Coaching Technique

Coaching Your Team to Victory
By Manny Nowak

It doesn't matter if you are in sports, sales, marketing, operations or any other area, as managers you need to become coaches to your teams. Coaching is a major stop up from being a manager, to being a leader.
Gallup recently did an article in which it said "coaching is putting people in the right roles, setting clear expectations, and praising accomplishments". Is that what you are doing for your team or as the article goes on to say, "are you spending your time critiquing performance".

If I was coaching a sports team, this is exactly what I would do. For those of us who have coached teams it was very simple when we were coaching. In soccer for example, I find the right forwards, players that can score, the right mid fielders, those that can play both offense and defense, and the right defense, those that can protect ( and if you are me, the best players with the most speed). I then set and deliver the expectations to each group. Forward are expected to score and be the first line for defense. Mid-fields are to get the ball up front, to score and to be the second line of defense. Defenders are to stop the forward movement of the other team and send the ball back in the other direction. Then the final point, when the players do it right, I let them know it, I praise them, both individually and as a team.

Now, how about your sales organization and your sales team? Are you coaching them the same way as you would coach a sports team?
First I have to ask, do you find the right talent? The Gallup article went on to say that, "7 out of 10 people currently employed in sales don't have the talent to perform at a consistently high level. Average sales people produce average results". If I am building my soccer team, do I go out and find average talent, or do I look for the best? Do I put someone who is OK in there to play forward, or do I look for the person who can drop the ball in the goal?

When you build your sales team, you need to spend more time finding the right talent. Don't get so caught up in filling the position. Take a look at your super stars, what is it that makes them super stars, then go out and find the same type of people.

Once you find the talent, then you have to set the expectations. In fact, when I work with companies and help them find the talent, I always insist that they develop a list of expectations, review them and get the prospect to sign in blood. If I am coaching the soccer team, my defense knows I expect my goalie never to touch the ball. If the goalie has to stop the shot, the opponent has gotten through the entire team. When my forward shoots the ball, I expect that forward to shoot for the open part of the net, not at the goalie.

In sales, just as in soccer, once I find the right players, I set the expectations and the team performs, I then take time to praise the effort. Are you praising your players for delivering results, or are you critiquing their performance? Are you getting the results you expect, or are you settling for less.
Gallup also reported that, "65% of employees in America reported receiving no recognition at work in the past year". Take time to recognize your team's performance. Read more...

Coaching Staff

It seems like good teams have always lucked out; you look over to their side of the field and the head coach seems to have a ton of help. Parents seem to positively flock in to help winning teams! Or just maybe it’s the other way around; maybe the team is successful because of the staff. Maybe the real truth is this: behind every successful coach, there is a helpful coaching staff.

Talk to long-time coaches and you’ll discover one thing mighty quickly. Most of them have several people that have been working with them for years. They have an assistant coach, maybe even two or three. They have some parents that help with fund-raising; they may even have the same sponsor year after year.

This isn’t just luck; it’s smart planning on the part of a head coach. Smart coaches make sure that they have plenty of help, and plenty of the right kind of help. Before the season has even begun, they probably have decided on a program and gotten their assistants to commit to another season of their chosen sport. Even first year coaches can do this; they might get off to a later start than the returning coach, but they certainly should spend the pre-season finding as much help as possible.

It is important to find assistants that are skilled in areas that the head coach has little experience in, or little joy in doing. If the head coach hates fund-raising, or dealing with the officials, or even going to league meetings, then the head coach should look for assistants who enjoy these tasks. Do not find yourself in the situation where there are four coaches on the team who all want to be in charge of the same area; this is worse than having no help whatsoever!

Divide your efforts and make sure to delegate responsibility for certain tasks. Make sure that each assistant coach has a say in the decision making, yet still be willing to defer to the head coach in case of disputes. That said, don’t be afraid to allow your assistants to operate independently at times as well. Always remember that the old saying: two heads are better than one. And in the world of coaching, four or five heads are usually MUCH better than one! Read more...

Injuries

“We were sailing into the playoffs when our star player sprained his ankle, and then BOOM, we were eliminated in the first round”. Sound familiar? If you’ve been around the sports world for any length of time, you have seen it happen, probably more than once. What can you do to prevent this, and how can you overcome this when it does happen to your team?

First off all, conditioning is everything! If you want to prevent most of your player’s injuries, then make sure that they are well conditioned. Devote most of your early season to getting your players in shape. Figure out your players during the early part of the season. Do not just assign the entire team to run three laps and then attend to other things while they run. Make sure that out of condition players gradually work themselves up to game shape. Assign well conditioned players even more work to improve their fitness to an even greater level.

