Mark Lebedew Edit
Sat, 10/23 10:02PM • 29:14
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaching, volleyball, team, people, australian, sport, ego, mark, players, book, important, expectations, game, playing, collaboration, australian national, motivations, blacks, win, imposter syndrome
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Mark Lebedew
Paul Barnett 00:00
So Mark lebu Good afternoon, and welcome to the great coaches podcast.
Mark Lebedew 00:04
Good afternoon. It's great to be here.
Paul Barnett 00:06
I love hearing a friendly Australian voice on a Sunday afternoon at the end of summer in Europe, and I'm very much looking forward to today's discussion on volleyball mark. First time I've chatted to a volleyball coach biochar won't be the last No, I definitely won't be because we're going to get into that fast flying ball as team formations in depth but, but maybe just something really simple to kick us off. I know you're Australian. But could you tell us where you are in the world today and what you've been up to so far,
Mark Lebedew 00:32
we're right this very minute, I'm sitting in the delighful Lakeside city of free tarfon in the south of Germany, on Lake Constance, I can see from my balcony, Switzerland and Austria, maybe one or the other, maybe both sides, just mountains. I'm a professional volleyball coach, I am Australian, where the European parentage I have been in European for the last nearly 20 years. I've coached clubs in Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Poland over that period of time and coached a lot of different people in different places. I am, of course, I have to go to the Australian National Team.
Paul Barnett 01:17
And I'm looking forward to getting into that and getting your perspective on teams from that very global experience base that you've got. But, Mike, maybe we could start by just talking about some of the great coaches that you've had firsthand experienced with, I can say there's they tell Hainan, there's Giovanni quiddity. And there's MC Haley. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Because in your own website, you've also interviewed other great volleyball coaches. But maybe if I could start by asking you, from your perspective, in your experience, what is it you think that the great coaches do differently that sets them apart?
Mark Lebedew 01:50
It's a great place to start, what I found, and what you're referring to, there is a volleyball coaching wizards project that I was involved with where we interviewed over 30 coaches from different levels and different teams around the world. And the thing that came out of that was that from that particular exercise, was the amount of lifelong learning that was involved. So Bible coaches are lifelong learners, from my own experience. The other really important or really common traits of health coaches are a high degree of passion, like absolutely passionate about some part of it. Some are passionate about teaching, some are passionate about the sport, some are passionate about the tactics, but as a group of people, Bible coaches, and I'm sure all coaches but volleyball coaches, I know the best ones who are playing some game inside their head 24 hours a day.[PB1] And they're also really, really competitive. And those two things are the things that drive people to become coaches. And the willingness and the capability to continue to learn and push and progress is that they that makes good coaches, great. If you want to put it that way.
Paul Barnett 03:14
Mark, you've got a degree in exercise and sports science, knowing what you know, now 20 years outside of Australia coaching professionally, what do you wish they taught you at university back then,
Mark Lebedew 03:26
the exact degree that I did was an interesting one, because it was attached to the, at the University of South Australia was actually an offshoot of their physical education teaching course. So it was actually more of a coaching background than a scientific background, which is a little bit different from, for example, the University of Queensland, the Sport Science course, which is very heavily science based, but in all of the education, the code education, the one thing that's missing that I've found is, is about the coaching about the importance of the coaching part. So coaching courses tend to focus on the scientific elements of it, the physiology, the biomechanics, and not about the everyday coaching, how to, how to communicate with people, how to convince people to do the things that you want them to do, how to really simple things about leading a team.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 04:30
So Mark, you played in the Australian National Team, but then at the ripe old age of 21, you decided you wanted to be a coach. Now was there a person or an event that ignited this passion to coach within you?
