Time to park the coaches
Most 'consultants' are a waste of space, says The VillainSo, the biennial humiliation of the nation is complete. At least this time the England team got it out of the way nice and early.
Yes, our ‘brave lions’ have suffered another humiliation at an international tournament, thus bringing heartbreak to plastic flag manufacturers, ropey sportswear retailers and football journalists, whose lovely holiday to Brazil has been cut tragically short.
The adventure in Brazil has been an unequivocal shambles. And the post-mortem has already begun. Who’s to blame? The coach? The players? The media?
Or could it be sports psychiatry ‘guru’ Steve Peters?
Peters is the man said to have played a key role in the successes of high-achieving sportspeople including the British cycling team. He was described as being integral to the Olympic medal haul achieved by Hoy, Pendleton et al.
His methods include encouraging sportspeople to ‘harness their inner chimp’. (You can insert your own Wayne Rooney punchline here – it’s too easy for me to bother.)
However, the last couple of months haven’t exactly been a ringing endorsement for Peters. In early May, Ronnie O’Sullivan, who had previously praised Peters’ role in reviving his career, choked spectacularly in the final of the world snooker championships, allowing Mark Selby to take home the title.
Later that month, Liverpool – another of Peters’ high-profile clients – suffered a similar fate, stumbling (or in Steven Gerrard’s case, slipping) late in the day to surrender a lead at the top of the Premier League and handing the trophy to Manchester City.
And England’s laughable exit tops off an unwanted hat-trick for Peters and his methods, putting him up there with Eileen Drewery in the ‘that seemed to be a good idea at the time’ FA archives.
Unnecessary evils
This all got me wondering whether sportspeople actually ever need gurus, mentors or mind-wizards (call them whatever you want, it’s all bunkum as far as the Villain is concerned).
Do you know what sportspeople need? Basic instructions, half an orange and an advertising deal. Sports aren’t complicated, folks – the point is to go out there, perform to the best of your ability and beat your opponent.
Thinking it’s any more complicated than that is a fool’s errand.
And it’s the same in business. One of the Villain’s greatest regrets is that he didn’t jump on the coaching bandwagon before the market got saturated.
If you’re running a business, it’s safe to say you’ve had the brains and savvy to get you this far. You don’t need a procession of waffle-peddlers to come in and tell you how to do things.
Employee relations coaching? Attraction agencies? Work-life balance consultants? Psychometric testing services? Snake oil, the lot of it.
And yet, there’s no shortage of individuals and groups queuing up to offer these ‘services’, when most businesses could handle these tasks perfectly well themselves.
Trust your common sense – the same common sense that in the real world tells you not to play ‘find the lady’ with those hustlers on the South Bank, or the sense that tells you the magician’s assistant isn’t really being sawn in half.
Gut instinct is a wonderful thing. Trust your own instead of drafting in a shiny-shoed, empty-headed ‘guru’ to fill your head and empty your business bank account in one fell swoop.
Until, of course, the Villain’s business consultancy finally gets off the ground…
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