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My son is like many 9-year old Canadian boys and loves hockey. “Hockey is everything mom”, he once said. At age seven, he had a master plan to make it to the NHL by age ten.

The kid is a good athlete — he is usually one of the fastest skaters on the ice, has a good sense of the game, and can handle the puck well. The problem is that he takes his role as a defencemen a bit too literally. He hangs so far back he is out of the play and he waits for the offence to come to him. His dad and I are not those crazy parents who think their son will make it to the NHL and push, yell, and criticize incessantly. However, we do want him to do his best, reach his potential and have fun. We knew that at the outdoor rink playing with his buddies, he has a ton of fun and is a much more aggressive player.

So how could we get him in the play? How could we get him to take chances and use some
of his offensive skills? For the longest time, we told him he should be ‘hungry for the puck’ and to not be afraid of making mistakes. He still hung back, making good defensive plays but essentially letting his team play 4 on 4 anywhere else on the ice.

Yesterday, I framed our advice differently. I told him I wanted him to ‘steal the puck’. Those three words transformed my son into a hockey player I had never seen before. He was all over the ice – still paying attention to his role as defenceman but also much more involved in the play. He even scored a goal worthy of the highlight reel. Wow!!! He was thrilled with himself. Not just about the goal but about all of the great plays he made. His losing team won that game and the one after that.

Same message — different words. Why the amazing results? How is ‘stealing the puck’
different from being ‘hungry for the puck’?

Make it Concrete

Well, for a nine year old, using an analogy might seem like a good thing to do but he
may not have really understood what we meant when we told him to be hungry. Stealing is more concrete. It is an action you can define, and you can count how many pucks you steal. You can’t count the number of pucks you eat. And for a compeitive kid, counting the number of pucks he stole was a great incentive.

Lesson: A concrete message is a clear message and a clear message makes a big difference.