Mark Lebedew 04:41
So interesting story, I guess, because the main catalyst for me to decide to become a coach was really the desire to avoid any sort of real life. So I was playing at the time I was in Germany, playing with a semi professional team. wasn't actually enjoying it, which makes the decision even order in retrospect, but I had been studying economics, I loved a little bit of my life, I wasn't enjoying the study, and the only thing I could really imagine doing for a longer period of time was something to do with volleyball. And the two options that I could see were administration, there was opportunity to work in volleyball administration. And even though my father had been president of the Australian Federation for some time, and longtime secretary of various sporting bodies that didn't interest me or excite me at all. And the only other way I could think of being involved with volleyball for a long period of time was coaching. And I remember sitting at that age with no experience of really anything at all and thinking, well, the very least I'll be able to work in Europe, there's lots of places that that employ coaches. So that's it, that was the decision. And that was not quite the amount of time that I spent thinking about it, but not much less. And then when I came back to Australia, at the end of the season, there was the opportunity to study Sport Science, it seemed like a good pathway turned out to be an excellent pathway. And basically, that was the beginning point. I didn't think I would actually coach until I was in my 30s, for example, that I would play for much longer, but as it turned out, I had an injury and ended up starting to coach when I was 23 or 24. And more or less Continuing from that moment,
Paul Barnett 06:43
you have a Russian background, and you worked with your father to translate perhaps the most famous volleyball coaching text ever written. My profession, the game, and it was the last book by the legendary Russian coach, Varsha Cliff platen off, I got the name right. And I'd like to know, what are the top three things that you learned about coaching from this project?
Mark Lebedew 07:04
It was a really interesting project. Platonov is one of the great volleyball coaches from the Soviet era. He coached a team that won multiple World Championships, Olympic Games, European Championships was essentially unbeaten in world or international competition for eight years, I think. He wrote a few books. And my father was acquainted with him through his work, and read the book and thought that it would be interesting for my brother and I. And together, we decided that he would do the translation work. And he translated the book. And it remains, to me one of the most in if not the most important coaching book that I've read, because of the way that he approaches the profession, which is a little bit is in the title. And I've read a lot of coaching, books by coaches, books about coaching, and nearly all of them have some sort of philosophical basis, some thing about the importance of coaching as a human development activity, something about the ideals of sport, and olympism. And a lot of the things that we're familiar with, in Australia, us in Great Britain, for example, but his approach to coaching was as essentially a practical exercise. So when I ever I have to describe the book, I think of it, or how he's vision of coaching, I always think of him as being a as being a craftsman, or something similar to that. So it's full of actual practical lessons about how to go about coaching, and what happens when you're working with a team and the difficulties that you face in the management of the team and ways that you can improve that work with the team. So it's a really practical guide. And it's, I think, off the top of my head is the only coaching book I've ever read that takes that approach. So your original question was, what are the three things and really there's only one thing that there's a lot of a lot of lessons, of course through the book, but the main thrust over the main theme already is code as a tradesman. And that's the big takeaway, the big lesson that I've learned from that book, and I think that in that context, it's a great book for all all team sport coaches.
Paul Barnett 09:45
Well, your apprenticeship, your work on this project. This focus on being a craftsman leads you to Berlin in 2010. And you become the coach of the Berlin recycling volleys and the team go on this amazing run They win the championship in 2012 2013 and 2014. three in a row, very difficult to do in any sport. What was some of the things that you first did when you arrived at that team that drove that result,
Mark Lebedew 10:13
I've had some similar experiences now in different clubs in different leagues, different countries, and in the case of Berlin, was that it was a team that was in a big city that had some reasonable support and had a good budget, a very good budget, but had over the recent past underperformed in relation to certainly the budget, and in a way the expectations of the club. But what I found, firstly was that the club, the team, at least had a kind of, and this is common in professional sport, at least in volleyball. And we'll do our best and see what happens kind of mentality. So the first thing really, that I did was to change the expectations of the group in terms of what's possible in playing what's possible in matches, but really at a micro level. So how what's possible, and every action, every action in the game can be a little bit better. And if we do X, Y, and Zed, then we have a really great chance of outcome. I algebra, not obviously my thing. But by changing the expectations of the small things along the way, we found very quickly that we could compete and beat the top teams who had been beating us the previous years[PB3] . And in the first year, we won the semi final against the top team, or we ended up being equal with three but three times but we won the toughest semi final when ended up losing the final, but it set in motion, the changing expectations that we were able to make use of in in following years.
