Emotional Involvment and Commitment

 engagement

noun
en·​gage·​ment in-ˈgāj-mənt

the act of engaging : the state of being engaged

emotional involvement or commitment

Webster's dictionary gives us the destination. Now to find the roadmap.

What gets YOUR attention? A loud noise, a pleasant smell, a song that brings back memories? Maybe it's your boss yelling at you or a person on the road that cuts off your car in traffic. Attention getters can be many things to many people, depending upon your mood, your location, your moment in time. Positive and negative stimulus, near or far, recognized or unrecognized.

The next question takes this a step further: what KEEPS your attention? A chat with your significant other? Watching or playing with your kids? Watching or being in a sporting event or playing music in front of a crowd where the wrong note will bring you ridicule and scorn? Maybe it's eating a delicious meal or a movie. Or maybe it's coming across the scene of a car accident or watching two people argue in public. Positive and negative stimulus, near or far, recognized or unrecognized.

Chances are great you have looked at social media today. Odds are also high that you subscribe to one if not a few "socials" as the kids refer to them. There is something here that grabs and holds our attention. There IS an emotional involvement and commitment to this medium. Why?

Charles Albrighton's June article, "Social Media and the Affect on our Attention Span" from Medium.com states, "Social media’s natural ability to provide quick gratification and never-ending stimulation is one of its key characteristics. The addictive qualities of these platforms are reinforced by the dopamine-inducing rewards provided by likes, comments, and notifications. We are so accustomed to the instant sensations of gratification and stimulation that anything that doesn't stimulate us quickly is considered less desirable and boring. We constantly crave novelty and develop the struggle of sustained focus in offline settings."

You, as the subscriber, which in itself is inclusive and safe, can choose the site you want, can post or not post on that site, can elicit feedback from others with those posts and all of this is controlled by the swipe of your finger- pure autonomy. YOU are in control of what you see, how long you see it and if you will respond to it. 

What about video games? How is it that an imaginary scenario presented to us on a screen can keep kids and adults enraptured for hours as a time while most of you reading this blog after just a few minutes are ready to pack up and head to the nearest 'anyplace but here' cafe.

In a Carnegie Mellon study entitled "A Quick Look at Game Engagement Theories" by authors Ren and Silpasuwanchai, they conclude the following:  "In design, one can consider how to design games based on these theories. There are four design considerations—autonomy (need satisfaction), competence (need satisfaction, cognition), relatedness (need satisfaction, relationship), and emotional arousals (emotion, aesthetics)."

What does any of this have to do with coaching volleyball, or any other sport? Look up again to Mr. Webster's definition of engagement: emotional involvement or commitment. And how do we get athletes and more importantly KEEP our athletes engaged? We can take lessons from two of societies biggest attention grabs.

Social Media uses safety, connection and autonomy. Video games use autonomy, competence, relatedness and emotional arousals. 

Do your practices feel safe for your athletes? Do they have any autonomy? Do you allow them competent moments while pushing them to be better? Do they feel connected and relatable to their team and coaches? Do they feel the highs and learn from the lows of the randomness of sport?

Engagement IS the golden ticket. If your athletes aren't engaged, they aren't learning and if they aren't learning you aren't teaching and if you aren't teaching, you aren't coaching and thus your practice has become the following:

If you see your athletes bored, standing in lines too much, not being engaged in time outs and not listening to your coaching, it's not their fault. ENGAGE them. for two hours a night twice a week, be their social media. Be their video game!

Ditch the lines, keep every player involved in every drill, keep it fun, keep score, keep things game like, don't talk too much, let the athletes have some say in things and find their competence level and work to push them beyond it each and every practice. These are ingredients in a recipe for engagement in a practice. 

Take a few minutes before your next practice and ask this question: if YOU were an athlete in your practice, would YOU be engaged? Would your own child? If you aren't sure, there is tweaking ahead.

Be the coach that teaches, not just the yelling drill sergeant. Engage!