Humility in Action

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

-James Baldwin

I'm blessed in my personal and professional life to be surrounded by knowledgeable, courageous, and compassionate giants. The picture above is of my father receiving a farewell gift in 1990 from one of his students in Botswana. My mother is a social worker specializing in early childhood education and my younger sister is working on a doctorate at the University of Michigan. I even have the good fortune of living with an amazing woman, my girlfriend, who teaches 2nd graders about privilege and combating oppression. One of my coaching mentors is a man whose incredible generosity and knowledge is matched by his attention to detail and work ethic. Yes, I'm truly blessed to be surrounded by giants, and everything I believe about learning, growth, and change has been influenced by them.

Individual people change far more rapidly than systems or institutions do. One of the reasons for this is the ability of social structures to protect themselves by enlisting fully indoctrinated agents in key positions who act as gatekeepers. The role of a gatekeeper is simple: Make sure, by any means necessary, that undesirables do not get access to power. Of course, in order to successfully maintain the status quo the gatekeepers must be completely invested in it. Systems change slowly—if they ever change at all—because some people benefit from the way things are.

In any setting, the question of who benefits and who is disadvantaged by the prevailing policies and procedures is the crucial element that must be faced in order for substantive change to occur. Certainly, the idea of people being resistant to changes and threats to their way of life is not new. Whether we like to admit it or not, inequality of opportunity, oppression, and injustices exist primarily because too many people—who often are completely unaware of the fact—are complicit in maintaining the status quo. The very act of not realizing or acting upon one’s position within a corrupt system is what allows for evil to endure because “good” people do nothing. This is how the psychology of the gatekeeper operates in just about every aspect of our lives.

This article could just as easily be about the condition of our political process in the United States as it is about the state of our youth sports culture. Truthfully, at the risk of confusing some and alienating others, it is absolutely this writer’s intention to mention the role that our national history plays in how we nurture and develop young people. What we pass on to our kids, in any setting, is directly related to the attitudes and behaviors that have created the structures we live in today. Put even more succinctly, we are products of our history and we cannot escape that fact. Unless we truly confront what our story teaches us about ourselves, we will not be able to grow and change. We will not be able to construct the environments that our children need for their future if we are unable to face the realities of how we’ve failed them in the past.

As a soccer teacher and student of the game, I’m a constant observer and facilitator of human interactions and I’m an architect of learning environments. My role is to build a culture of engagement, empowerment, and excellence. What I’ve come to truly appreciate, from coaching education and from my mentors, is that the players will learn from the game if the environment is set up properly. Good coaching isn’t merely reacting to the struggles that the students face; it requires planning and anticipation beforehand in addition to acute perception and problem solving during the session. When it comes to the culture of coaching in our country, I’ve been fascinated with some of the conversations that have been taking place more publically since the men’s national team failed to qualify for the World Cup.

Because I wholeheartedly believe in establishing a culture of humility with the teams I work with, what has especially piqued my interest is studying the concepts of humility vs. arrogance and how these attitudes affect the environments in which we nurture children. Many have said that our soccer culture—including the directors, coaches, parents, administrators, and players within it—too often falls more in line with a debilitating arrogance than a productive humility. While I tend to agree with that assessment, I feel that what is often lacking is a definition of the terms at play and examples of exactly what the issue looks like in application.

Everyday, I work with young people who are learning to play this beautiful game and I notice that they often struggle with some of the most basic and fundamental skills required to perform competently. Chief among these attributes is the ability to constantly scan and perceive their surroundings. Generally speaking, many youth players in our country lack an understanding and appreciation for the larger picture; a recognition that the game is about far more than what one individual can do with the ball. The point I wish to emphasize here is that their inability to recognize what is going on in the game, to think about the positioning of others, and to recognize and manipulate space is in large part due to our inability to demand that of them in our sessions.

