undiagnosed? It’s easier to ignore, out of fear, the potential horror that doctors can deliver. But easier can get you dead. The straight conversation is candid and immediate at its best. It’s merely simplification I’m after and the tough convo reduces the number of variables involved with executing tasks in line with whatever the mission is. I surmise that it would be easier to stay married, defend against the dribble drive, conduct a music rehearsal, etc. if we weren’t thinking about something that could be solved via an honest conversation.