A Highly Effective Tip To Improve Your Communication and Relationships With Your Players - Give Them The Answers

This is hands down the best article I've read in a very long time about player coach relations.

Like

GREAT aticle Don.

I al ways tried to make sure that my players and students knew that I cared about them. Typically, if they knew that they would go through a wall for you and the team.

A MUST read for every coach .... and if you can get some players to read this... you are way ahead of the game. Hope to see you soon.

Like

That example with the math teacher is very interesting. John Wooden was a math teacher before he was a coach. One of the foundations of his coaching was that teachers don''t just give the answers, they encourage their students to figure out how to find the answer on their own.

Unfortunately, I found the rest of the article disappointing. Yelling at players is not the best means of teaching or leading, whether it is in sports, business or school. It is unfortunate that it is accepted so much in sports. Your friend would benefit from looking into the Positive Coaching Alliance and learning about Double Goal Coaching, the Magic Ratio and the other highly effective tools that the PCA advocates. It''s never too late for an old dog to learn a new trick.

Like

great article and analogy but in order to get the best out of the kids you have to adapt somewhat,,, kids are not the same as they were 20 yrs ago

Like

This is a good starting point. But to take the analogy a bit further, the math teacher would never get in the kid's face and yell at him for getting the question wrong. If the kid were at the board, the teacher would never yell at him and "bench" him for making the mistake.

I think it is pretty well established that people do not learn by being yelled at.

If the old dog will not change, then maybe it is time to change dogs.

Like

Thanks for the feedback!

I happen to align with the positive coaching approach as well.

We have a whole section on our website dedicated to it:
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/positive_coaching.html


You can present research, studies, and reasoning to people who believe in yelling as a coach.

Some may try to change. Most won't. At least, that's from my experience.

The bottom line is that they believe in what they do. And we will never completely understand their reasoning and experience that led them to this conclusion. It simply is not possible.

They could be right. We could be wrong.

I've known some guys who were "positive coaches", who were manipulative jerks (to keep it PG). They used their kids in ways that I don't want to discuss here.

I've known temperamental yellers who absolutely adored their kids and would step in front of a train for them.

So why not offer a solution for coaches who are yellers to better connect with their players? Especially when their intentions are good.

As by good buddy Ken Sartini likes to say, JMO :)

Like

Sorry to disagree... but there is no way "they could be right".

I don't think there is a single piece of evidence-based research on learning and athletic motivation that would show they are "right".

Below is a link to one of thousands of research papers on the topic.

Their conclusion: "Techniques such as Punishment from Behavior, Punishment from Coach, Punishment from Others, and Guilt were negatively related to player motivation and coach affect."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Relationship+between+coaches'+use+of+behavior+alteration+techniques...-a0199684546

Like

I have never understood how consistently screaming at kids for mistakes they make is the "right way to coach". My sons played for a screamer and they told me that the players would tune him out when he went into a rant mode. Then the coach wonders why the players don't pay attention to him.

During my coaching career I have tried to be positive when dealing with mistakes made by players. However, we all have a limit --- on the very rare times when I screamed at them (usually during a practice when the entire team was not hustling) I found that raising my voice in anger was almost like shock therapy--the kids were very aware that they were doing something wrong and would immediately move to fix it

Like

George, thanks for the research! That's good stuff.

I've seen a lot of similar research. And that's why I coach the way I do. It makes more sense to me. And it may sound silly, but it just feels right. Also, it's not in my personality to be a yeller.

Most research that I have found is directly related to motivation and learning... not necessarily performance.

You would think that this would lead to better performance. But does it?

And I'm not even sure you would ever measure that. There are too many variables. No situation would ever been the same.

I hope positive coaching leads to better performance because that's what I try to do.

But I'm not 100% sure as with most things. In history, too many certain things have been dis-proven... even with research.

Also, to clarify, from my perspective, there is a big difference between being a yeller and being verbally abusive or demeaning.

Like

Mike, "shock therapy"... haha...I like that.

The few times that I yelled per season was typically pre-meditated to do exactly what you said...get their attention.

You know what really gets their attention is when you give them the "shock therapy" after a 7-point victory.

Next game, we came out and beat a much better team by 25 points.

So I'd like to think my shock therapy worked... but it was probably just the law of averages.

Like

I had my moments.... but like you said Joe.... everything was for a pur pose. Even my principal put it to me this way..... " Mr Sartini, I think you stay up at night and choreograph how you are going to deal with your kids.... then we both laughed.

We played in a field house... and IF I didn't yell, they couldn't hear me... my players knew that I cared about them...... from the freshman kids all the way to the varsity.. IF I didn't yell from time to time they would never hear me. They loved it when I got a sore throat LOL When I wanted to say something they would come running over and listen intently LOL

Those were the good old days.

