The Coach as a Facilitator
The Coach as Facilitator
So what do you do when your team has lost most or all of their games in a tournament? As the coach, what is your role? I've seen many approaches to this over the years, and a common one is to project one's own disappointment out onto the players. Of course, upon reflection it is obvious that winning or losing is not solely about the coach, it's about the entire team- coaches included- taking ownership of their contributions or lack thereof...
A good practice is to allow yourself as coach to have a few brief moments to collect yourself and your thoughts. Recall moments in the game when the team was operating at optimum capacity and everyone was "in sync". There may have only been a few moments of this, but it's important that you name them and point them out to your team. This reinforces their skills and provides hope for the next time.
An effective next step is to allow the time and space for the individual team members to assess both their own and the team's performance. Sure it's quicker (and the meeting is shorter) if you do it, but then it comes across like criticism and/or a lecture. Not helpful or inspiring. What works time and again is having the players examine their own performance and talk about what they already know they need to work on for next time. As coaches you can confirm their individual evaluations and add a comment or two of your own. It's helpful if each person is left with a genuine positive comment from either the coach or better still- from one or more of their team-mates. This is an area you need to be careful about, as it can be a patronizing experience unless the improvements or progress noted is authentic. In order for this to happen, the coach will have to observe what the players are doing well in the game. It's tempting not to focus on this. Once you are partway through the season, though, it should be easy to see progress because you will have set individual goals at the beginning (see previous article) and people will invariably have improved.
It may also be useful to ask the team to consider the role that their psychological/mental mindset may have had in their defeat. Many technically highly- skilled teams have lost games solely due to an inability to keep them selves in "the zone" under pressure. If this is true for your team, help is available to address this and it is an area that many coaches do not allow time for in regular practices.
Some days the coach needs to be like an army drill sergeant, while at other times attentive listening and encouragement are the way to go. In either case, being the facilitator of the team's growth is definitely a role the coach needs to take on.
Cheering you on,
Kelly