The United States Olymic Committee published an article on elite coaching and its trends based on interviews with the various national team coaches.
The article found that:
experience overwhelmingly remains the major way that coaches develop a coaching style, followed by modeling or observing successful coaches. Those two methods alone account for over 87% of a coach develops their coaching style.
If experience is the major way one develops a coaching style, how does one get experience? That is always the question. If you don’t have experience, how do you get hired to get the experience? This study suggests that a coach who has been a Head Coach at a lower level might be the better choice over an assistant at the same level; for instance, hiring a high school head coach over a college assistant for a college job. But, that never happens. However, if developing a coaching style requires experience, then that college assistant is learning on the job as a head coach making a huge salary and there is no guarantee of success.
Does this mean there are better ways to hire coaches? Does it suggest that maybe there are other, better ways for developing a coaching style, though nothing fully replaces experience?
As the article says:
If this is a tendency for young coaches as well, it raises an important issue for future coach development. Can we only hope that the young coach has a good coach to learn from or had a good coach as an athlete? The old adage of “you coach how you have been coached” is an area that coaching education may need to address.
I often argue against the “follow your mentor” approach because coaches blindly do what they have always done without thinking about why they do it. The way we teach certain things becomes the absolute way to do it whether it makes sense or not just because so many coaches do it a certain way.
In terms of body of knowledge, coaches ranked the following three at the top:
1. Skills of your sport
2. Strategies of your sport
3. Teaching of Sport Skills
Apparently knowing the skills and strategies is more important than being able to teach the skills. As for areas of study, coaches studied:
1. Skills
2. Sport Psychology
3. Strategies
4. Biomechanics
5. Physiology
At an elite level, I have to believe you know the required skills. For instance, I understand basketball skills. I do not spend any time, really, studying basketball skills. I study physiology and biomechanics to find a better way to perform the skills or train athletes. In an effort to find a better way to do things, I study outside basketball to incorporate that learning into my basketball background to improve my teaching and training. This gives me greater creativity in my teaching, as I am not beholden to basketball drills. Last week, to teach a concept, I used an old soccer drill. If I had read through more basketball literature, I would have done the same basketball drills. However, the players loved the new drill and it worked in our next game.
The end of the article offered a list of 20 additional insights of attributes and skills important for coaches, which I found interesting:
1. Ability to instill belief/trust/confidence in athletes
2. Big Vision, balanced by ability to set and adjust goals
3. Care about others more than self
4. Perseverance and a sense of humor
5. Attention to skills development of athletes; tailored to athlete needs
6. Precise training techniques and coaching on a daily basis
7. Ability to filter
8. Problem solving orientation
9. Ability to observe without judgment
10. Desire to improve through knowledge
11. Quality Decision makers under pressure
12. High level of integrity and fairness
13. Ability to multi-task with equal amounts of high energy
14. Knowledgeable and with an ability to transfer knowledge simplistically
15. Focused on the process
16. Creative, open minded to new ideas and approaches
17. Having thick skin
18. Flexible, but decisive
19. Excellent instructional skills, ability to deliver messages
20. Understands critical zone training
Maybe in the hiring process, or coach development process, we need to develop a matrix or test which demonstrates these qualities. In one of the management books I read this year, it talks about how the best managers hire for talent, not experience. However, another book suggests that managers conducting interviews rarely come to a consensus on the best choice. If the best managers hire for talent, but struggle to agree, how can we develop a better way to hire coaches which involves measuring for talent? Typically, coaches get their first jobs based on their playing career, which proves very little about one’s aptitude as a coach. Once a coach gets his foot in the door, its basically connections and recommendations by someone of influence. Rarely is coaching talent measured or considered. These recommendations possibly offer some thoughts as to a better way to hire a new coach.
Yo B, nice job, good thoughts. A couple things come to mind on this topic…
Is it possible that the “experience” the article refers to is inclusive of all basketball experience, not just exclusive to being an assistant on a staff?
For the young, or the otherwise newer coach, this “experience” begins the first time you step out on a court as a player in a team setting. I know for myself, much of my style has been developed from what I thought was effective and adopted, or thought was inefective and rejected.
Same thing when I became a fire captain. My experience as a rank & file firefighter prepared me more to lead than my temporary details as a captain before I got the job for real.
Knowledge and experience is important. But it can be over rated. I’ve been working on an essay about a High School coach who has 25+ years of experience. But there is a huge chasm between the knowledge he has accumulated, and his ability to communicate it to his players.
