The toughest room I've ever led
I've pitched to C-suite executives. I've run sales teams. I've keynoted rooms full of people who paid to be there.
None of it prepared me for twenty 9-year-olds at 6 PM on a Tuesday, half of them still half-asleep from school, one of them crying because his cleat came untied, and all of them deciding in the first ninety seconds whether you're worth listening to.
Kids are the most honest management critics on earth. They don't do polite. If your drill is boring, they tell you — with their feet, by wandering off. If you're faking enthusiasm, they know instantly. There is no "managing up" with a 9-year-old. You either earn their attention or you lose it, and the feedback loop is about four seconds long.
Lesson one: nobody cares about your title
On the field, I'm not a CEO. I'm not "Coach Strausser, VP of whatever." I'm the guy with the whistle and the practice plan, and that buys me exactly nothing until I prove I deserve their time.
Adults are more polite about it, but the dynamic is identical. Your team doesn't follow your title — they follow your credibility, which you rebuild every single day. The day you coast on rank is the day people start quietly routing around you.
My son's team doesn't care what I do for a living. They care that I show up early, that I know every kid's name, and that practice doesn't feel like punishment. My sales team, it turns out, wants the same three things in different wrapping.
Lesson two: "why" before "what"
Tell a 9-year-old to run sprints and he'll ask "why" — and "because I said so" gets you exactly one sprint before the mutiny. Tell him we're building the legs that win the fourth quarter, and suddenly he's racing his buddy.
Adults ask "why" too; they're just quieter about it. Every process I've ever rolled out that flopped had the same autopsy result: the team never understood why it mattered. They complied just enough to not get in trouble, and the process died the moment I stopped watching.
Now, whether it's a tackling drill or a new CRM workflow, I lead with the why. "We're doing this because..." isn't soft. It's the difference between compliance and buy-in.
Lesson three: fun is a delivery system, not a distraction
There's a coaching philosophy that says practice should be all business — no goofing around, no games, just reps. Those coaches lose their players by week six. Every time.
The best youth coaches I know hide the work inside the fun. Want kids to learn pursuit angles? Don't lecture — play a game where the only way to win is to take the right angle. They'll run it fifty times laughing and never realize they just did fifty reps of fundamentals.
I stole this for business wholesale. The best training sessions I've run felt like games. The best team meetings have energy. Somewhere along the way, corporate America decided that serious work must feel miserable, and it's just wrong. Engagement isn't the enemy of results — it's the engine.
Lesson four: correct the effort, praise the kid
Youth coaching 101: you never attack the child, you coach the behavior. "You're lazy" destroys a kid. "Your feet stopped moving on that play — keep them churning and you'll blow right past him" builds one.
Same with adults, minus the whistle. Feedback about identity ("you're not detail-oriented") triggers defense. Feedback about the specific action ("this proposal went out with last quarter's pricing — let's build a checklist") triggers improvement. I've managed both ways. Only one of them works.
Lesson five: they remember how you made them feel
Years from now, my players won't remember the score of any single game. They'll remember whether their coach believed in them, whether practice was the best part of their day, whether football felt like something done TO them or something they got to do.
Your team won't remember the quarter you crushed it. They'll remember whether you had their back when a deal blew up, whether you noticed the extra effort, whether working for you felt like an opportunity or a sentence.
The whistle works both ways
Here's the uncomfortable part: coaching kids made me a better leader, but it also exposed every lazy leadership habit I had. You can't fake it with 9-year-olds, so all the shortcuts I'd gotten away with at work — the vague instructions, the assumed buy-in, the boring meetings — suddenly looked ridiculous.
If your leadership approach wouldn't survive a Tuesday practice with twenty 9-year-olds, it's not as solid as you think. That's my test now. It's a brutal one. I recommend it.
Frequently asked questions
How do you keep 9-year-olds focused at practice?
Short segments, constant movement, and competition in everything. No standing in lines. No lectures over two minutes. If they're moving and competing, they're learning — even when it looks like chaos.
What's the hardest part of coaching youth sports?
Managing the parents, honestly. The kids are easy — they're honest and they want to have fun. The adults on the sideline bring all the complexity. Sound familiar? It's the same in business.
Can you really apply coaching lessons to a sales team?
Absolutely. Both are performance environments where confidence, preparation, and culture determine outcomes. The vocabulary changes; the humans don't.
How do you balance coaching with running a business?
You don't balance it — you integrate it. Tuesday and Thursday evenings are practice. Everything else flexes around it. My kids get the same calendar priority as my biggest client, because they are.
