Beyond the Scoreboard: What Would an "Exceptional Coach" Do?
Improve your coaching by answering this hypothetical question
Beyond the Scoreboard, a series of writings on things impacting coaching beyond X’s and O’s, is brought to you by Sideline Interactive.
To stretch the minds of the Gold Medal #RAMP member-coaches I work with, I stay on the lookout for great questions. These questions almost always demand introspection.
I ran across a great question and posed it to the coaches I work with. Here’s the question:
I presented this hypothetical question to the coaches with a bit of a rephrase:
If you got fired today and they brought in an “exceptional coach” to replace you, what do you think they would do?
I liked this question for two reasons.
It made the coaches think about the traits of an “exceptional coach.”
It is phrased in a way that suggests a coach is exceptional because of what they do and not because of some “gifts” they possess.
Here’s a random sampling of some of the responses I received:
“I think maybe they’d be more emotional than I am. I don’t get fired up very often unless I really think it’s warranted.”
“Truly trust my players more. Trust more of them when others don’t live up to a standard.”
“I think just starting with the delivery of coaching information. Be direct and matter of fact.”
“Make practices more efficient.”
“They’d have more structured practices. Addition of ‘vitamin’ type development drills and would get in and out of practice segments faster.”
“I think an ‘exceptional’ coach would probably emphasize shooting more daily.”
“Slow down and be more mindful with their words.”
During the discussion I decided to probe deeper. Since the question made it about what an exceptional coach would do or what actions they’d take, I posed some follow-up questions.
Are actions a choice? (Obviously they are.)
If you are able to identify the actions (choices) an “exceptional coach” would take, what is holding you back from taking those same actions?
Question #2 is the REAL growth question from the exercise. This mythical “exceptional coach” would DO this. Well, why aren’t you?
If there is an action gap between what you are doing and what an “exceptional coach” would do and you can articulate the actions you think they’d take, what is holding you back from taking those same actions?
It is a new year and oftentimes people use the new year to make changes in their lives and habits. For all the coaches reading this I’d pose this now two-part question:
If you got fired today and they brought in an “exceptional coach” to replace you, what do you think they would do?
What is holding you back from doing those things?
I’d love to hear your answers to the above two questions in the comments below.
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