Communicating Effectively With Your Players


The thing all good coaches do, no matter the sport, is communicate well. They specifically communicate in a way that ensures players know exactly what they need to do to improve their or the teams performance. So if you’re a youth, middle school, high school, or college coach ask yourself if you’re communicating effectively:

Is Your Communication Understandable?

If the player can’t understand what the coach is saying because they’re yelling, looking away from them, giving sarcastic comments, being flippant about a situation, etc., a player will block the coach out. Will the player try harder, sure, but they won’t do it because of what the coach said, the player will try harder so they aren’t embarrassed by the coach again.

Is Your Communication Giving The Player/Team a Correctable Action.

Telling a player to make the shot is not correctable whether the coach yells it or not. Telling a player to hold their follow through, bend their knees, or use their right hand are all correctable. They are things the player can do better next time.

Telling the team they will lose the game if they don’t play better is not correctable either. Showing the team how to attack the full court press, instructing the point guard where to look for a pass, or telling them to put more pressure on the shooters are all things that are correctable.

Were These Bad Coaches?

Is yelling bad and is being honest bad coaching? No, these two things don’t mean a coach is bad, but without their communication being understandable and correctable they shouldn’t expect their team to perform any better because of what they said or how they said it.

Make your coaching understandable and correctable and others will look at you and say, “Now that’s just good coaching.”

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