I have always enjoyed working with teams. As a coach, I never opted to become the type who works one-on-one when it comes to skill development. Instead, I was the first to jump at the opportunity to design a program for 30 kids who want to learn something new or improve their skills.
Just like any team, there will always be conflicting personalities, ideas and practices. One of the biggest challenges I have faced is to not make it so visible that I disagree with an approach or activity. It took too many years to realise that curiosity is always far more welcome than criticism, and you never know where your next learning opportunity may come from. So, instead of pulling faces I’ve started asking questions: Who inspired this activity? Where did you first see it? What is it trying to achieve?
People always respond better to curiosity than disgust, who would’ve thought.
To those players who have always been exposed to coaches standing next to them, or behind the net, or throwing the ball at them so that can feed constant feedback through, my absence can be jarring. You will never find me out on the field during breaks in play. You won’t find me pacing around the boundary, chatting to the fielders. You won’t hear me yell out reminders while they’re batting. If they genuinely do not have the skills to solve the problem, I have not prepared them well.
The first thing a player must learn with my practice is that failure is not the enemy. If anything, we are very well aware that failure is a necessary part of learning but we make life so hard for ourselves when it does happen. Being exposed to an environment where you feel comfortable enough to fail is my primary objective. Then you can grow.
Here is a shortlist of things I stand by as a coach:
1. I am not the source of your affirmation. I need you to define success yourself, and if you’re unsure, then we have a conversation about what success looks like to you. That definition will mean far more to you than it ever will coming from me, and I want you to feel it (not look for me) when you do something well.
2. Constant feedback halts the learning process. Saying something after every trial or attempt encourages learners to rely on your feedback, rather than the feedback they get from their experience. I recently picked up the “3 shut-up” rule: every time you feel like saying something as a coach, tell yourself to shut up. If you still want to say something, it should be framed as a question.
3. Your solution may not look like everyone else’s, so explore. With this exploration comes failure, but it does not need to be discouraging or helpless. Try to find all of the things that don’t work in the pursuit of your right answer. As the coach, I am here to help you through that process, but it cannot be done for you.
So you may walk past a training session and not be able to spot me. Sometimes I even sit down, sinking into the background and simply observing the learning process. The only time I make my presence known is when someone is struggling with failure because I know the feeling, and it took me too long to make peace with it. When I jump in to ask some questions, the conversation is based around what, why, and how this may help. Regardless of the training or game situation, this is how I approach my craft.