Can Sports Teach the Political World Anything?

After more than 30 years as a communications advisor, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many intriguing figures in the sports world.

Lessons from that world can be applied, I believe, to elected officials (whether they be, in Canada, backbench MP’s or Ministers-in-waiting) and those who advise them.

To provide some context, when I work with professional athletes, coaches (or with corporate leaders, for example) I always ask the same question: “How important is your own personal credibility to you?” To a person, everyone essentially answers, “It’s everything….the most important thing.”

But many in the sports world, specifically, react poorly in the media spotlight.

They either: 

• become overly sensitive
• play games with the media 
• don’t answer legitimate questions directly
• pick fights with particular reporters 
• can’t handle legitimate performance criticism  
• have public and overly emotional meltdowns 
• claim they were misquoted or taken out of context
• are numbingly bland

 In short, they engage in tactics that have the absolute opposite effect of building credibility with those who hear their words and view their actions.

I well understand the dilemma—in sports and in politics. There is a historical mistrust between media and politicos, as there has been recently between those who cover sports teams and the players and coaches they interact with in a particular market.

This has been exacerbated, of course, as media has become even more pervasive.

Given that media folks tend to last longer than most politicians or sports figures in a particular market, it makes sense, then, to find ways to make the interaction less contemptible.

Some Specific Suggestions to Help Politicians Become Better Communicators: 

1. 
   
    I’ve been in meeting rooms where politicians have been told, quite literally, “Minister, you don’t have to answer questions directly. Just keep repeating your message until the questions change…” or words to that effect. “Success” in those circumstances was (sadly) gauged by having survived tough questions through obfuscation. This approach kills credibility. (In sports, when a coach stays with this approach for too long, he is quite rightly ridiculed by the press—and fans.)
2. 
   
   “Talking points” can be important, of course. But how points are brought across is just as, if not more important. Just repeating the same lines over and over makes no sense. If you are asked a legitimate question, either in the House or out, why can’t it ever be addressed directly? Is it stubbornness, fear or simply bad advice, which precludes an elected official from responding appropriately? 
3. 
   
   Have you really won with the public when you leave Question Period either having yelled at the Minister of the day, or as the Minister of the day, having yet again successfully managed to crawl through Question Period evading real answers to the questions you were asked? Does anyone outside of Ottawa really think that still equals effective, credible communication, or concern for finding solutions to the real problems people face? 
4. 
   
   We all understand there is a huge risk, especially these days, in how politicians communicate. Athletes will still get paid if they mess up their media relationships. Politicians may lose their job. One slip, one off-hand remark and a political career may be lost. You’re followed everywhere, almost like a celebrity. Your comments and conversations are taped constantly. It can be both intoxicating and intimidating. 
5. 
   
   So the question may be, can you really be genuine and be in “successful” in politics? I still believe it’s possible, yes. You can be yourself. Just be your best self—true to yourself, determined and passionate.
6. 
   
   I’ve for many years believed that people don’t have to agree with you for you to be an effective communicator. In fact, they may disagree vehemently with your point of view.
7. 
   
   But, and this is a big but—if you can communicate in a thoughtful and credible way, in a manner that at least doesn’t turn people away and actually engages them and makes them open to at least really listening to what you have to say, then that is a first step in effective communication. 
8. 
   
   That means tone (how you say what you say) and attitude (arrogant, condescending or genuinely interested?) are hugely significant.
9. 
   
   The ability to deal straightforwardly is also crucial. If you dance around a question, people sense it immediately. People may not like an honest answer when they hear it, and honesty can do political damage, for sure. 

 But people absolutely loathe dishonesty when they detect it, so what’s worse?

Communication Questions and Thoughts for Political Advisors

 On the other hand, what can you, as a staffer do, to help your boss achieve something closer to “balance” in the way they prepare to communicate with their various day-to-day audiences—other politicians, the media, the everyday people and working families in their own community who your MPs are there to represent?

