Tag Archives: Rutgers Scarlet Knights

Let’s start with a truism:  things change.  Sometimes those changes are about how we behave; sometimes those changes are about how others react to behavior we’ve been manifesting all along.  Either way, if we’re not cognizant about the change and fail to act accordingly, trouble generally follows.  Let me explain why this is on my mind this morning.

You might have seen the video of the Rutgers basketball coach interacting with his team at practice.  He’s yelling at the kids as well as grabbing them, shoving them to move them around the court, and even throwing basketballs at them.  Was I shocked by this?  Not in the least, since I played organized sports growing up, basketball among them.  I had a third base coach in baseball literally kick me down the baseline in the heat of a game.  I had a lacrosse coach who was bigger than many of us and would engage us in hitting drills at full speed.  The basketball coaches had a kid stand next to a wall with his hands up for a long time to teach him, well, to keep his hands up, and ran us until some kids threw up.  I’ve got stories from other sports as well, and I don’t think I ever had a coach in any sport on any team who didn’t spend a fair amount of time yelling at us.

Did I feel abused?  No.  Did any of the other guys?  No.  Did the parents who might come by the beginning or end of practice go to the school to have the coach fired? Not to my knowledge.  But things change.  That’s not a knock on where athletes and their parents are today.  It’s a recognition that as a society we don’t expect what might seem to be  physical or verbal abuse from adults we put in charge of our young people.  If you’re a coach and you don’t understand that change, you end up on the news as an example of a bad apple.

The same applies to your business.  Calling your female assistant “honey” gets you fired.  When I started in business it got you coffee.  There are many examples but you get the point.  Many of us were spanked as kids – do that now and you might go to jail.  Things change, and you need to change with them.