Sophomor(e/ic)
Debate Coach
Thank you for reading! If you’re starting now, it might not make a whole lot of sense. Maybe skip back to the beginning. I promise, we’ll be waiting right here when you catch up!
When last we spoke, I was telling you that being terrified of public speaking, combined with being terrified by an impressive English Teacher who evidently believed I could do things that scared me, was motivation enough to take steps.
In High School, to conquer my fear of public speaking I joined both the Debate and the Forensics teams. The best way out is sometimes through. Being in a team makes a huge difference, not going it alone against fears can make a huge difference.
We had a young teacher as a coach my first year, and she was ferocious. Also, she was very very tall. When she drove she would hunch down and look THROUGH the steering wheel. When a super tall person does that, it looks hazardous. It was more than a little terrifying. She drove exactly as you might imagine. On back-woods roads in winter in Wisconsin after very long days at debate contests. We all tried to ride with someone else.
But she was good at the Debate coaching part. She would pair us effectively in ways that would give mentorship to new team members and work well with our strengths. She taught us the rudiments of the game, and how to make effective arguments very very quickly. My High School punched above our weight class the years she coached and dwindled when she left. I learned a lot the one year I was lucky enough to be on her team.
When Debate season ended, I did Forensics. If you’re not familiar, Forensics has several different kinds of contests. I tried a few of them, wasn’t awesome at them. Wasn’t great at picking topics and using tactics likely to actually win things. Instead I did bits from Monty Python, and a Five Minute Speech about superconductors. The Forensics coach encouraged us all, everyone was welcomed in Forensics (that’s a hallmark of the “sport”) but he so wanted for the team to actually win things, so he put his heart into his best shot players. After a fair bit of toying around with events, I suddenly realized that Forensics, for some reason, includes a different kind of debate than the Policy Debate I had so far done. So I persuaded the coach to let me try Lincoln Douglas. The up-side of not being a “best shot” player was getting to do whatever I wanted. I recall watching the hard work expected of our best. The other up-side is that I found my own talent by experimenting.
I wrote a case and had great success with it. “LD” debate, modeled after the famous debates between Lincoln and Douglas, is done solo. I did well, but I was still new, and nervous, and couldn’t crack the top tier of experienced debaters in our district. I was what you might call “promising.”
So that’s where the big lesson came in. We had a Senior who did Policy Debate, and wasn’t having much success his last season with whatever event he was doing. Our coach asked me to give him my case and get him up to speed with it so he could try the last couple of tournaments as an LD debater.
John had the experience, the polish, the tactics. He pulled out a set of wins that took him to nationals. That was my first experience on any kind of team, and at the time it felt like a betrayal. I’d worked so hard on that case, and had success coming from a team that hadn’t even been running competitors in LD. And this Senior guy just swooped in, used my case, and went straight to Nationals? I got a “teamwork” award. I was livid. (And what I’d now describe as “butthurt.”)
Then, that felt like betrayal because I didn’t understand how teams work, or that sometimes you have to put a lot of skills together to get success and maybe one person doesn’t have all of the skills.
Now it’s the kind of opportunity I look for. I understand that I often have more scope to be really good at things and to get actual goals accomplished if I don’t sit in the top spot, with the constraints top spots always have.
Whether we owe competent people leadership positions and support for their personal goals is one question I’m writing these essays to ask. And I’ll want your thoughts. So let me ask it with a little more story.
I never got my shot on that Forensics team, my coach never saw me as top tier, so I did what I felt like doing, and never made much of it. I did bring home some wins, but was never stellar. In Policy Debate my partner and I made the State tournament our Junior year which was cool (though I didn’t attend). I’ve done more and better with my life driving for that recognition and for leadership opportunities and not getting most of them than I might have if I’d gotten more. It’s been frustrating (who isn’t frustrated not getting what they want?) But I’ve also never stumbled into the “Peter Principle,” for which I’m grateful.
That can be the dark side of climbing high. Let me be precise. Too often useless people are put in top positions out of confusion (confusing confidence with competence) or hegemony, nepotism, boys clubs, or other bad reasons. Sometimes people are advanced out of well-intentioned desire to do something for a person who worked really hard for a long time, even though they aren’t good enough to do a higher-level job. Sometimes though, it works the other way; an organization will seek out the *really* most competent person, but they were competent where they were, and they don’t succeed in the new role. That scenario is The Peter Principle. That people have a scope where they can be good, and sometimes when “rewarded” with a place outside that scope, it’s a miserable failure that hurts them and everyone else.
In my observation, you don’t find “big-C” Competent people in roles they can’t handle. They either shy away from those roles, or quickly realize they’re in over their heads and figure out how to swim, or they put together a rocking team that covers their weaknesses and makes it all work, or they get out before they break things. But I think you do find “little-c” folks in those roles sometimes, and you just have to feel for them. We really want a meritocracy, but rewarding merit with authority/position/new-responsibilities isn’t always a reward.
In High School (and for a long time afterward) I only felt the sting that I wasn’t good enough in the eyes of that Forensics coach. But it made me more determined to hit my marks in other ways. I burned to be recognized and given the chance to stretch my wings in full view of everyone. And that burning desire made me work super hard. I don’t regret it. Just wish I could have been smarter sooner.
The lesson of Competence today is important. Our team wouldn’t have sent someone to nationals without my work behind the scenes writing a good case, testing it, and perfecting it in competition, and then training our ringer to argue it. I wouldn’t have gone to Nationals that year because I didn’t have the polish, charisma, or experience. But with a ringer and a competent resource, our team did well.
In a way, a team can have a kind of “Competence.” A team with the array of skills needed to be successful is like a many-person version of the “big-C” “Competent” individuals I’m describing. You don’t have to be “big-C” to experience what it’s like when all of the skills come together, you can be with other people making it happen. I think it takes competent-in-their-own-way people to make up teams like that. People who have the needed skills, and the judgment to use them well. I think the very most successful teams have a “big-C” on them. A star player who also makes everyone better. That’s been my observation.
I posit that while it’s a trait many people have, that it’s an indispensable requirement of a truly Competent person that Competent people make others successful. The “behind every successful man is a good woman” saying is a lot more true than we would like to think. And in many cases the person who becomes the face of success does a lot less and may even be a hindrance while the real work is done behind the scenes. Competent people bring out the best in those around them, and supply a lot of the horsepower themselves. But there are ways to make that relationship both fair and rewarding for all involved.
I’m grateful for that early debate coaching by our great coach. It’s served me well. But maybe I’m equally grateful for the lesson in teamwork foisted on me by being forced to help someone else succeed. Learning how to make others successful is a skill we need widely distributed. I didn’t appreciate that lesson until years later, but it’s one of the most important things I’ve learned.
Thank you for reading! If you’re able to see the comment section, please weigh in. Particularly if you have thoughts on the management skill of when to promote or otherwise advance a competent person, and when not to.