Paul Barnett 12:06
And how about the expectations on yourself? Did they change and evolve when you arrived?
Mark Lebedew 12:11
I don't think so. My expectation, and whether this is
something Australian, some inferiority complex, or some misplaced superiority
complex, I don't know. But I never think that I can win. And it doesn't matter what the situation and I look at the game and the
opponent, and I see the strengths and weaknesses of the team. And I can always
see a path to winning in a particular game. And the reality is, if you win
enough of those particular games, you end up at the pointy end of the season,
and you have a chance to win the whole thing. And that's been my approach from
the beginning with in, in every club that I've been at, and also with the
Australian National Team. And over the course of nearly 20 years now, I think
that I have been able to exceed the expectations of each team in virtually
every place I've coached[PB4] . I guess
Paul Barnett 13:13
mark, this kind of confidence, or self belief isn't always as prevalent within the team within the players in the team. Is there any particular method or way that you found useful in building more belief or confidence within a group,
Mark Lebedew 13:29
I'm not sure that I would describe whatever it is that I do as having has been based in high self confidence. I think it's much more likely to be based in fear of being found out. But that part of the decider, I really think it's the focus on the steps of the way and being able to explain what it is how to, firstly, how to go from each step to each step, and also what the possible things are at the end of that pathway. So being able to explain the steps, how they fit in with each other, and what it can possibly lead to what I would say is that methodology, if you will,
Paul Barnett 14:14
you call it fear of being found out, I guess sometimes it's called the imposter syndrome, very prevalent at all levels of society. Do you talk to your players about it and help them through it?
Mark Lebedew 14:26
Why in particular, the imposter syndrome? Yeah, I never talked about that concept. In fact, this might be the very first time I ever have but my way is actually to expand the expectations expand the visions of what's possible, so I would never talk about imposter syndrome to them. I would be telling them that despite all the evidence, they really are great at playing volleyball. Fair enough.
Paul Barnett 14:50
You've got a is a nice quiet I've got from you, Mark. I'd like to read it to you. Actually, before I read the question you've said the way people did it in the past is not the Way, the best way to do things now, it's a starting point, but it's not the best way. And so I wanted to ask you how important is innovation in your coaching philosophy?
Mark Lebedew 15:09
My innovation to me is the cornerstone is finding better ways to do things that your my quote, your starting point here is not something that's necessarily literally true. But it's certainly the way I approach every problem. So as human history has evolved, people have got better at doing things. And the way that they've got better is always by change by changing something by looking at something a different way, by developing new techniques. And obviously, there are a lot of things that they looked at and tried to get make better that they couldn't, progress was never looking at something and say, You know what, that's just about fine the way it is. So I'm always trying to figure out a better way to understand it, to look at it to explain it. And that's innovation in that sense, is a cornerstone of the way that I think about coaching, and perhaps in some way that does come from specifically from being Australian and in volleyball, in that we have inbuilt weaknesses in that, in sense of a relatively small base of players are not very good competitive system. And so the only way as an Australian to think about being better was to or to reach a higher level was to do things in a completely different way. Because to do things in the same way as the Soviet Union did. That just is not possible because the the level of resources, the level of interest is just not the same.[PB5]
Paul Barnett 16:48
I was actually interested to read your thoughts recently, on the need for coaches to control their emotions in a way the players don't have to. Could you talk a little bit about why you think this is so important?
