The season is almost over. Over the course of the season, the team continued to improve and the players are doing well on and off the field. Individually, players are making great strides in improving their skill level and continue to play with more confidence each time they step on the field. As a coach, you have done a great job with your team spending countless hours putting together training session plans, analyzing player performance, and providing instruction that helps player correct mistakes. Now what?
The Great Coach Misconception is that a coach will look at what they did this past season and try to replicate it to try to achieve the same results. The coach found a system that works and the coach will stick to it, right? On the contrary, a great coach will look at how the season went, successful or not, and find things to improve. The misconception is that great coaches stick to what is working. When in fact, great coaches are never satisfied with what is working, and are ALWAYS looking for ways to be better. Why? Simply, great coaches know that just because it is working does not mean it is the MOST EFFECTIVE way to do it. For great coaches, there is no ceiling to improvement. They are often pleased, but never satisfied with their performance as a coach.
When I started coaching, I had this misconception about great coaches and teachers, and I still find myself fighting it today. When things are working and going well, it is very hard to make changes. My goal was always to find what worked and then stick to it. Why recreate the wheel each year, right? If I have a system that works, it does not make sense for me to take time to change it again. Changing what I was doing could also lead to adverse results. I can make a change and it not work, and then everyone would ask, "Why did you stop doing what was working?" Then, I would really look silly! Well, at least that is what I used to think. That fear and unwillingness to change is just an excuse, among many other excuses, to not put in the extra effort to improve.
Great coaches constantly challenge their own coaching philosophies and practices at the end of each season. Not everything, but looking at a couple specific areas in which there could be room for improvement to help the players and team achieve even more next season, on and off the field. Think of the wheel. No, they are not trying to reinvent it, but over the course of history it has proven beneficial to keep trying to make the wheel better. And that is the difference, the desire to constantly make it better. Without it our wheels would still be made of wood or stone.
The more I have read about great coaches in all different types of sports, I am constantly blown away by how much work goes in during the off-season to get better. Great coaches expect that attitude from their players in the off-season, and the expectation is the same for themselves. Not just the standard things that need to get done to prepare for the season, but the amount of extra effort and time put in to analyzing and critiquing their own actions and approaches to teaching their players. Great coaches tend to be more particular and critical of their own actions than anyone else. They are brutally honest and very particular when picking a part all their actions and decisions from the previous year.
Coach Wooden is a great example and someone I love to read about. After each season (many of which ended with championships), Coach Wooden would spend a lot of time researching a part of his approach to training or teaching his team the game that he wanted to improve (regardless of the success last season). His goal was to always improve.
He did a ton of research on the area he wanted to improve and analyzed the data. He would find other team’s statistics, call or send out surveys to opposing coaches, find related articles and publications on the subject, etc… After all of that, he would take all the information, and come up with a plan on how to implement his findings into his training for the following season. As a “thank you” for helping, Coach Wooden would send his results to the coaches who provided information for him to analyze.
It seemed odd to me that the coach, who I assumed would be receiving calls for help from other coaches (which I am sure he did), was the one who was making the calls for help. Again, that was my misconception about great coaches. I thought they did not need any help. They were already great! The simple fact is that these coaches understand that they do not have all the answers and needed to constantly learn as much as possible to help their players succeed.
Great coaches who have a lot of success are often seen as very systematic. Yes, they have a system, and many of them have written about their systems and they are available for coaches to study. The consistent thing about many of these systems is the principles most of them are based on; analyze and improve. To analyze a season requires asking a lot of tough questions. Improvement requires change, and at times, some level of discomfort. Improvement does not happen by accident. Consistent improvement, and regular success, is the result of coaches willing to make changes each year that will help their team and players. After a season below expectations, this is probably something most coaches naturally would do. But after a season that expectations are met or surpassed, making changes is normally not a natural thought. Most coaches will ask, “What did I do right this year to help the team get to that level?” which is a good question. The question that is harder to ask is, “What did I do wrong this year to make it harder to get to that level or beyond it?”
Great coaches have coaching philosophies and firm fundamental beliefs that may never change much throughout their career, and that can be a very good thing as it shows the coach knows what they want to accomplish and how they will do it. Although to best implement their philosophies, the coaches will look for ways to improve upon them or adjust them as their knowledge of the game grows, the game changes, and their players develop.
Again, I think a great misconception with great coaches is that they are stubborn people who do not compromise or look to change. They are coaches with a set system and the recipe for success that works for them. This was my image of those coaches.This image has changed the more I have learned about how these coaches actually operate and the only thing really consistent about them is their willingness to change and improve what they do.
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