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Coaching Basketball: How Do You Deal With An Assistant Coach Who Oversteps Their Bounds?
- By Jeff Haefner
This is one of those tricky situations that nobody wants to deal with. However, it can be easier than you think. And for the best interests of your players, it's critical to get the situation under control.
When you have an assistant that oversteps their bounds, it almost always comes down to a management issue that can be easily solved. As a head coach, you need to set clear expectations and roles for your assistant. Then communicate those roles.
I suggest the following actions to remedy the problem...
- Sit down with him/her. Review expectations. Talk about your stance on things so you both get aligned.
- Give your assistant specific responsibilities. If they over-step their boundaries, perhaps
it's because they don't know their responsibilities. If your assistant is really good at
defense, put them in charge of defense or maybe they can do stats, film, and so on.
It's important to consider your assistant's strengths. Then it's your job to put the assistant coach in the position to use those strengths to benefit the program.
- Just like coaching players, you need to give your assistants clear and defined roles and responsibilities. Document those roles and review them with your assistants. It's very important for this information to be documented in writing. Then routinely review expectations. Regularly scheduled weekly and monthly meetings will definitely help keep everyone in check!
- You can also try daily huddles with assistants. This just takes 5-10 minutes. Each day you huddle and you ask each person - what's your priority for the day? Are you stuck on anything? What are your key metrics for the day? Some coaches will have key metrics to review daily (rebounds, shooting percentage, attendance, etc). This huddle should be done very quickly and efficiently. Everyone should stand up the whole time to keep things moving quickly.
Managing assistant coaches is just like managing employees in a business. The same management tactics work. In a business, you document procedures for an employee. You document and define expectations and roles for that employee. You implement key metrics to measure the performance of that employee. You have regularly scheduled meetings with that employee to review goals, expectations, metrics, performance, and progress. You hold that employee accountable and communicate with them.
Bottom line, set expectations and roles with your assistants. Meet with them on a fairly regular basis. Give it a shot and you'll end up with a much smoother and productive basketball program. And happier coaches too!
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Comments
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bennykillerbee says:
6/25/2009 at 4:24:34 AM
nice topic...this will greatly help head coaches in dealing with their assistant/s...keep it up.....god bless
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ernie says:
6/25/2009 at 12:45:39 PM
I think thats a good ideal. I will use them on pratice next time. Also, to have meeting and go over everthing that need to be fix. Thanks for the tip!
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david anderson says:
6/25/2009 at 2:03:47 PM
This is a good article. What happens though when your assistant is part of the AD's mission to have you fired as the head coach. Politics in high school sports will always baffle me. It is not how good the coach is or how he is turning a program around for the better, it is whose kid did not get enough playing time.
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Kenny Robinson says:
6/26/2009 at 6:43:12 PM
Like everyone in here, great topic. I really like the idea of meeting on a regular or semi-regular setup and setting clearly defined expectations and roles. As an assistant coach, seeing and hearing what the head coach wants, makes my job so much easier.
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Jay says:
6/29/2009 at 10:42:51 AM
I spell out EXACTLY what is expected of the assistant coaches in our season playbook. Expectations, appropriate conduct with players, during practices and games, etc. We have a pre-season meeting and then meet daily after practice. I have had assistant coaches who were not loyal, some were lazy and basically incompetent in the past. That is why I started doing this. This article confirms that I am on the right track, so thank you for publishing it.
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