These are some of the notes presented by Matt Doherty. Matt is a former D1 Coach and currently serves as a professional scout.

The Art of Leading with Emotional Intelligence

Coaches are in the people business

The art of coaching vs. the science of coaching

The art of coaching is more important. X and O’s are secondary.
Without the players feeling good about being a part of the team,
the X and O’s don’t matter.

This is not about us (the coaches)

People will judge you on first impressions and then discount you going forward.

– First 90 days on the job (or the first few weeks of a new school year for high school and middle school coaches with incoming freshman and all new players & parents)
-If you come off as rude, but you are not, people will use that as your default personality even if you are a good person in the future

Servant Leadership

– Serve the people you are leading
– What is in it for them?
– How are you going to make their lives better?
-Off the court/field you do what is in their best interests. On the court/field you do what is in the team’s best interest
-Be the model they can respect and look up to when it comes to drinking, cursing, family values, and all areas of behavior
-They are watching how you treat people -­‐ family, janitors, your spouse, your children
-Ask your players and assistant coaches what they need to be successful and then do everything you can to provide those things.

Communication

50% Body Language
35% Tone
15% Content
Stand behind players
Praise in public, criticize in private

Primal Leadership, With a New Preface by the Authors: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence is a great book for leaders–You can click the link to read a little from inside the book.
Leadership is a learned behavior

Praise the actions you want repeated

Skill set often flips when you are an assistant and become a head coach.  You have to move into new areas of responsibility and will need to delegate which involves giving up some control.

Spend time with your people and connect
– Sit down
– Get on their level (physically)
○ Eliminate all distractions
– Have a sitting area without distractions

Staff meetings

-Include everyone when possible
-Ask the youngest assistant to answer first as he/she might have the best answer and then won’t be intimidated by someone else’s answer
-Agree to disagree but when you leave that room we are all on the same page

Hire coaches that are loyal to you.  You can teach someone how you want them to coach, but can’t teach them to love you

Let players decide on things that don’t really matter to you

-Meals
-Practice times
-Uniforms, shoes, practice gear

Have a mission statement

-Develop young people
-Positively impact the community
-Win Games

Year end evaluations
○ You write things down
○ Staff rights things down
○ Put a list together and you both sign it
○ Unemotional event
○ File it
○ Intermittent meetings during the year.
○ Coach your coaches

I found this on Alan Stein’s Stronger Team Blog. It was originally written by Coach Jim Burson (www.JimBurson.com).

Preface: Having coached for 40 years and looking back to those beginning times, I wish that I had had an article that would warn me of some of the pitfalls that were ahead of me.

However, at the time, I am pretty sure I wouldn‘t have read it and if I did, I would have thought that none of it applied to me.

However, I think these thoughts can be useful for any coach.

1. Not every player will be interested in every practice.

No matter how much experience you have or how great you are at teaching, you will encounter times in the gym when players are just not interested. Don‘t give in to the temptation to scold or yell. Instead, try changing your tone of voice. Try moving around. Try both. You can even switch from talking to a physical activity, like a scrimmage. The process of the scrimmage may increase the players‘ understanding and, possibly, their level of interest. Teach them anyway.

2. If a practice is going badly, stop and regroup.

Even if you have planned a detailed practice and have a clear goal in mind, if your approach is not working – for whatever reason – stop! Regroup and start over with a different approach, or abandon your planned practice entirely and go on to something else. Afterward, be honest with yourself as you examine what went wrong and make plans for the next day. Do it. Do it right. Do it right now.

3. Coaching will get better.

Maybe not tomorrow or even next week, but at some point, as you keep at it, your job will get easier.

Do you remember your very first practice? Were you nervous? Of course. So was I. See how much your coaching has already improved? By next year you will be able to look back on today and be amazed at how much you have learned and how much more easily you do your job. The dawn alleviates.

