Go on, put the cart before the horse
Isn't it time for you to spread your creative wings?
Coaching is mostly a very logical pursuit, right?
A lot of linear thinking - along the lines of if we do this and then that we’ll get a certain result or outcome.
Or, a lot of reductionist thinking that seems to make sense on the surface. And yet, the reality, in all of its multi-factorial glory, is a little different.
Both approaches are quite normal and prevalent. However the coaches you look up to and admire tend to disrupt this way of behaving.
They openly and regularly display a level of left-field thinking that wows the masses.
Really though, they are just being creative.
In my eyes they are deliberately putting the cart before the horse. It could also be called inverse-logic; taking actions that are at odds with the norm and that, on the face of it, seem quite experimental e.g. playing with no true No.9 in football, giving up the kick-out restart in Gaelic football, running the ball a la rugby in American Football etc.
But these actions are deliberate and well thought out.
So, to prompt your own creativity and pull yourself apart from the crowd, how challenging would it be to introduce and leverage any of the following principles into your regular coaching approach?
Fail deliberately:
We live in a somewhat ‘straight-line’ era; we focus on the fastest distance between two points and generally plump for the lift instead of the stairs, so to speak. It's fair to say we’ve become quite risk-averse, a little lazy and this plays out in many coaching sessions that I observe.
These sessions are “safe”. Probably too much so.
Safe to the degree that they aren’t placing players in a situation of red-zone or worst-case scenarios where chaos reigns. Where noisy minds combine with fatigued bodies to result in a system & process shutdown. Learned responses fail. We see this all the time in competitive action. So, why not address it by ensuring your coaching sessions are, on the face of it, a little bit messy? Where you are provoking failed attempts and even ultimate failure. Would that better prepare players for the issues they’ll (regularly) face? Would it support an improved learning environment?
Rethinking:
Instead of piling on fresh thoughts and knowledge do you ever press pause so that you can reconsider or reformat the detail you already store?
And, with the benefit of hindsight and wisdom, rethink over and through these details with the purpose of evolving them?
Rethinking is powerful. [Note: well worth reading Adam Grant’s book “Think Again”]
It helps to outweigh confirmation bias. It’s a real antidote to cognitive dissonance and the Dunning Kruger effect.
It also helps us overcome the common hindsight bias effect which leads to blind faith being placed in the old thoughts, beliefs and experiences that result in us thinking that we’re better predictors and situation readers than we really are.
We live in an era of accumulation; would it be better to use an approach of regular rethinking to reappraise & reconsider on a path to renewing and renovating?
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Ask, not tell:
Words are and have power.
And yet all day long I spout them with abandon and little thought.
Words, in the form of questions, can be magical.
Questions clearly show that you want to listen, learn and understand. That you are interested. That you value what the other person(s) has to say.
So often in coaching sessions I have found myself as the purveyor of all knowledge and answers; but then is my relationship with the players one of teacher-pupil or on an adult-adult basis where we’re on a shared journey with a destination point of engrained learning?
An experiment for you - How would you cope if 80% of the words you speak in some upcoming coaching sessions were in the form of questions? How would that work out for you and your players?
Pre-Mortem:
Isn’t it fair to say that any time you lose a match or don’t have a winning season that the root reasons are not really new news?
We all engage in post-match or postseason reviews that, no matter the positive intent, take the form of post-mortems.
We comb through the ashes and look for reasons for the ultimate outcomes. It can quickly take the form of a blame game. And how often are any of these causes that we find are novel or a surprise to us? In the main you’ll find it’s very few, if any.
Instead, if we’re honest the causes are hiding in the wide open all the time - like cracks in the wall that we just papered over. And we hoped it would be ok; but, as we’ve said before, hope is not a very rewarding strategy.
How about you try this.
As well as your next post-match review, host a pre-mortem before the upcoming match.
Jump into the future. Outline two scenarios to players. In both they are living 1-2 hours post the upcoming match and you’ve (i) lost the match and (ii) won the match. Pick scores to make it realistic.
Now ask the players to live in those moments, to feel them and to share reasons for each result. Specific reasons. No fluff.
Compile the answers and then quickly do a run through to establish what actions from the two scenarios were fully in the control of the group. Why those actions (hypothetically) failed or succeeded and what you can do in advance to make sure they don’t or do transpire.
It’s kind of like going back to the future.
In this way you’re prompting and promoting a culture of ownership and accountability through understanding. And it’s player led.
If you know what a future looks like then you can prepare for it. A Pre-mortem is a form of proactive visualisation. And at a fraction of the cost of looking back in anger and frustration.
How powerful is being forewarned and forearmed?
Proflect:
There are similarities in proflection and premortems. The key difference, for me, is that pre-mortems tend to be more of a group exercise (though not exclusively).
Proflection is more of a personal pursuit.
You consider the response you can give or the actions you can take vs. what you would have done. In effect it’s like the Accusation Audit promoted by hostage negotiator, Chris Voss. You foresee events that may happen to you. Words and statements you are presented with. And then live in that moment to choose the most rewarding, empowering and advantageous response.
You can't, of course, foresee to the level of prediction. However one of the benefits of experience is pattern recognition. How many times have you seen signals that led to an outcome that wasn’t a surprise to you?
What if next time you see and hear these signals you briefly internalise them so that you can craft the most appropriate response toward a desirable outcome. It may well be the difference in owning the moment rather than letting it happen to you.
If you do and behave the same as everyone else you get, largely, the same outcome. Progress results from proactivity; from chasing down solutions rather than repeating and hoping. Our most urgent need as coaches is to learn and a great way to do this is to travel new paths and blaze new trails. It can be risky but then don’t forget that calculated risk taking probably had a large role in helping you toward any of the progress & success you’ve enjoyed to date.
You want players who are learners and creative. Set an example for them. Stand back and look at the multitude of choices you have to help you grow creatively….and then go and break off the cuffs of majority thinking.
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All the best….Paul