Again, lessons from the world of sports—from kids on the playground to professionals—may help guide you in your efforts:

1. 
   
   Adopt a team-centric approach. Do it because it’s the right thing to do, but also out of self-interest. Former staffers tell me the life expectancy of many Hill advisors is pretty short anyway, so you might as well go down with a good reputation.
2. 
   
   Being a team player can mean many different things. It doesn’t mean being the loudest person in the room, or the first to speak or the last to speak.
3. 
   
   Put your views forward strongly, but be open to the different perspectives that will inevitably emerge in any intelligent, healthy debate.
4. 
   
   The poor “team player” has an attitude that can spread like a disease, and over time can kill the harmony and chemistry that is often critically important in any work setting. It’s hard to meet “team” goals when individuals within the group are primarily fighting for attention, glory or credit.
5. 
   
   How are your listening skills? Do you take input well from others or make instant determinations to ignore what certain people say? We all know, instinctively, that being a listener is the first step in being a good communicator, and thus the first step in being able to advise others thoughtfully and wisely.
6. 
   
   How much, if any, time do you spend self-reflecting. Failure to look in the mirror generally means you aren’t stepping back and seeing if you are really suggesting the best options.
7. 
   
   Are you a get-your-hands dirty “role-player” or a glory person?
8. 
   
   Respect given is usually respect returned. This includes respect not just for your boss, but for fellow workers. Genuine respect is the basis for lasting relationships, in good times and bad.
9. 
   
    Negative body language can send awful signals—mostly about ourselves.
10. 
    
    The blame game is a favorite excuse in sports—is it in your office? “Not my fault”… is often our first instinct. In the non-teamwork environment, when things hit the fan, eventually everyone learns to cover their back, and you end up with a room full of people with their backs against a wall. It’s hard to be effective that way.
11. 
    
    When someone else is down, pick them up.
12. 
    
    Trust takes a long time to earn. But comfort is something you can start to create the moment you meet someone.
13. 
    
    Read, watch, compare, research, think, check your common sense meter, and then advise.

 If anyone—politicians, advisor, whomever—ever discovers that responsibility is more important than “power” and could genuinely and legitimately communicate that; the country would be further ahead.

A final comment: you’re never so experienced in these things that you can’t learn more. I recently read a comment from former Super-Bowl winning coach Jon Gruden, now a color analyst for ESPN. He has spent his “down” time away from coaching to be with family, but also to learn more about coaching methods. He mentioned that he has reached out to college coaches, and learned a lot from them, including coaches at Appalachian State.

Here’s someone who has won the biggest award in his profession, learning from those at a school many have never heard of.

The lesson of humility may be a worthwhile one for politicians and staffers, too.

Political communications advisors, politcal spin doctors, good media advice, bad media advice

The issue is more than respect

Within the past few days, I heard an NHL player, still in his 20’s, discussing the issue of “head shots” in the NHL.

It’s a serious issue, to be sure. The league has unfortunately been slow to deal with the question of concussions as a serious health concern. All major professional leagues are really just beginning to deal with the significant medical questions involved with any degree of resolve.

Interestingly, during the interview, the player suggested that there was less “respect” (there’s that word again) in the game than there was even five years ago.

The reality is, “respect”—or lack thereof—has been an issue for much longer than that. Some players may believe it has just cropped up as a problem, but that’s simply not the case. Every generation of player looks back and seems to say that there was more respect in the game in “their” day.

The thing is, those of us who have followed the game for fifty-plus years have heard that kind of comment for years and years.

Surely, there was no “respect” in the game more than five years ago when Todd Bertuzzi did what he did to end the career of a fellow NHL player. The young player had delivered in an earlier game between the two teams what may or may not have been considered, by some, a “clean” heat on the Canucks’ leader, Markus Naslund.

The price he paid: His career.

Yet Bertuzzi is still playing and has made millions and millions of dollar in income since.

So, how serious is the league about changing this ugly aspect of the culture of the game? The problem has exited forever.

