Management Lessons from Youth Sports

Here's a link from a good blog post that was on World Class Coaching by Dan Coughlin, the author of 'Find a Way to Win' -

If you ever really want to understand yourself better or to understand what motivates people, I encourage you to coach a youth sports team. You will learn in real-time situations how and when to intervene in situations that can be enormously frustrating. The primary source of this frustration will come from your interactions with other parents. However, that’s a good thing because it’s hard to recreate these types of situations in normal day-to-day business activities. You can then take the lessons you’ve learned from these youth coaching situations with parents and use them in business situations.

For example, when you are giving an important business presentation there will occasionally be a heckler in the crowd. If you are used to having people yell at you while you are presenting (i.e. parents telling you what to do during the game and in front of the players and the other parents), then it’s much easier to stay patient with the heckler or know-it-all in a business situation. At first it may seem a little shocking to have another adult step right in front of you while you are coaching at a practice or a game, but once you get the hang of dealing with situations like that you will find that it is a very useful skill to have. There are many more examples like this where you have to think quickly in responding to unexpected circumstances in youth sports.