If we’re completely honest, we can admit that how we use the concepts of humility vs. arrogance is often a function and euphemism for power. Simply put, those who have access to power—in any setting—are often given license to behave as they wish without reflection, hence the feeling that they can abuse their power. On the other hand, those whom the society deems (or wishes) to be powerless are most likely to be chided for a lack of humility when they do anything to threaten the established order.

What people really mean by humility in this sense is submission to whatever is considered to be normal and acceptable behavior. This explains, for example, the long tradition of non-white men and women being labeled “uppity” for daring to challenge the doctrine of white supremacy. In a racist society, those who strike out against the underpinnings and the inner roots of the oppressive system face severe backlash from folks who feel that their conception of the world and their way of life is under siege.

Similarly, when it comes to changing the prevailing structure of youth sports, the very adults who are benefitting the most from the current systems in place are the same people who will push back with all their might against any threat to their hegemony. Herein lies the arrogance: Some people can cling to self-serving attitudes and behaviors because they’ve never truly been forced to reckon with the objective repercussions of their actions. They won’t face it, and even if they do, an escape route is immediately found, especially if someone else with less power can be blamed. For the adults out there who work with kids, arrogance manifests itself in how we shift the blame onto the kids in our care for our own shortcomings. Arrogance is refusing to self reflect; it is deflecting when we really ought to take ownership.

Rather than humility being a synonym for submission from others, we ought to think of it as a catalyst for growth and change within ourselves. Reflection combined with hard work is what humility looks like in action. This is what we can learn from individuals who are truly masters at their craft. Reflection and hard work are integral in an environment where everybody is pushed and supported to be the very best version of themselves. In education, on the athletic field, or in the classroom, the idea of the instructor being in service to the students is powerful because it shifts the paradigm for what constitutes quality teaching.

When coaches are in service to their players they think about what the players needs are, they plan with those struggles in mind, and they adjust based on what they observe the players experiencing. The focus transfers from what the coach wants or desires to what the players are empowered to achieve based on the environment that has been created. The result is the difference between producing insecure and submissive performers to nurturing intelligent and audacious artists. This requires humility in coaching, this is a culture of excellence, and this is what kids deserve in every single academic and extracurricular setting.

Individual people change far more rapidly than systems or institutions but that doesn’t mean that structures can’t change. Often, the primary challenge that coaches and teachers face is establishing the proper mentality, both in themselves and in their students, to attack their craft with courage, competence, and compassion. Mistakes—specifically how we make kids feel about themselves—will be made from time to time along the way. I’ve certainly made some and I try everyday to be intentional with every interaction. Perfection doesn’t exist but consistency and wholeheartedness do.

I implore every coach and teacher out there to be aware of the fact that in a very real sense you might be the gatekeeper holding your students back. Your instruction might be the barrier between them and access to greater opportunities. I’ve learned the hard way, from an episode in which I alienated kids in a classroom, that your mentality as an instructor can be the difference between inspiring a spark of curiosity or reinforcing a cycle of negativity that actively prevents learning within a young mind. 

Clearly, the institutions and systems that we’ve been operating under do not work for all kids. Of that, there can be no debate. In youth soccer alone, there are so many significant barriers blocking access for many kids who want to play. Furthermore, even in places where families are spending thousands of dollars a year to participate, the quality of teaching is often poor. Now the question becomes what we are willing to do to change and to provide a different structure. This is where everybody, including directors, administrators, teachers, coaches, and parents must come together to define what kind of environments we want to put young people in.

We must do this with the knowledge and the humility to appreciate that we are educating the people who will carry on the traditions of the present society or they will (hopefully) rise up and create a better one. We’re teaching young people how to be aware, how to carry themselves in the world, how to respond to struggle, and how to be in solidarity with others. This is the task we must embrace with every fiber of our being, with the conviction and clarity to understand what humility looks like in action. Together we reach higher, grounded in the knowledge that to reflect, to grow, and to work hard for change is to walk with giants.