Communicating with Athletes

The heart of every team and player experience is the coach. Coaches have a choice of going down one of two paths. One is a win-based approach. The other is often called developmental, but I prefer to call it "relationship- and experience-based coaching. "

Win-approach coaching is the most common by far (especially these days).  It involves short benches, and scheduling more and more games to build a winning record.  As a result, the dialogue between coach and players is one-sided and mostly counter-productive. It can result in brawls during the post-game handshake line, reckless play, lack of respect for the rules, opponents, officials, coaches and the game itself.

There seems to be a phrase that every coach has embraced of late which I think needs a closer look, and it is "teaching life lessons." It's phrase you have probably heard a lot lately, so much so that it seems to have taken on a life of its own, particularly in the context of middle and high school sports.

The subject of which has better coaches: private or public school always seems to spark some petty good debate but my experience and insight into the differences between private and public school sports is a subject that I have spent some time studying for the last year, and I have made some really profound discoveries.

The most revealing discovery was the dynamics of the high school teams that I researched from both private and public schools all had one very common thread. They all have the same coaching issues, the same drama, the same politics, the same favoritism, the same  nepotism, and most critically, the same breakdown in coach/player relationships and lack of understanding. But they are all  dealt with in a very different way.

It seems that every time I have a conversation with a coach who complains that some of his players have bad attitudes, I quickly start getting a sense that the coach not only isn't doing anything to make things better, but may be contributing to the problem in the first place.  It is often easy for an outsider to spot the bad body language that infects so many player/coach relationships, but goes unchallenged and unaddressed because of the power that a coach has over playing time. If this doesn't make sense to you, start watching the coaches at games, and pay close attention to their body language and interaction with their players. See which team ends up winning. The coach who interacted with their athletes least, and displayed the better body language, probably came out on top.