How much respect was there when Eddie Shore ended Ace Bailey’s career in the 1930’s?

How much respect was there was Montreal’s Doug Harvey intentionally speared New York’s Red Sullivan in the 1959-60 season, I think it was, and Sullivan almost died?

Was there respect between players when Wayne Maki and Ted Green swung sticks at each other in a game in the late 1960s, and Green was seriously injured and was never the same player again afterward? Or when Eddie Shack and Larry Zeidel did much the same thing with their sticks?

Similarly, when Wayne Cashman swung his stick over his own head in a wheelhouse action and just missed hitting Dennis Hextall in the head in an early 1970s NHL game, where was the respect? There was no respect- and no suspension.

Did the Broad Street Bullies, the dirtiest team in hockey history that I have ever seen, play with respect?

When Dale Hunter hammered an unsuspecting Sylvain Turgeon from behind in a playoff game in the early ‘90s—simply because Turgeon had scored a goal—was there concern for fellow players in the game? Or when Marty McSorley chased down Donald Brashear and knocked him out with a stick to the head in the year 2000?

The point is: there has always been violent, terrible behaviour in the game. For too long, the league meted out only minimum justice (the McSorley incident/suspension behind a bit of an exception perhaps, since McSorley was suspended for a year)—and is still doing so today.

Even 8 games for the recent hit Wisniewski hit is nothing, really.

Speaking of nothing, that’s what Matt Cooke got for ending Marc Savard’s season.

At some point, the NHL Players Association has to wake up and focus on protecting the majority of their membership, rather than protecting the “rights” of a relative few players who carelessly injure others, under the guise of being a tough or aggressive player. (Bob Gainey was one of the toughest players in hockey in the 1970s and ‘80s, but didn’t resort to dirty play.) In fact, the NHLPA should have been way ahead of the League ownership on this one.

It’s hard to challenge the longstanding culture of the game, but it has to be done.

U.S. college football coaches continue to show the worst kind of leadership example

I’ve written in previous posts about a number of U.S. college football coaches and the (to me, at least) disappointing way some of them conduct their business.

They are supposed to be teachers, leaders, role-models, winners.

Too often, in reality they are recruiters and charlatans.

Beyond the obvious (and countless) instances of recruiting violations, poor conduct and such things, too many leave their contracts and the kids they recruited—high and dry because a “better” job came along. Brian Kelly, who recently left his Cincinnati college team to become coach at Notre Dame is an example, as is Lane Kiffin, who left the University of Tennessee after just one season to go to the University of Southern California.

Check previous posts and you’ll see this is a subject I believe is important when we are talking about sports, our youth, and what leadership really means.

A well-respected football writers in the United States, Peter King of NBC and Sports Illustrated, wrote a piece recently (shown in part, below, in italics) which largely mirrors my long-held views. I was particularly drawn to comments attributed to the son of legendary college football coach Joe Paterno.

*****

This Lane Kiffin story really ticks me off.

The gall of Kiffin. The unmitigated, outrageous gall of this kid. And the idiocy of Tennessee apparently giving Kiffin -- when, let's be honest, what options did he have coming off his disastrous 5-15 run with the Raiders? -- an $800,000 buyout after one year of his contract. But I blame Kiffin far more. Tennessee bought out Phil Fulmer's coaching staff, then brought in Kiffin and his staff (including his father, Monte, for a reported $1-million-a-year deal to be a college defensive coordinator) and the minute there's an opening at USC, Lane Kiffin bolts ... in the prime part of recruiting season, a terrible time to hire a coaching staff.

I wonder if Kiffin ever said to a single recruit since getting hired by Tennessee 13-plus months ago, "USC's my dream job, so if it ever opens up, I've got to go?'' Of course not. I'm sure the conversation was something like, "Come to Tennessee, I'm going to be here a long, long time, and we're going to win a national championship together.''

