Jill Ellis is the former US Women’s National Soccer Team coach from 2014 to 2019. Under her leadership, the team was ranked #1 for six consecutive years. She is only the second coach to win two successive World Cups (2015 and 2019). Among her accolades are 248 All-time Collegiate victories. Continuing with the Netflix series ‘The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life,’ Jill Ellis shares her experience being a female coach in the football world. She shares about coming out as a lesbian to her team and adopting a kid with her partner. Let’s jump into Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life.
It takes special coaches to thrive in the role of being the person who is being chased.
When you are a coach, it is always easy to be the underdog, it is easier to be the team that’s hunting rather than the hunted.
You are high in the rankings and everyone’s gunning for you. You are not sneaking up, there’s a target on your back.
It’s how you measure success. For some, they would just kill to be in one final four, I’ve been in eight. But that internal piece was like, it’s not enough. It’s got to be better, better. When you are on the top, the challenge is to make sure you are competing and evolving against the best version of yourself. Regardless of being #1 in your country or the world, you have that attitude and mindset you got something to prove.
When Jill took over as coach of the US team, they were ranked #1 worldwide and had won an Olympic Gold medal in 2012. Without a World Cup in the past 16 years and an opportunity coming up in 2015, there were a lot of expectations and scrutiny as to what would happen.
When you are at the top, the competition just becomes yourself. That’s when you see failure in sports. If you want to sustain excellence, it’s not about being the best, it’s how do you stay the best. You have to push the envelope, evolve, and get better.
Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life #1: Mountaintops are small, and the air is thin
Mountain tops are small and the air is thin for a reason because you are not supposed to dwell there. It’s rented space. You get up there, enjoy the view briefly, and must climb again.
When you are on top, one of the things you have to guard against is complacency. You can’t take anything for granted, show up, and expect everything to work in your favor. You have to be locked in and focused. A scrappy Swedish team knocked out the US team in the quarterfinals; their worst result in a major event. Such setbacks are wake-up calls for everyone involved and valuable lessons.
Share your success and own your failure. As a leader, you have to shoulder the responsibility. There’s no bigger in-your-face lesson than a loss. Success in never resting on your laurels, and someone is always gunning for your spot. Failure presents an opportunity to try something new, reinvent yourself, do something different, and reinvent yourself.
Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life #2: Hold Fast, Stay True
It can be challenging and chaotic when you are going through a rough patch, and things aren’t going your way. When you are losing, you face criticism. As a leader in such a situation, you may encounter growing frustration from people around you and be backed into a corner.
When you are responsible for taking your team forward as a leader, you can’t always look to please your critics or team members. You’ve got to have a sense of self and stay true to your beliefs. Jill Ellis shares her mantra for dealing with challenging situations, which she learned from a US Navy Seal, i.e., Hold Fast, Stay True.
In life, there’s going to be a lot of storms. At times, there’s gonna be a lot of distractions and disturbance. You have to hold fast, stay true to what you believe.
Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life #3: Risk is Opportunity
Going into coaching was a risky proposition for Jill Ellis. She didn’t see coaching as a true profession or a viable career path for women at the time. Nevertheless, her love for the game made her rethink when an opportunity came her way. As she puts it, she lived a good life earning decent money.
Risk is not something to be seen as a be-all and end-all situation. Jill Ellis views risk as an opportunity. Taking risks is not about money; it’s about whether you love and enjoy what you do. Jill Ellis gave up a $40K job as a writer to coach a women’s soccer team for $6K a year. She did it because she believed that if you are passionate and you are a good person, you will land on your feet eventually. If you believe in something bigger than yourself, choosing passion over a paycheck is a no-brainer. If you work hard and your heart is in the right place, the risks you take will surely pay off.
Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life #4: Be True to Yourself
To succeed at a high level, communication plays a vital role in building harmony and establishing unity within a group. People need to be able to trust each other, which requires that we be true to ourselves.
In a leadership position, one can learn a lot about themselves. Jill Ellis struggled with being a lesbian, which was not accepted then in the world of sports. She was sensitive to that fact but also had to manage being put in the spotlight as a head coach at UCLA. It’s hard to remain true to who you are and your values in the face of adversity, but everyone has to go through that.
Over time, we will come to realize that being inauthentic about yourself is not going to work. There is a fear of being judged by people, but as Jill realized, so much of that fear is concocted in our heads. As a leader, we need to be brave, and we have to make hard decisions. Being a leader is hard enough; you don’t want to be at odds with yourself. It is worth the risk and effort to put everything on the line and own up to who you are. You go through a roller coaster of emotions, but in the end, you will be relieved to have that pressure lifted off your shoulders.
Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life #5: If you want to be heard, make a statement
The best way to build a platform to advocate for something is to win.
One of the major issues globally is the gender pay gap. Leading up to the 2019 World Cup, the women’s team began speaking publicly about equal pay as the men’s team. As one might expect, this was received with a stiff response.
Sometimes, words are not enough to make a change because they fall on deaf ears. If you want to be heard, you need to make a statement with your actions. Jill’s team played their best game; they played to their strength and reached the finals. As they progressed through the tournament, the support for their cause grew, and the spotlight became bigger.
If you keep doing what you do best and prove the skeptics wrong, eventually, they will concede, and you will be heard. A famous adage that comes to mind is, “Be so good; they can’t ignore you!”.
As much as coaching is about pursuing success and victory and wins etc., what I am truly gonna remember are those moments that made me feel alive.
Own it. Own who you are, be proud of who you are. Stand up for what you believe.
Being a coach for so long, there is much that young professionals like me can learn from her example. I have been trying to define who I am and what I aim to be as I go along. Jill Ellis’ Rules for Life have given me much to think about, especially how I need to own up to my failures and take responsibility for my decisions moving forward. I will be back with more lessons from the third episode with Jose Mourinho.
When I became open to who I was, I found my purpose.