Coaching philosophy: There is a thin line between having pride and arrogant… be humble but remember to have pride!

Before I go into the main topic, let my talk a bit of where I came from and what are the cultures here. I’m a Malaysian but I’m a Chinese. For people who doesn’t know Malaysia, it is a country which consist of 3 main races which are Malay, Chinese and Indian. Chinese educations always emphasize on respect to others, being humble and kind. Well educated Chinese are usually being portrait as someone who is very humble even though he is smart, respectful and never be arrogant.

As a coach, I found that these characteristics can somehow affect the self-esteem of a player. It is because when a player is not taking pride of themselves, it will take away his aggressiveness in the game. He will not be courage enough to intimate his opponents and when it got worse, he will be easily intimidated by the opponents. Besides that, not taking pride will slow him from getting to a higher level too because he is not confident to be better than others even though he really is. However, I didn’t want my players to lose the characteristic of being humble and respectful. This is because arrogant, big ego and overly proud players are usually players who are not coachable. Which is why I had been trying find the best way to explain the thin line between having pride and arrogant.

The best explanations I could give to let my players understand the line between having pride and arrogant are this:
If you feel you are good because of what you are good at, you are taking pride. All you do is being confident with your abilities and in fact, you should be very proud of your abilities all the time. Which mean, if you are taking pride, you can still be humble and respectful because you are just increasing your confident with the abilities than you really had, knowing that there are things that still can be improved.

On the other hand, if you feel you are good because you think other people are too weak for you, you are arrogant. This is because now you are looking down on others, unlike taking pride, which all you do is being confident with yourself. With this kind of mindset, it will be easy for you to not be willing to learn because you always thought that you are the best. Also, a person who looks down on others usually is disrespectful.

In short, if you are not looking down on others, you should be confident to say that you are good and you are not arrogant as long as you are not looking down on others. So, go out there and be humble, but remember to have pride. Do you all think these explanations make sense? Share me your thoughts on this.