4. You do not have to say yes to everything.

Do not feel that you must say yes each time you are asked to participate. Know your limits. Practice saying, ―Thank you for thinking of me, but I do not have the time to do a good job with another commitment right now. Of course, you must accept your responsibility as a professional and do your fair share, but remember to be realistic about your time. Learn to say no.

5. Not every player or parent will love you.

And you will not love every one of them, either. Those feelings are perfectly acceptable. We coaches are not hired to love players and their parents. Our job is to teach players and, at times, their parents as well. Players do not need you to be their buddy. They need a facilitator, a guide, mentor, a role model for learning and for character. Give them what they need.

6. You cannot be creative every day.

When those times happen, turn to outside resources for help. Coaching books, teaching guides, clinics, professional organizations such as high school associations are designed to support you in generating well-developed practices. When you come up with your own effective and meaningful practices—and you will – be sure to share your ideas with other coaches, both veterans and newcomers to the profession. Sit at the feet of Masters.

7. No one can manage classes, students, players, recruiting, media and – oh, yes, coaching – all at the same time and stay sane.

A little multi-tasking can be good, but you must know your limits. Beware of burnout. Remember #4.
A little learning is a dangerous thing – drink deep.

8. Some days you will cry, but the good news is that some days you will laugh.

Learn to laugh with your players and with yourself. Patience is a great virtue.

9. You will make mistakes. That’s life, and that’s how you learn.

You cannot undo your mistakes, but berating yourself for them is counterproductive. If the mistake requires an apology, make it and move on. Mistakes are life. Life is not a game. No one is keeping score. Put down the beating stick.

10. This is the best job on earth.

Stand up straight. Hold your head high. Look people in the eye and proudly announce, ― I am a coach. You make a difference.

Alan Stein
Hardwood Hustle Blog

Be Precise

This is the next in a series of posts that come from some ideas I wrote about in my first two booklets A Head Coach’s Guide for Working with Assistants and The Assistant Coach’s Guide to Coaching. While those booklets were born out of some specific head coach/assistant coach issues I was facing with some members of a coaching staff for whom I was an athletic director, many of the ideas in them form the basis for good coaching principles in general. This post discusses the concept of being precise as we teach.

In the booklet A Head Coach’s Guide for Working with Assistants, I explain to head coaches that they need to consider how they will get their systems implemented into their programs through their assistant coaches. While we may know how we want things taught, we have to make sure that our assistant coaches know how to do this, too. Just giving assistants a drill book and sending them out to fend for themselves isn’t going to get it done.  Head coaches need to make sure that assistant coaches understand how drills work and how to teach them properly.

For kids to attain a certain skill level or understand a certain concept, they must not only practice it; they must practice it correctly.  The old saying is “Practice makes perfect.”  A better way to put it would be, “Perfect practice makes perfect.”  If you are practicing something the wrong way, you are just going to reinforce an improper way of performing a skill.  You may have some type of positive result, but you are not going to attain the level of “perfection” that you are seeking.

Coaches must be demanding of their players that they perform the drills and skills the precise way, or they are setting the kids up for failure down the road.  If I say to a kid that he needs to be at a particular spot to execute a certain move, I better make darn sure that he is at that spot each time that he is working on it.  If he isn’t, I need to stop him and correct him to make sure that he understands the importance of doing it the right way.  If I don’t correct him, it is my fault if he fails at that skill.

Early on in a season, I believe it is imperative that all the little things get corrected and taken care of right away.  Then later on, you can give them a little more time where they try to work through things without correction because they have practiced it the right way so much up to that point, that now all you need to do is stop them occasionally and remind them how that skill needs to be done.  At that point in the season, they will usually nod their heads, acknowledge what you are saying and go on.  I don’t subscribe to the theory of “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”  You need to sweat the small stuff, the big stuff, and everything in between.  It is a key to your success.

