What EVERYONE can learn from the Royals Winning the World Series

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for posting about this article, http://nyti.ms/1XK4Myt .  And thanks to Dr. Roni Ellington for her inspirational presentation at the 2015 Midwest Noyce conference, where she talked about how teaching STEM is all about HEART.

First of all, I am going to admit that I did NOT watch a single game in the 2015 World Series.  However, several of my family and friends were consistently posting Royals updates on Facebook so I knew what was happening.  After they won last night, I saw a blog post by Larry Ferlazzo, http://bit.ly/20ohAwS that made me more interested in the Royals General Manager Ned Yost.

Ned Yost endures daily criticism for unorthodox decision-making and there is now a new verb in the English language, “Yosted.” The verb describes what happens when his decisions lead to a Royals loss. But despite his critics, his teams keep winning and this year he took a team that hadn’t been to the playoffs in 30 years and won the World Series.  So, what is the secret to his success?

He is willing to let players learn from their mistakes so that they can improve. He genuinely loves his players and gets to know them so that he can understand them.  He does this so that they are comfortable as members of the team and that they know he will support them no matter what.  He believes in his players when they may not even believe in themselves.  This allows them to struggle and work through their failure because they know he is behind them 100%.  He lets them be themselves on and off the field.  He doesn’t rely on the data for each player, he relies on his feelings for the player as a person.  Yost said, “I’ve never really had a guy that I strongly believed in not make it. I just knew it, don’t ask me how.”

As educators (parents or administrators or colleagues) we should all take notes from Yost’s playbook.  First, we must build relationships with our students. We need to believe in our students when no one else does.  We need to sometimes take risks and give them a chance when no one else would.  We need to let them struggle and learn from their mistakes.  We need to provide them a comfortable, safe, learning environment.  I agree with Larry Ferlazzo, Yost would have made an excellent teacher.