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Know Limits
In the lore of people who attended my college at roughly the same time I did, there's a genre of tale known as the Jack Dray Stories (name changed). Jack was a colorful guy, an enthusiastic guy, a quirky guy. He would get intensely interested in his studies, and would be so fervent about some new thing he'd realized that he would approach the first person he saw--whether they knew one another or not--and start discoursing on this Most Amazing Thing. In class, his answers to questions often induced dumbfoundment in his classmates, but every so often he would strike gold, saying the most amazing, most true-but-not-obvious thing that had ever been said on the topic. He was also an avid weight-lifter, and there's a story about him down in the gym one day, from which I'm taking the title of my entry today.
It seems that he was down in the weight room doing the clean and jerk (where one lifts a weight from the floor, gets it up to the shoulders, and then presses it overhead--it's the classic Olympic weight lifting event). Intense guy that he was, he was always trying to lift heavier and heavier weights, and in this case he was straining mightily to get this weight over his head. Red-faced, he finally cried out "No Limits!", pressed the weight up over his head, then dropped the weight immediately to the ground and vomited all over the place.
While there's a lot to be said for the heroic acts of pushing ourselves beyond what was possible, by expanding our limits--which we certainly can do in many, many aspects of our lives--there's also something to be said for knowing our limits. There was a moment at today's tennis tournament that brought such things sharply into focus for me.
Today was the second day of the tennis tournament that my school hosted. We had four schools, ourselves from Pennsylvania, plus schools in West Virginia, Ohio, and Illinois. In one sense, it didn't turn out to be much of a tournament--the Ohio school blew us all out of the water. However, our boys had their moments, and should certainly be proud of the effort they put forth. There's no shame in losing to a good player or a good team. And though it's quite possible that we could have won more matches than we did, there certainly weren't any bad losses, losses that just shouldn't have happened.
I had an interesting moment as a coach as, at the end of the tournament, we watched another school's #1 and #2 singles players (a freshman and a junior) battle for the tournament singles title (even though there weren't actually individual awards). We saw a pretty high level of high school tennis being played--each of these boys certainly plays tournaments, is ranked, and will play in college if they want to. At the same time, neither is--at this stage in his high school career--ready to play at an elite university, nor will they be going pro any time soon. While they were clearly the two best players at the tournament, neither's game was perfect. What was interesting to me was talking about the players with my school's varsity coach. While I could see some elements of each of their game's strengths and weaknesses, he could quickly assess their games and give a fair estimate of where their talents stand in relation to other players they've seen at other tournaments this year or by the yardstick of college programs. While everything he said made perfect sense when I heard it, no way could I have done that.
It brought into focus my own abilities and limitations as a coach. If, for instance, I had a coaching job where I had both of those boys playing for me, we might win a lot of matches on their talent, but I doubt that I would be much help to their individual growth. I could gradually get to know their strengths and weaknesses and might be able to make some marginal improvements in their games, but ultimately I couldn't take them to the next level. Likewise, I'm not that helpful to absolute beginners. I fancy myself a pretty good doubles coach who works best with mid-level players or mid-high level players (we're talking high school here) just learning the doubles game. My JV coaching job in Rhode Island, for instance, was just about perfect for my strengths as a coach.
The same general thing applies in conducting a music ensemble. Some people are very good at developing children's choir or a high school ensemble, while others can take a college program to its full potential, and still others are at their best bringing out the subtleties of music with a professional ensemble. I'm sure there's cross-over here: some might be able to do two or three of the above, some might be able to do any of the above well, but I doubt that's always the case. I wonder what Franz Welser-Most, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, could do with my school's fledgling instrumental ensemble, for instance. Could he get much out of students at this level, or can he only inspire professional musicians?
I wonder the same thing when I watch football. The NFL, for instance, often has college coaches making the jump to the NFL, and as often as not they're unsuccessful--what they did at the last level doesn't translate to this one. But I wonder about the reverse--could NFL coaches make it as college coaches? What if they had to coach a high school team--could they build an elite high school team, or can they only work with the big boys? As far as that goes, how much of a coach's success is being at the right place at the right time? Bill Belichik didn't, for instance, have great results as coach of the Cleveland Browns. Probably he learned something in the years between his head coaching jobs, but what if he'd been head coach of the Bengals or the Cardinals? Even within a particular level of the game, there are other factors that lead to success, failure, or simple mediocrity. A coach might be able to bring out the best in some professionals, the worst in others--ditto that with athletes or singers or people at every level. The same's true in teaching, I think.
Thus, the two most important skills in one's career may be to be able to know one's own strengths limits and to recognize the right position in which to thrive.