Being precise is a necessity.  Kids need specific direction in order to perform the way you want them to perform.  By the same token, assistant coaches need the same kind of specific direction.  Head coaches need to show them exactly how they want something taught, and then make sure that the assistants are teaching it that way.  Head coaches need to help assistants understand the terminology and the steps of teaching the skill.  Then they need to correct the assistants when they make a mistake.  However, they should never correct the assistants in front of the kids.  They must find a way to augment what the assistants have said, or they should have the assistants come back the next day and re-teach the skill the proper way.  That way the assistants are not put into an embarrassing spot of having to explain why they taught something the wrong way.

In any situation where there is teaching to be done, it is always best to err on the side of being too precise than to not be precise enough. While I fully understand the importance of trying to be brief as much as possible, you cannot sacrifice quality instruction in order to be brief. Yes, coaches need to talk less and have players play more. I totally agree. But when it is fitting and necessary, they need to make sure they get as precise as possible. This means making sure that every word has meaning and power, so that you can pack the most power into your message in the least amount of words. This takes a lot of work for a coach to master this concept, but it is work that will be well worth it in the long run.

For more information like you find in this post, check out my blog posts on coaches being teachers and my booklets A Head Coach’s Guide for Working with Assistants and The Assistant Coach’s Guide to Coaching. Just click on any of these to be taken to that page on my website.

 

About the Author of this Article

Scott Rosberg has been a coach (basketball, soccer, & football) at the high school level for 30 years, an English teacher for 18 years, and an athletic director for 12 years. He has published seven booklets on coaching and youth/school athletics, two books of inspirational messages and quotes for graduates, and a newsletter for athletic directors and coaches. He also speaks to schools, teams, and businesses on a variety of team-building, leadership, and coaching topics. Scott has a blog and a variety of other materials about coaching and athletic topics on his website – www.coachwithcharacter.com. He can be reached by email at [email protected].

Scott is also a member of the Proactive Coaching speaking team. Proactive Coaching is dedicated to helping organizations create character and education-based team cultures, while providing a blueprint for team leadership. They help develop confident, tough-minded, fearless competitors and train coaches and leaders for excellence and significance. Proactive Coaching can be found on the web at www.proactivecoaching.info. Also, you can join the 200,000+ people who have “Liked” Proactive Coaching’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/proactivecoach. Scott can also be reached through Proactive Coaching at [email protected]

Hey, Coach!  Be a Teacher

This post will be the first of a few that come from some ideas I wrote in my first two booklets A Head Coach’s Guide for Working with Assistants and The Assistant Coach’s Guide to Coaching. While those booklets were born out of some specific head coach/assistant coach issues I was facing with some members of a coaching staff for whom I was an athletic director, many of the ideas in them form the basis for good coaching principles in general. Today, I want to talk about the concept of how it is important for coaches to adopt the mindset of being a teacher.

Now I am not advocating that all coaches have to be actual schoolteachers to coach. While I have long maintained that the best job combination for a coach to have is to also be a schoolteacher, there are many great coaches who are not schoolteachers. We do not want to lose the good coaches that we have just because they are not classroom teachers in our schools.

What I am advocating is that coaches need to recognize that they are in the profession of teaching. Teaching is a critical component of coaching, and hence, coaches need to become proficient in all that they can when it comes to the art of teaching. The skills that a teacher learns in education classes and then learns by getting up in front of a class and teaching are the skills that a coach needs to possess to be able to teach kids how to play their games.

One of the most important, yet underrated, elements of coaching is the ability to teach.  Don’t get me wrong – people involved in the higher levels of coaching for many years don’t see it as underrated.  But to the average fan or person out there, it is often overlooked as one of the keys to a successful coach.

This is especially true with young coaches and with new coaches.  So often, people who are fans of a sport will sit in front of a TV set or in a gym and think, “I could do that.  I played high school ball,” or “I played college ball.  I know more than that guy.”  That may be true, but what you know is of little consequence if you can’t communicate it clearly to the kids.

I have known teachers and coaches in my time who had a vast knowledge of the subject matter or sport they were teaching or coaching.  However, they were terrible teachers or coaches because they couldn’t get it through to the kids.  Either they failed to teach it so it could be understood, or they never established good relationships with kids, or they got frustrated too easily when the kids didn’t pick it up right away, or some other reason in a long list of problems.