One 7-6 season. After Tennessee rescued a tarnished Kiffin. After Tennessee's athletics department backed Kiffin through six secondary recruiting violations, and after Tennessee backed Kiffin in a potential violation of having campus "hostesses'' make "visits'' to recruits all over the southeast.

And he's rewarded by another institution of higher learning (and I type that with as much sarcasm as I can muster), making him even richer than if he'd stayed at Tennessee .

Where's the decency? The maturity? The gratitude? The simple sense of even a pinch of loyalty?

My favorite part of this story is that Kiffin left Tennessee so hurriedly that he didn't even bother to call his brother-in-law, the brother of his wife, who was also his quarterbacks coach at Tennessee . The New York Times reported David Reaves found out Kiffin was bolting when he saw the news on TV at a local restaurant.

In the past few days, I've learned that I'm really old, because there's not nearly as much outrage as I thought there'd be over this. I'd say my Twitter account has been 60-40 against my anti-Kiffin stance (yes, I did call him "a bum''), believing that as long as he pays the buyout, he's got no obligation to the university beyond that. That's where I'll draw the line in the moral sand. He has an obligation to Tennessee. That school gave Kiffin and his family a life-preserver when he was on the street. Would he have gotten a good coaching job, after Davis booted him out of Oakland? Maybe. An SEC contender's coaching job? I doubt it. And this is how he thanks them.

Interesting column Friday on statecollege.com by Penn State quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno, son of Joe, railing about the state of college football. "This profession has lost touch with the reality of the world around us, and some coaches have lost touch with what the mission of our profession should be,'' Jay Paterno wrote. "We are starting to look as arrogant as the Wall Street bankers raking in seven-figure bonuses. The astronomical explosion in coaching salaries continues at a time of 10 percent unemployment in America and exploding tuition costs burdening working class families ... Coaches walk into a recruit's home and talk about how they will look out for that young man's future. The expectation is that the coach will help to guide him through a very formative time. A year later the same coach is off to another job for more money and left behind are the young men he promised to nurture towards their future.''

That's precisely the way I feel. I hated Brian Kelly skipping out on Cincinnati before its bowl game; I hated the USC staff not returning calls to recruits they'd bombarded with text messages and phone calls for months when Pete Carroll flirted with the Seahawks. But this one is so reprehensible because of Kiffin being rescued by the Vols and leaving after a cup of coffee and tons of broken promises. Now, a few notes responding to many of your e-mails and Tweets to me:

• Why this differs from a NFL coach like Bobby Petrino or Nick Saban leaving for college football. It doesn't. Those things were outrageous too.

• Why this differs from a coach who gets fired despite having a valid contract with his pro or college team. It does, because teams or schools have to pay a coach who gets fired what he's due under the terms of his contract. If he's got three years and $3 million left, the school has to fork it over.

• Why this differs from the Josh Cribbs story. You may know that I've been on Cribbs' contractual side. He's got three years left on a contract that in 2009 made him the 30th-highest-paid Cleveland Brown, though he was selected the all-pro return man this season. I've written the Browns should do the right thing and give Cribbs, the most dangerous special-teamer in football, a new contract. I feel strongly he should be paid more. But if he is not paid, he needs to live up to the contract he signed. He signed it, it stinks, and he's got to live with it if he can't reach agreement on a new deal.

• Why this differs from the real world. Scores of you believe I'm a Pollyanna about this. I currently have a contract with Sports Illustrated, and another with NBC. If another media company came to me and offered me three times what I'm making, I wouldn't entertain the offer. I want to believe I'm like most Americans -- a contract's a contract.

Except, of course, if you're a college football coach.

********

Based on King’s comments above, some people are evidently not troubled by coaches moving around, believing, I suppose, that it’s a “free country” as the saying goes and coaches have a right to go where they want to go, whenever they want to go- just like anyone else

While that is true, the example it sets for young people, on many levels, is anything but good.

Hockey violence: where does it stop?

There’s no point shying away from the word. Hockey is working its way back—or has never really moved away from—violence.