Never ever scrimp on warm-up time! Make sure that late arriving players go through a full warm-up period before allowing them to join in the activities. Many players are injured each year when they get to practice late and then jump right into high stress movements. Do not injure your players with over-enthusiasm.

Proper rest is vital to continued good health, we all know this. So how come so many coaches put their star player into the game and then him or her there throughout the entire game, and then into any overtime that might be required? Pace your players, substitute them liberally, especially in early season games and/or blowouts. Giving everyone a chance to play doesn’t just have to be a touchy-feely idea; smart generals preserve their forces for later battles!

So, what happens to you if despite all of your planning and following of these rules, injury still strikes? Well, make sure your player gets proper medical attention for sure, and never put an injured player back in the game just because he says that he’s healthy… players never want to say “die”, so be slow to trust the word of a highly motivated player.

Trust in the rest of your team to fill the spot. After all, if you’ve followed the above plan all year long, your team will be well conditioned, warmed-up, and will have had plenty of playing time to prepare for this moment. Slap them on the back and tell them to “go give it their all!” Read more...

Drills

Every coach knows that successful practices involve a lot of teaching. Players learn the proper techniques through hours and hours of repeating the same movements. Yes, drills can be plenty boring, but they are the key to teaching any sport.

Bored players will just go through the motions. They are like a team that is getting beaten badly in the waning moments of the game. Their hearts are not in it, and their ability to learn is severely diminished. Good coaches manage to minimize the boredom, and great coaches make the most boring activity entertaining and engaging.

Make your drills fun! This cannot be emphasized enough. Yes, it is vitally important that your coaching staff is in place, during the drills, making sure that your players are using the proper techniques, but it is also important that your players enjoy, and even look forward to this activity! You have their bodies; now work on getting their brains.

Every coach will tell you that smart players are their finest assets. Savvy, well-conditioned players will beat less intelligent, yet bigger and stronger players almost every time! If a coach trains the minds of his players while he is drilling them, he will be amply rewarded in the long run. The best time to engage your players’ minds is when you are drilling their bodies. This goes hand in glove with the idea of keeping your drills fun!

Work on several things at once! While the assistant coaches are observing technique, a smart head coach will be drilling his players minds : teaching them game situations, preparing them to think for themselves when the time comes. Never waste an opportunity to succeed, and make a point of never wasting time!

Know why you are running the drill! Don’t just find some drill in an old coaching manual and decide that you can waste twenty minutes on it at the next practice. Locate drills that will improve what your players have been doing poorly. If your players are making poor tactical decisions during their games, find drills that will teach them to think about that specific game situation. There is little sense in running them through another drill that teaches them something that they already know by heart.

So, keep your drills fun, keep your players “in technique” and challenge them to think ahead. Do this, and you will be successful!
Read more...

Promoting a Positive Attitude

The head coach of a sports team has one main job. He has to get the most out of his team. Everyone wants to win the championship, but the reality of the situation is that every single team but one is going to come up short of that goal, and if coaches are going to grade themselves by whether or not they’ve won it all, there are going to be a lot of unhappy coaches and players at the end of the year.

So ask yourself. Can you make your team better than it was at the beginning of the season? Can you take a group of under-achieving players and make them into a cohesive unit? Can you teach your players something about the game and improve their outlook on life at the same time? Maybe the first thing you should work on is promoting a positive attitude within your team.

At the beginning of the season every coach meets his or her new players and analyzes their skill-set and knowledge of the game. And lets face facts, most coaches know from the first day whether or not their team is going to be competitive or not. And it just as true that many coaches get frustrated on that very first day. A good coach never lets his team see this frustration.

Focus on the positive! Speak to your players about improvement. From the very first practice, speak of learning skills and working hard. We’ve all seen the comedy routines about the impossibly naïve coach who keeps talking about having fun while his players are getting killed, but in the long run, aren’t sports supposed to be about having a good time while simultaneously building character?

As the season progresses, keep after your players. Build them up, compliment their improvement; reward them for it! If your team is competitive, don’t forget what got you there! Continue to speak of team cohesion and learning opportunities. The worst thing you can do is to forget your plan and start focusing on the title; all you are doing is setting your players up for an even greater disappointment. You’ll make them tight, nervous, and in the end… will they still be having fun then?

Remember , even if you’re not feeling particularly positive during some point in the game, your attitude and your face, your posture, your entire being must reflect that you are positive. You have all the faith in the world in your teammates. They can do this and your positive attitude shows them that. Read more...

Motivations

Every coach struggles with motivating his or her players. You’d think that this wouldn’t be a problem; you’d think that that all of your players would be highly motivated already. I mean they signed up to be your team right? They MUST all be highly motivated and ready for you to mold them into stars… right?