I have also known teachers and coaches who had a limited knowledge of the subject or sport but who were excellent teachers and coaches.  They communicated well, established positive relationships with kids, understood that not all kids are going to “get it” at the same pace, and generally just worked well within the framework of the experience.

It helps if coaches have a bit of knowledge of some basic teaching methods and a bit of understanding of how people learn, especially kids.  Obviously, there are many teaching methods in the world.  The head coach needs to help the assistant learn what will work best for working with his kids.  From teaching skills to instilling discipline and commitment to team, how a coach teaches is of great importance.

A coach needs to know how to have “classroom management”; it’s just that her classroom is a court, field, track, or some other athletic arena.  She needs to be able to have the discipline and control necessary for a group of kids to pay attention and learn.  Also, a coach needs to know “teaching techniques” to be able to help kids learn the skills and concepts she is teaching.  She must have a variety of methods on hand to use to get the points across to the kids. While a coach needs to understand teaching techniques, she also should have an understanding of “learning styles.”  Coaches need to try to tap into the different ways that kids learn in order to maximize the chances for success.

Finally, coaches need to have some level of understanding of “educational psychology.”  There’s more to teaching and coaching kids than just explaining subject matter and X’s and O’s.  It helps to know the personalities of kids and how to deal with them.  It also helps to know how to be a counselor, for coaches end up counseling kids as much as anything else they do.

The roles of teacher and coach are intertwined in many ways. I have always called myself a “coach in the classroom, and a teacher on the court” as a way of showing that both roles are linked so strongly that you can’t really tell the difference between the two. However, as is the case with most things, the teaching and coaching must be done intentionally to create the experience we are seeking to provide the children in the different arenas in which we work.

 

About the Author of this Article

Scott Rosberg has been a coach (basketball, soccer, & football) at the high school level for 30 years, an English teacher for 18 years, and an athletic director for 12 years. He has published seven booklets on coaching and youth/school athletics, two books of inspirational messages and quotes for graduates, and a newsletter for athletic directors and coaches. He also speaks to schools, teams, and businesses on a variety of team-building, leadership, and coaching topics. Scott has a blog and a variety of other materials about coaching and athletic topics on his website – www.coachwithcharacter.com. He can be reached by email at [email protected].

Scott is also a member of the Proactive Coaching speaking team. Proactive Coaching is dedicated to helping organizations create character and education-based team cultures, while providing a blueprint for team leadership. They help develop confident, tough-minded, fearless competitors and train coaches and leaders for excellence and significance. Proactive Coaching can be found on the web at www.proactivecoaching.info. Also, you can join the 200,000+ people who have “Liked” Proactive Coaching’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/proactivecoach. Scott can also be reached through Proactive Coaching at [email protected]

By Scott Rosberg

There is power in the words we speak. Our words carry great weight for those to whom we say them. However, the words alone are not what make them powerful. It is our intention, our tone, our inflection, and our desired outcome of speaking those words that give words their greatest power.

Words spoken or written on a page but independent of each other do not carry nearly the same weight and power as they do when they are put together into sentences. The way we string together certain groupings of words into sentences give meaning, life, and strength to the words. It is critical that we choose our words carefully and wisely in all instances. Many of us have uttered things that we wish we could go back and “rewind the tape” so as to not say what we said. But our words cannot be unsaid; our actions cannot be undone. While we can augment, tweak, clarify, apologize, and re-state, we cannot “un-state” the words we have stated.

Therefore, it is important that we choose our words wisely. As teachers & coaches, it is absolutely critical that we “watch what we say” and “how we say it,” especially to the young people in our charge. We must always keep in mind that children are taking their cues from us.

While it is true that actions often speak louder than words, our words still speak very loudly. Kids are constantly listening to what we tell them (even when we feel like they haven’t heard a word we said!). Be careful what you say to and around them. You never know what they are picking up. Kids have a funny way of reminding you of something you said days, weeks, months, or even years later. They will talk about what you said at halftime of a game 10 years ago, and you will not even recall saying what they tell you that you said.

