This article was provided by Coaches Network

Coaches often find themselves trying to explain complex, multi-layered ideas to their athletes, and this is inherently challenging. From practice drills to in-game strategy, the mental side of sports can easily become overwhelming. Fortunately, there are a number of ways that you can simplify complex concepts and make your job as a coach easier.

In an article on USYouthSoccer.org, Robert Parr, former Director of Coaching for the Arkansas State Soccer Association and current Technical Director for the Gulf Coast Youth Soccer Club in Southeast Texas, uses the metaphor of “peeling an onion” to describe how coaches can break down complex ideas.

“As a teaching technique within a given practice session, you can ‘peel an onion’ to get things moving quickly whenever you introduce a new training activity,” Parr writes in a blog for US Youth Soccer. “Especially as players become older and more advanced, your training activities often will have multiple layers of complexity and multiple types of restrictions. If you take the time to explain every last nuance before you get the ball rolling, players will lose interest and motivation, and aren’t likely to actually remember all of the conditions required in the game.”

Parr suggests that when you are trying to explain a multi-layered practice drill to your players, it’s helpful to break it down layer by layer. Instead of expected your athletes to understand the entire concept from one lengthy explanation, start them off with the simplest form of the drill and gradually add in more pieces. Though this may seem like a time-consuming approach, it’s likely to actually to save time by causing less confusion.

While you peal back the layers, you need to be careful to not lose sight of the big picture. Don’t forget about the purpose of the drill or the strategy and how it can help your athletes. If you keep the big picture in mind you will be able to explain to your athletes how the work they are doing is going to benefit them.

Language is also an important part of communicating complex ideas, according to Kevin Daum in an article on Inc.com. Even while you break the concept down into smaller pieces, it’s still helpful to use clear, concise, and simple language. Before you even start talking, take some time to think about the key points you want to cover and the simplest way to do so.

In order to do this successfully, you will have to fully understand the concept yourself. Identify any areas that you might be confused about or have trouble communicating and take the time to do some extra homework. It can be easy to say that you get the gist and that’s all you need, but if you are going to teach this concept to others you will need to have an advanced understanding.

Using the right tools can be critical for communicating complicated ideas. A visual representation can often help others understand what you are asking of them. Whether you draw it out yourself on a clipboard or show a video of other athletes, visual tools can be a great way to get your ideas across.

Lastly, don’t hesitate to delegate responsibility to your fellow coaches. Understanding and communicating complicated ideas is inherently difficult and there’s no reason to try to do it all on your own. Talk about these concepts with your fellow coaches and determine who is best at explaining certain aspects. This collaboration can turn a daunting task into a simple one.

Great coaches and elite athletes understand that performance is a behavior, not an outcome. It is doing the little things correctly, moment to moment, day after day. But how do we do this in our teams?

By John O’Sullivan, founder of Change the Game Project.

Last week I received the following email (edited for anonymity). We get calls and emails like this quite often from amazing, passionate coaches who are trying to make a difference. Take a read:

Dear John,

I’m currently a head football coach…I took over the program last January after being on staff for the previous 10 years. We had a great offseason and a solid summer. We started the season off with a come from behind victory. Everything was going well. However, these past 10 days have made me question everything. We had a below average week of practice last week and got crushed by our arch rival. Our best player got ejected for fighting and…his brother also received a personal foul and cursed me on the sideline when I tried to reason with him. We have had an equally poor week of practice this week.

Since I took over, my main concern has been trying to change the culture here. I am at a low socioeconomic urban school. Many of my players have no father figure in their life. Many of them are poor. Many of them don’t eat lunch. Many of them aren’t disciplined at home because their single mothers are just trying to survive. I knew all this coming in, so my main goal has been trying to get them to be better humans.

I have seen several of our kids grow on and off the field but I feel like we’re starting to slip back into the abyss. Our practices have been flat. The kids are starting to seem uninterested. They are so used to being the ugly duckling of our district and the perennial loser that I don’t think they know any better. It’s like they are okay with it because that’s the way it’s always been. What can I do to turn this around?”

Sincerely, Coach B

Wouldn’t you want a coach this dedicated to your kids to be their coach? I know I would. Coach B cares about the person, not the athlete. He sees sport as a vehicle that will give them the life skills to better their life situation. For him, it is not about the wins and losses, but the willingness to compete the right way. This is a great coach. So how can we help?

Recently I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, “The Talent Equation” with Stuart Armstrong. Stuart’s guest was his coaching mentor, Mark Bennett, M.B.E. Mark is the founder of Performance Development Systems Coaching, and a mentor to high-performance and professional coaches across the globe. Mark is a former British Commandos trainer and originally developed his PDS system as a way to shape the behavior of elite soldiers. Since then he has worked with professional coaching staffs from the NBA, professional rugby, golf, and elite NCAA teams, shaping coaches so they can shape their athletes.

His wise words during the podcast were the exact advice I needed to pass onto Coach B:

Performance is a behavior, NOT an outcome.