Eddie Shore ended Ace Bailey’s NHL career in the 1930s with a vicious hit.

In the early 1970s, I recall watching Wayne Cashman of the “Big Bad Bruins” swing his stick over his head violently and just miss hitting Minnesota’s Dennis Hextall in the head during a brawl between the two-teams. The NHL did nothing. It was just “part of the game”.

Later that decade, the “Broad Street Bullies” won two Stanley Cups. The Ontario legal system tried to jump in, and many argued the courts had no place in hockey rinks, because the sport ‘regulated’ itself.

Really?

We all remember the Todd Bertuzzi incident of a few years ago. Steve Moore has never played again. Last time I looked, Bertuzzi was still making millions, playing in the NHL. He represented Canada at the Olympics (selected by Hockey Canada), did he not, after that awful act?

A few folks say, “Oh, that’s terrible”, a player gets a slap on the wrist and we move on.

Has our mentality changed at all?

Last week, a well-regarded junior player in the Quebec League elbowed an unsuspecting opposing player, leading to convulsions on the ice. A suspension “announcement” is due shortly.

That same player displayed on-ice behaviour at the recent world junior championships that should have been punished. Hockey Canada did nothing.

Does the NHL, or Hockey Canada, set the “attitude” tone for hockey behaviour?

This past November, in an earlier post, I wrote the following:

Players can say they don’t hit to injure, but they certainly hit to hurt, and given the reality of the human body, that’s really no distinction at all.

Players are bigger and skate faster than ever before. The huge equipment players wear is a big problem. It makes players feel they aren’t vulnerable, yet they are, in part because of the equipment they wear.

Football and hockey were both probably safer (still “hard-hitting” but safer) when players dressed more like rugby players than gladiators.

Think about: fans -and the media - have spent countless hours in recent years discussing the apparent epidemic of serious injuries—head shots (many still “legal” in hockey terms); hitting from behind situations; concussions; knee injuries and more.

It really does have to stop.

When you have 16 year-old playing against men, the risks are already there. Unless hockey authorities begin to absolutely, once and for all, outlaw hitting from behind or even the side, this problem will continue.

NHL GM’s met this week, and reports suggest movement was made about creating new rules to reduce dangerous hits. Too often in the past the league talked around the real issues. They can’t seem to decide what types of hits should be “legal”.

To me, the question is not what is legal in hockey terms, but what is dangerous.

The game has changed. Rules, and what is—and isn’t—allowed, should evolve as a result.

It has taken generations to get people to recognize the problems associated with smoking, for example, and to change behaviour. And still, probably 20% or more of people smoke in Canada and the United States.

Changing the mentality around hockey won’t be easy. You don’t want to lose the great parts of the action, but surely protecting the basic safety of vulnerable athletes—especially at the younger ages—must be a priority.

Again, let’s not pretend we’re making a big deal out of nothing. This is a big deal. Hockey is a great game, but has always experienced players who go way over “the line”.

We’ve talked about hitting from behind, for example, for years. Youth hockey has those “STOP” signs on the back of jerseys. Yet, watch almost any NHL game these days and you see guys throwing other players into the boards from behind.

Why?

We demand that players be rough and tough, and in the middle of intense competition, when athletes have heard this all their life, this is what you’re going to get. Violence.

It’s hard enough to made smart decisions in the middle of the day in a relaxed and comfortable environment—when you have time to make the best decision you can.

In sports, and certainly in hockey, players have a split-second to decide. Their competitive instincts, and the values they have been taught since they were kids, take over.

So you don’t want to dull the competitive instincts, but we better do something about the values were are installing in our young people when to comes to competition.

We can talk all day and junior hockey commissioners can use nice, thoughtful-sounding words about what’s not acceptable, but at the end of the day, nothing is actually changing.

We all realize professional sports is about winning—full stop. Big business. People talk about the importance of character but if, at the end of the day, a Sean Avery helps you win, he has a job. The same attitude is pervasive, not only at the Junior levels of sport, but all the way down through the minor/youth levels.