The other issue with that is the difference between your intended message, the actual message, and the received message. These three messages can end up being quite different from each other. I might know what I am trying to say. However, my words may come out different than the way I am thinking it. The person to whom I speak it filters the message through his/her own ideas to determine what was meant. My intention might be quite different from the final perceived message of the person to whom I spoke. Or I may have intended a message for one person, but there were others there who picked up a completely different message.

Have you ever had a parent question you on why you said a particular thing to their child, and your response was, “I never said that.”? This happens all the time. When you “rewind the tape” to consider where the miscommunication happened, think about the words you chose, your inflection, your tone of voice, and your body language. Maybe you thought you were saying a certain thing, but what came out was not exactly what you thought you were saying. Then consider what the child’s state was during the conversation. Was s/he focused & attentive? Did you get confirmation from him/her of their understanding of what you said? These types of miscommunication are common, but they can be reduced by just being more in tune with your own communications and how your audience is receiving them.

We must always keep in mind our intention with the communication we are about to have with our players. Am I saying this to serve my needs or to serve their needs? Are the words I am about to speak going to help build up these young people or tear them down? Am I creating a positive, trusting relationship with these words, or am I destroying the trust that I am trying to create? Keep these questions in the back of your mind as you are building relationships with your kids.

Our tone of voice and our body language play a major role in giving power to our words. Just as words have more power when they are strung together with other words to intentionally give them power, our tone of voice and our accompanying body language give added power to our words.

We must be careful that our tone is conveying the intended consequence in the receiver. The exact same words said in different tones of voice can mean very different things to the receiver of those words. Listen to yourself and to your players utter the simple exhortation of “Come on!” Is it said as a positive form of encouragement, or as a desperate cry for help or condemnation, or even a sarcastic dig? The tone of voice says everything in a statement like this. Be careful that your tone conveys the right message.

Also, your demeanor when you say the words can create a certain feeling and response. As the leader of your program, you need to be the face (and body) your team needs to see. A scowl on your face with your shoulders back and your hands clenched will convey a very different meaning than a smile while seated. Whatever you are trying to convey, recognize that your facial expression and your body language play a huge role in how your words are interpreted.

Children learn many things in a variety of manners from the teachers and coaches in their lives. We need to constantly be considering our words, our tone, and our body language when we are communicating with the young people in our lives. We are not only giving them a message for the moment in which we are speaking to them; we are also instilling in them the ways that they will communicate with others as they make their way through life. Never forget that there is great power in your words.

For more great info on the concept of the power of our words, check out the DVD “The Power of Your Words by Bruce Brown of Proactive Coaching. Bruce gives a powerful presentation that will resonate with coaches, teachers, and parents. You can find “The Power of Your Words“ at Proactive Coaching’s website – www.proactivecoaching.info.

About the Author of this Article

Scott Rosberg has been a coach (basketball, soccer, & football) at the high school level for 30 years, an English teacher for 18 years, and an athletic director for 12 years. He has published seven booklets on coaching and youth/school athletics, two books of inspirational messages and quotes for graduates, and a newsletter for athletic directors and coaches. He also speaks to schools, teams, and businesses on a variety of team-building, leadership, and coaching topics. Scott has a blog and a variety of other materials about coaching and athletic topics on his website – www.coachwithcharacter.com. He can be reached by email at [email protected].

Scott is also a member of the Proactive Coaching speaking team. Proactive Coaching is dedicated to helping organizations create character and education-based team cultures, while providing a blueprint for team leadership. They help develop confident, tough-minded, fearless competitors and train coaches and leaders for excellence and significance. Proactive Coaching can be found on the web at www.proactivecoaching.info. Also, you can join the 200,000+ people who have “Liked” Proactive Coaching’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/proactivecoach. Scott can also be reached through Proactive Coaching at [email protected].