We get so focused on scoreboards and standings that we lose sight of the foundational element of coaching: shaping behavior. When we get the behavior right, when we get our athletes to take ownership of the standards for each and every little thing they do, the magic happens.

Athletes rise to the standard.

They hold each other accountable.

They define what are acceptable levels of focus, effort, and execution.

They train more effectively.

Great results follow.

When you get the behavior right, the scoreboard starts to take care of itself. Athletes control the controllables, make more effective plays, and those small plays add up to big wins.

Coaches, first and foremost, we are shapers of behavior. When we get the behavior to the required and agreed upon standard, results start taking care of themselves. This is my advice to Coach B: focus on behavior first.

This seems simple, but in reality, most coaches do it backward. They focus first on the outcome and hope that the behavior will follow. They install new defenses and trick offensive plays, they teach tactics and technique, they up the fitness expectations, and then come game time, they roam the sidelines yelling “But we went over this in practice!”

They have no idea if learning took place. Just because we taught it, doesn’t mean they learned it. The coaches have no idea if the athletes were listening. And often, when the game gets tight and the pressure ramps up, their teams crumble under the stress of focusing on the scoreboard. They revert to the old norm. Players fight the opponent. They yell at officials. They argue with each other. They stop controlling the controllables, and eventually they lose regardless of talent.

Great coaches and elite athletes understand that performance is a behavior, not an outcome. It is doing the little things correctly, moment to moment, day after day. But how do we do this in our teams?

First, you must clearly define your core values, your standards, the list of “this is how we do things here.” In conjunction with your athletes (as we have written about here), you take the time and define the standards of effort, focus, execution, respect, humility, selflessness, and more. You allow your athletes to define who they want to be and how they want to do it. You get them to sign their names and commit to being the type of teammate described by those values. I recently did this work with a team I am coaching, here are our values:

Next, before every practice, you must get your athletes to own the level of performance – the behaviors – for the day. Mark Bennett recommends that his coaches have the athletes define what acceptable, unacceptable, and exceptional looks like for the chosen activity. This includes not only values based things such as effort and communication, but tactical and technical elements such as spacing, movement, speed of play, and whatever else you are trying to teach. The athletes define and own what is good enough, what is great, and most importantly, what is not good enough and warrants a stoppage of play and a reset.

Bennett challenges them by asking “how long can we sustain acceptable and exceptional,” thus giving the athletes a goal to shoot for. The activity starts and continues as long as the behavior level is acceptable or exceptional, and stops when the level becomes unacceptable. Usually, your players will overestimate how long is sustainable, but over time, with consistent reinforcement, their behavior – and thus their performance – starts to change. Most importantly,  the athletes own this process. They define the standards, they define acceptable behaviors, and when it all clicks, they identify unacceptable, call each other out on it, and hit the reset button and do it right.

Within your culture, you may have individuals that still do not buy into the behavior, even as the team as a whole progresses. This is the situation with the coach I wrote about above. In this case individual intervention is warranted. Sit the athlete down and follow these three steps:

1. Have the athlete define the team values, and identify which one he or she is not adhering to. Many coaches do this in front of the team for the benefit of 1 or 2 kids. Do it individually so that the specific kids know you are speaking to them, and their teammates don’t think they are being called out for the actions of a few.
2. Help the athlete see their behavior through other people’s’ eyes. “How do you think it makes your teammates feel when they are giving maximum effort and you are going through the motions?” “How do you think it makes your coaches feel when we rely on you as a leader and you disrespect your teammates?” Most kids never think of this.
3. Help your athlete change by asking “Is that who you want to be?” If the answer is no (which it is 99% of the time) ask them “how can I help you change?” When you see their new behaviors, catch them being good. If you want the good behavior to continue, you have to acknowledge and reward it.

Sadly, you will from time to time have individuals that will not get on the bus, and you have to make a decision whether it is time to let them off and move on without them, regardless of talent. You must understand culture trumps talent in any environment, and even the most talented players will slowly destroy an entire culture if they are not a good fit and they are behaving counterintuitively to the cultural standards.

Finally, shaping behavior is not a sometime thing; it is an all time thing. As Bennett says “Changing behavior takes time, and the quickest way to change behavior and make progress is to do it every time you step on the field, not just once in awhile.” It is confusing for kids when failure to meet the standards is ignored by coaches time after time and then when coach is having a bad day, he loses it and yells at everyone for the same behavior that was OK the previous week. If it is not OK, we must say so. If we let it go today, we are saying that it is not really a standard. You condone what you do not confront. You must intentionally cultivate the right behaviors and you must intentionally confront the wrong ones.

Coaches, our team’s performance is a behavior, not an outcome. This is my advice to the coach who wrote us last week. How we play is shaped by our standards and our accountability. Identify your standards, agree upon them and define them with your team, and agree upon what happens when we fall below the standard. Hold everyone accountable, and get them to hold each other accountable. Identify the individuals that still don’t get it, and either get them to change their behavior or get them off the bus.

When do you do this?

Every. Single. Day.

When you realize that performance is a behavior, the result takes care of itself.

Good luck Coach B, and to all of you as well.