My AD loved to go to the AD meetings, they would ask him how i got along with the kids so well, he told them that i knew everyone of them by name.

My principal told me somewhat the same... they wanted to know how I got along with my kids so well..... first of all, you had to understand that there was 57 different languages spoken in our school at that time.
She was proud for all the kudos she got because of that.

NO ONE could ever call me me a racist, not will all the different kids on the team.

Like

Key word Mike -

consistently - pick your spots JMO

Like

Inevitably it seems that every player thinks that you are yelling at "them" more than anyone else on your team. I praise often, but praises many times go unheard by players, however, if you get on to them, they remember it for years! I know this because they will remind me of the exact game I let them have it their freshman year when they are seniors.
In one of her books, Coach Pat Summitt discusses having the same problem with her players. She put into place a system that when her players got yelled at by her they would have to shout out loud "rebound!" Meaning rebound from your mistake- and when she praised them they had to yell "2 points". Players found that they were yelling "2 points" a lot more than they were yelling "rebound". Emphasizing that they were getting praised A LOT more than they what they thought.

Like

I am 100% certain that negative coaching leads to decreased performance for most players and for all teams. I played in High School, Division 1 College and professionally overseas. At every level I had coaches that were yellers and screamers (I played a long time ago). There were always players who could have contributed much more to the team but didn't because of the coaches style, in many cases these were among the most talented players on the team.

There are two ways to look at it. Those coaches would have said these players should get tougher, have thicker skin and understand why the coach was yelling at them. They weren't mentally tough enough.

I'd say that effective leaders find ways to bring out the best in those they lead, rather than blaming those they lead. Overwhelmingly research shows that performance increases in business with positive leadership, why would sports be any different?

Like

You are the sum of your thoughts; if you have just made a mistake and then the coach yells at you for this - your thoughts are in the past dwelling on the error, they are not focused in the present "NOW" and quite often the child will end up making another error because they are worried. When giving feed "Forward" try to focus on the "HOW" to improve a skill performance versus pointing out/yelling about the error.

Try reading "Zen Golf" you can relate it to all your sports and life. I use many tips from this book; - (In a game) When a player makes an error we look at each other and go "HMMM Interesting" They have a little chuckle it breaks the tension and nerves they know they aren't busted and they move on/what next. I use this method with all my new groups and after about 3 weeks we don't need to do it because the kids know they aren't going the be blasted. Then at the break I discuss "HOW" to improve a skill not rant about the error.

I coach netball in Australia and use this method successfully with netballers from 8 to adults.

.
Lyn

Like

I don''t normally comment on my own articles but I feel I must as I feel that the purpose of the article has been lost in this discussion.

The thrust of the article was not a commentary on yelling and screaming or positive and negative coaching.

The coach asked me into his practice to help him. He knew he was to hard and negative with his kids. He asked me to try be be a moderator of his delivery and the way he presented himself in practice. He would say to me that he was trying hard to be less emotional but, at times, it would still get away from him.

This was his team, his invitation and it is not my place to evaluate him. He has and continues to be very successful. His kids are successful on and off the court and they are very loyal. What my own personal feelings about his delivery and actions are not the subject, nor an endorsement or criticism of his coaching style. I think it would be really presumptuous of me to do that.

Getting into a discussion of what I believe is good or bad coaching is one of the things that coaching is all about. But, for me to make value judgements about a particular coach without having to live in his situation I think is inappropriate.

If you took this article with the focus on yelling and his demeanor with his team, then I did a poor job writing this and I apologize for that.

The point of the article was intended to be this. We spoke, a lot, about his demeanor. What he was going to do and how he was going to act was his purview. But, he wanted his team to focus an what he was saying, not how it was said. That is why he told them that they, "can''t escape" the fact that they would get yelled at. I am not making a value judgement on that.

But he also understood that, in coaching, whether you coach positively or negatively, loud or soft, that when you coach or correct players, most of them take it as criticism, not instruction. True, delivery and demeanor has a lot to do with it. But, it is a very valid observation and it holds true in a vast majority of players at all levels in all situations.

The thrust of the article was built around his "giving you the answer" comment that he made in practice, in that, we have to get our players to realize that when we coach them, we are not criticizing them but trying to teach and make it easier for them. I am not in a discussion about yelling or negative coaching in this article, though it is a discussion that should be had and had continuously.

But rather, this was supposed to be a discussion that we need to spend more time cultivating an atmosphere of correction and improvement rather than criticism. When you coach players, their first instinct should be, "Coach is helping me get better," as opposed to "Coach is yelling at me again and I have to defend myself." That is an open and continuous process. Maybe we should spend more time working on that as opposed to constructing more plays.

If anyone took anything other than that from the article, I apologize for writing it poorly.

Like

Lyn

I give "Zen Golf" to all of my high level clients.

Like