But Responsible Coaching is not soft. It is every coach’s job to help players improve, especially Responsible Coaches, who also strive to teach players life lessons through sports and therefore must carry extra credibility on the playing field. After all, players who do not think their coaches can help them improve their games may tune out and miss their coaches’ life lessons, too.
To be effective, Responsible Coaches must know when and how to correct players. In fact, the “Magic Ratio” works not because it helps youth athletes feel good about themselves, but because that good feeling keeps players open and receptive to the necessary corrections.
When to Correct Players Almost all correction should occur in practice. In the heat of a game, technical skill correction rarely works.
Especially in flow sports, such as hockey or soccer, a player in the game must focus on continuous action and stay aware and ready for the next play. Yet too often coaches yell or try to physically demonstrate corrections in technique, which only distracts players (who already are fighting distraction due to whatever mistake prompted the coach’s urge to correct).
If a coach absolutely feels compelled to correct a player’s technique during a game, it should occur during a break in the action and should be no more than a minor adjustment that the coach has previously addressed with the player in practice and can reinforce with trigger words, a hand signal or other gesture that just serves as a reminder.
Other opportunities for brief, simple corrections occur during timeouts, when players come out of a game and between periods. Each of those scenarios has its own challenges and balances to be struck.
For example, during a timeout and even between periods, you won’t want to correct players at the expense of their understanding any discussion of strategy to be used when play resumes. You might just deliver the trigger words a certain player needs to hear and then keep the player included in the strategy discussion. And players coming out of the game, especially if they sense they are coming out because of mistakes, likely are not open to correction at all.
In all the above circumstances, it is best to correct privately unless there are several players who will benefit from hearing the same correction at the same time. In summary, the more removed from action a player is, especially the action that requires correction, the more open to correction the player is.
How to Correct Players Depending on players’ ages, skill proficiency and your team’s level of competitiveness, it often helps to ask players if they are open to correction. If you do so, and the player says “no,” then it is best to respect the player’s wishes and say something along the lines of, “OK, when you’re ready to talk about it, please let me know.”
A “Criticism Sandwich” also can be helpful. Try to “sandwich” between two pieces of praise the “meat” of your message: calm, quiet, specific, constructive instruction. For example: “It was a great effort to get to the ball. If you peak over your shoulder to find your defender, you’ll be even more ready to do something great with the ball once you control possession. That little peak over your shoulder will really help you take advantage of the quickness you’ve worked so hard to develop.”
In that Criticism Sandwich, notice the “if-then” statement. Rather than just telling the player what to do, the if-then structure gives power to the player. In the throes of a mistake and a correction, players regaining a sense of control can be critical to their absorbing the correction and implementing it as soon as possible.
Determining when and how to effectively correct players is part art, part science. The suggestions here may make the correction more palatable for the player and thus more accepted. However, note that you, as a Responsible Coach, must provide the occasional hard-to-deliver, hard-to-hear truth that will improve your players’ performance and help them learn the life lesson of how to benefit from coaching on the field and beyond.