Mark Lebedew 16:59
There's a couple of different things. The first one is that I strongly believe that when applier looks at the coach or looks at any leader, what that person what that team member has to see is somebody who is in control of the situation. So that might not mean that they have the answers at that exact moment in time, but they have control the process. And given a few moments or whatever the timeframe is, we'll be able to find the solution to the problem that we're in. And in Bible pit, that's specifically a game situation, when we're three points down, or the referee has made a call that we don't agree with, then the pliers, look at the coach. And in my opinion, what they want to see is somebody who can lead them out of what the situation is. And in the coaches jumping up and down and screaming and yelling at people and waving his arms in the air and all those things that you see coaches do on TV, I can't see how a player could look at that coach and say, well, all we have to do is follow that lunatic, and he will take us out of the problems that we have[PB6] . So that's really the background of that for from a personal point of view, I also find that controlling my emotions, as difficult as that may be at times it actually helps me to make for the most part better decisions in the heat
Paul Barnett 18:32
of action. Any particular methods you use to control your emotions,
Mark Lebedew 18:36
nine, the basic thing is to control my emotions. So I don't have any little trigger other than saying that I'm not going to jump up and down. Now of course, if you spend a little bit of time with me earlier, everybody has their tails. So with me, you can probably see my face changed a little bit. And there are some other things of course, but how you stand over but the main thing is, I decided I'm not going to be that guy.
Paul Barnett 19:05
When you talk about teamwork in volleyball, I've got this quote where you say, it's actually more important than jumping two centimeters higher, or five kilometers per hour of attack speed. So I wanted to ask you, what did teams with great interactivity have in a volleyball team that others don't,
Mark Lebedew 19:23
I'm absolutely convinced and that the most important thing in success, you know that at any level avoidable is the ability of the group to work together in all of the different ways that that means. And the way that that manifests itself on the chord, when in what you can see in the game is really simply players doing the thing that they have to do at the right time. That can be playing the ball. So the person who has to play the ball plays the ball. And the people who don't have to play the ball do the other thing that they have to do. So to move into position to play the next ball to cover, whatever that is, it's players doing the right thing at the right time. [PB7] And in volleyball, like in nearly every sport, that thing is different for every buyer.
Paul Barnett 20:22
I have another great quote from you mark. And he say social and cultural context, level of athletes power structure of the program, sport and gender are just a few of the context that impact the coach's work. So when you first enter a new team, potentially in a new country, what are the top steps you take to ensure that you understand the context in that team,
Mark Lebedew 20:44
the origin of that quote, the thing that prompted me to think along those lines was the a lot of attention that's paid to the All Blacks in particular as being a team that has a great culture that everybody should study and copy. And the All Blacks do, indeed, by all accounts have a wonderful culture, that is certainly admirable, and would be effective in a lot of different places. The slightly complicating factor, though, is that the place that the All Blacks hold in New Zealand society, and because All Blacks are so important to all of New Zealanders, you can work with them in a completely different way. And their motivations for working are completely different than professional volleyball players who make coming together in my team, this year, I have a different nationalities, they're not going to see each other again, they don't have a connection with the city with the town with each other, except for the nine months that they're going to be together. So as a coach, the thing that I have to find out fairly quickly is what are the individual motivations for each of the buyers, everybody has a slightly different motivation. In a lot of cases, I can know at least part of that before I arrive by talking with them by talking with people they know, and piecing together a few things. And those motivations are wide and varied. Some people want to make more money, some people want to go to a better League, some people want to win, some people want a quiet life. And all teams are basically made up of some combination of all those people, you want to have too many people who want a quiet life, but it is advantageous to have one or two, because then of course, any job and then to just to work on the individual motivations of the players. And for the most part explained to them how working together in a group in this group, in particular for this period of time, will help them to achieve the individual motivations to find a better time to get more money to whatever that motivation is,[PB8]
Paul Barnett 23:07