A visit to most any youth hockey rink on any given night, and listening to parents yell at opposing players who may be all of 10 years old, tells us all we need to know.

It’s sad, just really sad.

McGwire still misses the mark

Former baseball slugger Mark McGwire “came clean” recently, finally admitting he took steroids over many years in his juiced-up major-league career.

That he, and many others who have yet to “declare”, did so should be no surprise.

His hope, and that of his friend and booster, St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa, is apparently that people will accept his “apology” and “move on” and not dwell in and on the past. This is all part of a public relations campaign to be warmly embraced by baseball again.

One wonders if Barry Bonds, with a different personality and relationship to the game, would be given the same embrace if he acknowledged steroid use in the future?

While belated honesty is perhaps preferable to no honesty at all, before McGwire is given absolute ‘forgiveness” by the sporting community, there are some points that really should be raised:

• 
  
   For many years I have preached the importance of acknowledgement, in its various forms. But there has to be a timing element to a willingness to acknowledge. Doing so, as McGwire has, when the obvious attraction is changing the minds of Hall-of-Fame voters (who had days before snubbed him for the third year in a row) is quite obvious.
• 
  
  McGwire’s apology is written with a deft touch, which to give the impression the steroids didn’t really help his performance. His broad-brush claim, saying essentially, “I had good years when I didn’t use them, bad years when I did” is hard to believe. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary, not only in his case but in those of dozens of other “caught” athletes who achieved results they otherwise would not have, or they would not have been using these substances. Interestingly, these individuals are almost always caught well after the fact, and after records have been set.
• 
  
  To say he took them “on and off” over the years again aims to throw people off the scent. What does “on and off” really mean? A car doesn’t need gas every day, but when it runs down, you put in the gas. Was this any different?
• 
  
  He claims he used steroids only to help heal injuries more quickly. Of course, this is one we’ve all heard before (see Andy Petite and others). No doubt it’s true that steroids quicken the healing process. But are we to ignore the other staggering performance side-benefits? And what of those athletes who were also injured but chose to work their way back into the line-up the old-fashioned way—though sheer hard work and dedication.
• 
  
  He says he “wasn’t in a position” to tell Congress the truth five years ago. Why? It’s all because of his lawyers?
• 
  
  McGwire says he is being as “honest as he can be”. How honest is “honest as he can be?”

Surely this is all designed for the aforementioned Hall-of-Fame balloting for next year, and to ensure a comfy landing spot back in baseball.

It’s interesting that former slugging teammate Jose Canseco was laughed out of the baseball fraternity in light of his allegedly silly allegations about steroid use in his book published some years back. Yet much of what Canseco wrote has turned out to be pretty accurate, it seems.

McGwire says he won’t get into a debate with Canseco about the issue, saying he wants to “stay on the high road”. Easy to say when you’ve done the opposite for twenty years.

I really wonder what lesson this circus sends to young student-athletes, and young people in general. Cheat for more than 10 years, wait another five to tell the “truth”—(and was it the full truth?), then become the guy who tells kids “do as a say, not as I did, while I got unbelievably wealthy while cheating…”

The hypocrisy of the entire baseball community is stunning as well. Not to defend the indefensible (a manager betting on baseball games) but Pete Rose remains out of the game, essentially, never to be in the Hall-of-Fame, though his transgressions occurred after his playing career and arguably came as a result of an illness- an addiction to gambling. A worthy player such as Jack Morris isn’t in the Hall-of-Fame because a number of writers didn’t/don’t like him. More “likeable” players with no better or lesser credentials are in. Go figure.

None of this is to suggest McGwire wasn’t an elite power hitter, a hard worker or dedicated to his sport. He clearly was and if you set the steroid issue aide, was inarguably a Hall-of-Fame talent because of his prodigious home run skills.

It’s important—but sometimes a bit too easy—to preach and believe in forgiveness. There are worse things than taking steroids, for sure. But this particular recent apology was just a bit too easy.