The Story

Our first year at Hendrix College was challenging. The women’s soccer program lagged far behind most of the teams we competed against. Apart from a few players, many of the women had little or no competitive youth or high school soccer experience.

We lost most games by wide margins and rarely played competitively. The players were intelligent, good people who worked hard, but the reality was that we simply did not have enough soccer ability or experience on the roster.

Back at our rental home, I would get calls from friends in Chicago. Those conversations were private, direct, and sometimes pretty raw. I talked openly about our lack of talent and our inability to compete.

There was just one problem.

Our daughter, Micaela, was about seven years old, and apparently she was listening.

I had sworn her to secrecy because the last thing I wanted was for our players to hear my private assessment of the team.

The coaching challenge was real. How do you take a group of young women who did not have enough soccer in their backgrounds and help them compete in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference against programs recruiting players with years of high-level youth experience?

I coached our players sincerely and honestly. I wanted them to improve, and I wanted us to become more competitive. At the same time, I knew that if the program was going to move forward, eventually our roster would have to look more like the rosters of the teams we were playing.

Then, after one home game, Micaela was around some of our players. They started teasing her about me, saying things like, “Your daddy is fat.”

Apparently, seven-year-old Micaela decided she had heard enough.

She fired back with something along the lines of:

“My daddy tells all his friends you guys suck.”

So much for secrecy.

When Paula found out, she was mortified. She told Micaela that she was going to have to tell her daddy what she had done.

When I walked toward the parking lot after the game, Micaela was crying. I wondered what had happened. Paula told me what she had said.

My response was immediate.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I did say those things. You told them the truth.”

That solved one problem. I wanted my daughter to understand that our relationship was not going to be damaged because she had told the truth about something I had said.

But I still had another problem.

Now I had to face my team.

I could have denied it. I could have explained that the comments were taken out of context. I could have blamed a seven-year-old for repeating something she wasn't supposed to repeat.

But none of those things would have changed the fact that I had said them.

So we had a team meeting.

I owned the comments. I explained that I had been talking privately with friends back home about some of our results and about the challenges we faced. Some of our scorelines were bad enough that fellow coaches had asked me what was happening with our program.

I also chose not to turn the meeting into a discussion about what had been said to my seven-year-old daughter. That wasn't going to help us move forward.

Instead, we talked honestly about where we were.

The scores were real. Our limitations were real.

But so was my responsibility to coach the players who were standing in front of me.

We focused on what we could do with the talent we had, how we could continue to improve, and how we could become more competitive.

I couldn't take back what I had said.

I could only own it and decide what I was going to do next.

The Lesson

First, don't trust a seven-year-old to keep your secrets.

Seriously.

The larger lesson is about taking ownership of our words and actions.

Those conversations were private. They were never intended for my players to hear. But once my words reached them, whether I intended that to happen no longer mattered very much.

They were my words.

I had said them.

So they were mine to own.

We are often tempted to defend ourselves when something we've said or done creates a problem. We explain the circumstances. We point out what someone else did. We argue that something was taken out of context.

Sometimes all of those things may even be true.

But explanations don't replace ownership.

When you've created the problem, own your part in it. Don't make excuses. Don't deflect. Deal with what happened honestly, and then make it clear how you intend to move forward.

Clear communication can keep a bad situation from becoming worse. Problems left unaddressed have a way of growing. Resentment builds. Trust erodes. Something that could have been dealt with becomes much harder to repair.

I couldn't change what my players had heard.

What I could control was what I did next.

A Thought for You

Have you ever said or done something you hoped would never come back to you?

What happened when it did?

The instinct may be to explain it away or defend yourself. But sometimes the most powerful response is much simpler:

I said it. I own it. Now here's what I'm going to do next.

Taking responsibility doesn't erase the mistake.

It gives you somewhere productive to go from there.