are talking about trouble and eight different nationalities, I guess, conflict could be prevalent, or maybe not so prevalent when you've got different cultural people, maybe they just are more wary of and they keep distance from each other. But when it comes to managing disruption within a team, are there any particular tools or methods you use that have been more effective than others,
Mark Lebedew 23:29
this is probably going to fly in the face of everybody else that you've ever talked to. But the biggest, the most effective method I found of dealing with at least small conflicts is to mostly ignore them, to note them to see that they're happening. And then to move on. A lot of the environment that we work in is fairly high intensity, we spend a lot of time together in small places. So volleyball courts, not very big change rooms are normally small and smelly. The team biases is also small, we're in hotels together. So there is a lot of opportunity for daily problems just getting a little bit tired of each other. We are tired, we're physically mentally tired. So there's lots of little small things that happen. And nearly all of those things don't mean anything. It's just somebody who hasn't had their coffee yet. It's somebody who's tired today, but after sleeping on a day fine. So one of the most effective things is just to, like I said, night, see night and then mostly ignore the small things that happen on a day to day basis.[PB9]
Paul Barnett 24:43
Mike, I've read across your blog in depth, and the weekly messages or posts you put out about coaching and you do focus a lot on collaboration seems to be a key thing. So if someone wanted to improve collaboration within their team, what would be the one or two top things you'd advise them to do
Mark Lebedew 24:59
the biggest thing about collaboration is that you're allowed to be wrong about things. So I can be wrong. And I can admit to being wrong. And that certainly allows people the freedom to collaborate, can you
Paul Barnett 25:15
think of a time where you had to build collaboration within a group and some of the steps you went through
Mark Lebedew 25:21
the ability to be wrong about something to say, to have it to and fro that's actually open the you need to have some control over your ego. And the thing that I'm getting caught on in my head is that I actually don't mind people to have egos. And I think the ego is an intrinsic motivator that you don't want people to lose. So to control some part of their ego to allow them to work with others is probably the second thing.[PB10]
Paul Barnett 25:52
I imagine in volleyball, though, he said, it's a confined space. And you got these, I mean, many of these players right are six foot five, six foot six, or seven foot tall, they have a very small space to work with. So I guess, connecting that with ego, they have to stay within their space, and not go hunting in other space to make up for a perceived weakness. So you must have to find a way to manage that.
Mark Lebedew 26:16
That's the concept of team play that we just talked about. So is the ability to do your job and let the next person do this, the most effective collaboration is when people understand exactly what their roles are at any particular moment and on the court. And that's something that we've already talked about is that, that it's a really dynamic environment where the roles change from second to second during a game. But off the court, it's just as important that we understand what the there are individual roles, the coach, the assistant coach, the player, the boss of the change room, the there's always one of those, and that we not only understand what the roles are, we fulfill our roles as we need to, but we also allow others to fulfill their roles. And that is the essence of collaboration[PB11] . I wanted to say, I have something floating in my head about ego in that context as well. But ego is not something that I think we need to suppress. Because ego is, of course, what drives intrinsic motivation. And intrinsic motivation is the most important driver of performance. So I never want to suppress someone's ego, perhaps help them to manage it or guide it in certain directions at certain times.
Paul Barnett 27:54
So Mark, you've been expanding now for 20 years coaching around the world, hopefully got 20 more to go at least, what's the legacy you'd eventually like to be remembered for, from the people who you've coached along the way.
Mark Lebedew 28:07
One of the slightly annoying things about the progression but wanting to progress and continue to improve and get better is that you never, or at least I never have a chance to really think about anything else other than the next step. So I don't ever think about things like legacy or even what I'm going to do in a few weeks. But since you've asked the question, probably, if there's one thing that I would like, when it's all said and done, is that people thought of me as having my volleyball a tiny bit better.[PB12]
Paul Barnett 28:50
Now great way to finish. Not so sure the word tiny matches with what I've seen, we follow the ball. But I guess if you do make it a tiny bit better, that would be a wonderful legacy. So Mark lebu thank you so much for your time this Sunday afternoon. I've enjoyed chatting with you and I wish you all the best for the season ahead with your new team.
Mark Lebedew 29:08
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to share our Sunday afternoons