The following is an extract from Pat Critchley’s new book ‘A Coaching Way – Insights, Strategies and Tools for Successful Coaching’
Coaches want their players to be ‘coachable’; players who listen, players who want to constantly learn and improve their performance, players with a growth mindset.
If that is the type of player we want to develop, then we need to reflect on how we shape up in this regard as coaches. Where are we on the pendulum between a growth mindset and a closed mind?
We, as coaches, must be like sponges, taking in information and insights at every opportunity. Read and re-read, attend conferences and workshops, talk to coaches and ask questions.
I have found that the majority of coaches are very willing to share ideas and experiences with other coaches, especially coaches who are starting out on their journey.
I have rarely attended a workshop, at which I did not learn something. I was the tutor for some of these workshops and yet learned from the participants.
Morgan Wooten, the American De Matha High School basketball coach, told how he would be very generous with his time at coaching clinics over the years.
Yet he was amazed how many times a coach would spend time in conversation telling him all their plays and their successes at their school.
They had just had a conversation with a coach who is widely regarded as the best ever High School coach in American basketball history and they hadn’t asked him a single question.
These conversations had boosted their egos but hadn’t learned anything. They had missed a precious opportunity to learn from the best. Ask questions!
When we coach week in, week out, we can sometimes fail to notice the significance of an insight picked up from a workshop, discussion or book. Some of these insights may cause us to tweak marginally how we do things but others can change dramatically the focus of our coaching.
During the recent Covid lockdow, I re-read Dean Smith’s basketball coaching book. It was one of the few books I had packed for my eight-month career break, round the world trip in 2000.
I studied that book in great detail that year. On the re-read I was struck by the huge significance that book had on the way we have played basketball in our school for the past 20 years.
Since primary school we were coached to defend between our player and the basket or the goal in the case of Gaelic games. From 2000 on we adopted a Dean Smith strategy and coached our players to play between our player and the ball when on the ball side.
This created our Pressure Defence which was proactive rather than reactive. All our players needed to trust each other and not play in a safe or comfort zone. Once we maintained our intensity with this defence, few teams could handle the pressure over a full game.
We have heard the expression ‘we learn from our mistakes’ and coaches often highlight mistakes after a defeat. We should also compliment and re-enforce good parts of our performance despite a loss.
However, we should also learn from victory. I would often compliment a team on a victory but also point out parts of our performance that would be found out against stronger opponents.
“It didn’t lose us the game today, but it will in the future if we don’t address it in training.”
Our team could lose but we might praise the team or an individual player, who improved on an aspect of play that we were working on and the performance marked huge progress after hard work in training.
Alternatively, there might be a great team performance but we might point out an aspect of play, in a one on one, where an individual player needs improvement.
Ultimately it is all about the performance and constantly seeking to improve the performance.
Our focus is fully on the session or game as it transpires but when it’s over, we have to be reviewing, evaluating and seeing how the performance fits into the overall progression of our players and team.
‘A Coaching Way’ is available to buy in All Books in Lyster Square in Portlaoise or on the All Books website here.