Okay, stop laughing. I know, I know… don’t be ridiculous! Wake up! I’m dreaming! Don’t be upset, I’ll bet you thought the same thing when you first started coaching. You entered into this avocation with the idea that everyone would be happy to see you, and that everyone would look to you for guidance. Boy, that didn’t last long now did it?

So what are you to do about your players strangely lacking drive to run through a brick wall for you? Well, the first thing you need to understand is that every player is different. Not all of your players are dynamos of energy, ready and willing to die for the cause. No, some of them just want to have a bit of fun in the sunshine.

The first thing you’re going to have to do is pretty simple. You’ve got to get to know your players and find out why they are signed up to play on your team. Because, let’s face it, if all twenty something of your players are just interested in having a bit of fun and not working very hard, you are NOT going to do anything but make yourself crazy trying to convince an entire team to see things your way. Figure out what your players want, and you’ll be able to meet them half way.

After you get to know them, and you’ve discovered what they want, it’ll be time to explain to them what you want from them. Go ahead, be honest, you’ll gain nothing by lying to your players. Tell them what you want from them and what you will do for them. Make sure that your players have the opportunity to ask you for help.

Make sure that you take this process very seriously! You’ll refer back to this over and over again during your season. When players start to drag, remind them of what you are trying to do for them. Be prepared to ask them how you can help them. Always remember, the coach works for his players harder than they work for him. He sets the tone. A coach that is not working his tail off has no business asking his players to do the same. Read more...

Rules

Every sport official will tell you the same thing. Almost every single coach they’ve ever met thinks that they know the rules, and that almost every single coach they’ve ever met… is sadly misguided about their own rules’ knowledge. A smart coach will take the time to learn the rules of his or her sport; the coaches that are wise enough to make their tactical decisions based upon the lesser-known rules of a contest… win.

The number one mistake that almost every coach makes is that they do not understand the differences between the levels. Let’s look at football for a moment. There is youth ball, high school football, collegiate sport, and then the NFL; and all of them have different rulebooks, and different points of emphasis. Those end zone celebrations that you see on Fox on Sunday, they are illegal at every other level, indeed, they are cause for a player’s ejection from youth ball. A coach that yells at an official that he saw the same thing on television… is a losing coach.

Buy a rulebook. I cannot emphasize this enough. Buy a rulebook and spend hours going through it. Read it from cover to cover, and then read it again. Contact your local officials organization and ask them questions. Ask whether they’ll allow you to visit one (or more) of their meetings and find out what they are talking about. Think about it for a moment, while you are spending hundreds of hours working with your players, they are spending the same amount of time learning the rules and the mechanics of their profession.

Every local sports league seems to have a list of in-house rules. Make sure you know what they are; memorize them. Indeed, this is the one area where a local coach may have an advantage on the official that is working his or her game. Talk to your official before your match, find out if he is aware of the local rules. If the official works a number of leagues, he may not be as comfortable with the local rules as you are. Don’t wait until a dispute before bringing something up; you won’t win that argument.

And always remember that the rules tend to change every year. The governing boards of the various sports are always refining their rules, making their games safer and bringing their game into the modern era. Don’t miss out on learning about these rules changes, and yes, this means that you’ll have to buy a rule book every single year that you coach. If you want to win, it’s a small price to pay. Read more...

Youth Coaching 101

In this country, youth sports have really taken off over the past twenty years or so. More kids are playing more sports, on more fields, all over this nation; and thousands of men and women are being called upon to lead these efforts. So… why do we do it? Why should we volunteer our time, our sweat, our tears, and our hearts to coaching these young players?

Maybe you drew the short straw at the parents meeting. Maybe you want your children to have a chance to win something for a change. Who knows, maybe all of us just want to be a part of something that we missed out on when we were younger. I know that there are dozens of good reasons, but I’m certain that the best reason of all is this: we coach so we can give something back to our community and to give something back to our children.

With the way most of our lives work these days, we lead an increasingly isolated lifestyle. We sprint from our homes to our jobs, and then from our jobs to the grocery store, or to our children’s schools… and then if we’re lucky, from there to a quick dinner before collapsing into a heap so we can get some sleep before the next day’s race. There is never time to become part of our community, never really time to do more than survive.

Coaching our young players allows us to be part of the answer. Study after study has shown that when children are involved in organized activities, they do better in school and within their families. So the real question isn’t how can we make time for this, it’s more like, how can we not make time for this?

I think we’ve all met the bad coach, the unreasonable guy who treats eight year olds like they are adult men from the NFL. But we’ve also met the guy who motivates his players to try new things in life, and to learn about self confidence and team-work. You know… he’s the guy that we aspire to be, the one who generates respect from his players and their families. It really isn’t that hard... if you are coaching for the right reasons.

Always, always… coach for the right reasons. You are not involved with children in order to make them better players; you are coaching them into being better people! Read more...