Changing the Game Project was founded John O’Sullivan. Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.

By John O’Sullivan, founder of Change the Game Project

Coaches, imagine if there was a way to gain insight, understanding, and connection with your athletes by asking a simple question? There is. let me explain how.

A few years back, I coached a talented, yet underperforming sixteen-year-old girl I will call Maddy. She was incredibly inconsistent in her play and often looked very depressed. She was definitely lacking in confidence. Her friends told me she was unsure whether to continue playing or not. After trying multiple ways to help her play the way I believed she was capable of, I called her in for a meeting.

I spent the first 30 minutes of our time together offering my thoughts and suggestions, but as I rambled on and on I could tell she was simply tuning out. Here I was, the highly experienced coach, offering my years of wisdom, and she wasn’t listening.

“Maddy, if you don’t start taking my advice, I can’t really help you. I don’t know what else to say,” I shrugged.

“It’s all good stuff coach, but none of that stuff helps me with my problem,” she replied.

“Really?” I exclaimed. “Then perhaps you better tell me what the problem really is, because I clearly am not helping right now.” I waited for her answer.

‘It’s my Dad,” she said. “Whenever you play me on his side of the field, he is constantly telling me what to do, where to be, when to be there, and I can hear him and see him getting angrier and angrier with me. I think I play a lot better when I play on the side where the teams sit, and away from the parents. At least that way I can’t hear him.”

I thought about it for a second, and she was right. She did seem to play better on the team side of the field. I could honor this request, without affecting the team much. “I can help with that Maddy, no problem at all. Why didn’t you ever say something about that before? I can certainly help you with your position, and more importantly, I can go and speak to your Dad. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“Because you never asked,” she said stone faced.

My heart sank. She was right. All season long, I watched this girl struggle with her play and her confidence, and all I did was get upset and frustrated with her. I tried to solve the problem, without ever knowing the problem. All I had to do was ask one simple question, but I never did.

“What is one thing you wish your coaches knew that would help us coach you better?”

It is the question that changes everything. Not only for the athletes but for us coaches too.

Kyle Schwarz is a third-grade teacher at Doull Elementary School in Denver, CO. A few years back, she decided to start asking this question of her students in order to get to know them better, and the responses blew her away.  As she details in her great book What I Wish My Teacher Knew, and as written about in this great article, the answers to this question open up a whole new level of insight from teacher to student, enabling a deeper connection, and the ability to teach the child, not simply the subject. As some kids wrote to her:

“I wish my teacher knew that my dad works two jobs and I don’t see him much.”

“I wish my teacher knew that I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework.”

“I wish my teacher knew that my dad got deported when I was 3 and I haven’t seen him in 6 years.”

“I wish my teacher knew that my family and I live in a shelter.”

“I wish my teacher knew that I am smarter than she thinks I am.”

Kyle Schwarz has certainly tapped into something here, not just for teachers but for coaches. The more we know about the kids we coach, the better we can serve them as both athletes and as people. When I read her book last year, my first thought was of Maddy and her situation with her father. I thought “why don’t coaches ask this same question from their athletes?”

Recently on our Way of Champions Podcast, Dr. Wade Gilbert, Jerry Lynch and I discussed how this year I started asking the kids I coach to finish the following sentence. We have also been suggesting to coaches at our workshops to have their athletes finish the following sentence, in writing, to be collected by the coach:

“One thing I wish my coaches knew about me that would help them coach me better is…”

The insight this exercise has given me to the kids I currently work with is unbelievable. Coaches who have done this with their teams have shared some of the responses they have received as well. Collectively, to protect anonymity, some of the things we have learned from our athletes are:

“I don’t like to be first in line to demonstrate new things. I usually don’t understand how to do things until I see them once, and it is kind of embarrassing when you ask me to go first.”

“When I make a mistake I would much rather you pull me out and tell me what to fix than yell it out in front of everyone.”

“I get really nervous when I am not playing well and my dad is at the game because he gets really upset in the car on the way home.”

“I don’t like to shoot because my old coach used to yell at me whenever I missed a shot, so now I prefer to pass.”

“I am sorry we don’t stay at the team hotel but my dad says we need to camp to save money.”

“I would practice more at home like you ask me to but last time I went to the park some older kids stole my ball.”

Coaches, the more our kids know how much we care, the more they will care how much we know. When we connect, when we show them respect and encouragement, when we communicate well, and when we listen to what they have to say, we build trust and let them know we care. The best way I have found to be a better listener is to start by asking good questions. And the best thing I have ever asked my players is for them to complete the magic sentence:

“One thing I wish my coach knew about me that would help him/her coach me better is…”

Please try this with your teams, and share with me what you learn. Don’t make the same mistake I made years ago with Maddy, assuming she didn’t care or was simply unteachable. Ask her! I am confident that it will have the same impact on your coaching as it did with mine. Good luck.

Changing the Game Project  is a site that is your one stop shopping for  the latest and greatest information, research, and best practices regarding high performance, motivation, Long Term Athletic Development, fitness, nutrition, college recruiting, and more.