When my wife owned a hair salon, she used to say that she, “Hires for personality and trains for talent.” Transfering that thought to basketball coaching may be a bit of a stretch, but I think there’s a correlation.
If a player is intelligent, is a real good communicator, has a positive upbeat personality, and understands how to motivate athletes to play hard; the rest (tactics and strategy) can be learned.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the essay I mentioned, but I can’t figure out how to end it. The story is about a real life coach, and though I came up with a fictitous name, locally it would be easy to figure out who I’m talking about, and it’s not my intention to hurt him.
coach7 said this on September 6, 2008 at 12:56 PM |
In response to your wife, not to disagree, but hiring for personaity would be hiring for talent, at least if we use Marcus Buckingham’s definition of talent vs. skills, while training for talent, I imagine, really means training the skills of the job.
As you say, if the player has the talent (intelligence, communication skills, personality, etc), he can learn the skills (tactics, etc.).
I disagree with the experience argument. I do not believe in experience. I don’t think a 10-year veteran is better than a rookie coach just because he has 10 years of experience. There are plenty of awful, experienced coaches.
I believe in talent, work ethic and open-mindness. I think we need to re-evaluate the way coaches are hired because most coaches are hired based on experience and connections (like everything else in the world), but neither one’s experience or connections necessarily translates into a successful coach.
Brian McCormick said this on September 7, 2008 at 1:22 PM |
Brian, you and I do this almost every time man!
There’s nothing you said that I disagree with. In fact, I’m kinda concerned if you took from what I’d said to mean that I value experience over talent in a coach. Concerned that I’m not communicating clearly.
This coach I wrote about (shelved until he retires or is finally put out to pasture) has 30+ years of coaching experience, and he is so awful that I honestly believe many people would find parts of my story about him difficult to believe. He does things every day that create slow basketball players, who are confused by his teaching. They aren’t having fun, are learning bad habits, and are not getting life lessons from the game. He is modeling failure. It’s pathetic.
Sorry, didn’t mean to go off on a rant. Getting back to experience… This will be my 8th season. That’s not very much experience compared to his 30+ seasons. Yet, I admit that I believe I’m the better basketball coach between the two of us. I don’t go around saying it out loud, there’s no reason to, but I believe that about myself.
I’ve thought about how my belief that I’m a better coach might be quantfiable other than by wins and losses (pretty sure I’d win that contest anyways). Because this is developmental basketball, and while almost everyone seems to make winning & losing the end-all-to-beat-all, coaches like us know that’s NOT what’s most important.
When you wrote about playing hard being a skill, a light went on for me. Playing hard is the quantifiable factor I was looking for. When one team always plays hard, no matter the score, no matter their record, or how tired they are, you can see that. Conversly, if another team consistantly plays with a noticable lack of hustle and effort, you can see that also. These factors are heavily influenced by leadership, and that’s why I believe they are better indicators than wins and losses of how effective a youth coach is.
I was feeding this coach players from Jr High level for 5 years before I went up to V assistant(he was JV) 2 seasons back (last year he went to V and I became the JV coach). I’d focused on preparing them for HS ball by really emphasizing fundamentals over remembering plays (probably not a coincidence that we won a lot too). We played M2M defense while almost every other team in our Jr High league was running zone defenses (win by friday mentality).
Then I’d go see them play HS ball, and they were diminished! Underachieving. They played with little passion. They gave up. They literally got slower (I have video to prove it) as the season progressed and it was clearly as much from a lack of desire as it was a conditioning problem. They just didn’t care, and he coaches (led) them to that destination each season.
(he’s a teacher & an archaic provision of their Union Contract allows him to hang onto the job unless a more experience teacher wants the job.)
This has really bothered me. Especially now that my daughter is in line to play for him. If I didn’t want to be around to see her play, I’d go back to Jr High coaching tomorrow to get away from having to see him every day. In fact, if he’s not gone soon, I will go back to the Jr High after my daughter graduates.
Am I ranting again? Sorry.
coach7 said this on September 11, 2008 at 4:35 PM |
No worries. I was clarifying my point to make sure that you understood that I agreed with you, and, as I have read the essay and understand the situation, it’s a rough spot. I know a college coach just hanging on until he qualifies for retirement while his assistant does all the work. It irritates me that people who have coveted jobs and who do not excel, or at least work hard, keep the jobs while there are hundreds if not thousands of people waiting in line for the opportunity. But, I guess that’s life…
Brian McCormick said this on September 11, 2008 at 9:37 PM |