When identifying important positive issues which can affect coaching, it is important to regard the social factors which affect: the coach, the participants and the coaching environment. Below, a constructed and revised list of ‘commandments’ is shown, all of which are believed to have a positive sociological outcome.
‘The 10 Commandments of Coaching’
When coaching a team, it is found (Jones, et al, 2004) that their are certain carachteristics which work together to create the perfect coaching and team environment. This ranges from: trust, humour, discipline and knowledge. The specific carachteristics were labelled as ‘commandments’.
1. Be yourself
2. Know thy players
3. Be respectful and garner respect
4. Establish mutual trust
5. Be fair, disciplined and treat players equally
6. Strive for clarity of purpose and communicate this
7. Develop structure and clear expectations
8. Challenge your players
9. Negotiate ‘buy in’
10. Don’t take it too seriously!
Above is the list of commandments which I feel are most relevant to coaching, specifically my own. The list was created with help from interviews that were conducted with professional coaches from around the world such as Graham Taylor and Hope Powell in Jones, et. al, 2004 study.
Each of the point listed above plays an important part in succesfully coaching a team. It is very important to ‘be yourself’ while coaching, because simply enough if you are not your coach, the participants will not know who you really are, and how to communicate with you. ‘Knowing your players’ is important as it allows you to know whats best for each person individually and collectively as a team. This can be training sessions, tactics or even to solve conflicts that may occur. Developing a mutual respect between youself as the coach and the players is also incredibly important. It, as the coach is important that the boundaries are set for the players but in the same sense ensure that as a coach, you pay the players the respect they deserve because ‘earning respect and garnishing respect’ are equally important. The boundaries set can not be to strict for example. By ‘earning a mutual trust’ between yourself and your team creates a better harmony for performance, both from the coach and the players. Trusting your players with specific job roles or tasks, or even to warm themselves up at trianing, creates a better performance environment for everyone. Despite the trust having been earned it is still important to be ‘fair, disciplined and treat players equally’. By showing favouritism towards certain players and excluding others will deteriorate any team morale that has been previously built. Every player on the team should be treated equally in every aspect, especially discipline.
References
Darlington, H 2007, ‘The 10 Commandments Of Good Coaching’, Supply House Times, 49, 12, pp. 64-67, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost
Goldsmith, M 2012, ‘Expanding the Value of Coaching’, Journal For Quality & Participation, 35, 1, pp. 29-32, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost
Very interesting viewpoint Ben! I agree with Callum, I too had some difficulty when treating the pupils all the same and failed to gain respect from most of them. However, through allocating roles within my sessions to those who were less engaged, this challenged them and began to flourish in peer coaching roles. Have either of you experience this within your coaching?
Yes Charlotte I completely agree, I almost created a private team between myself and the misbehaving pupil to keep him enganged on behaving properly, allowing him to control when the session stops.
Hi,
Thanks Cal, yes I encountered a similar problem on occasion with mine, however my philosophy differs to yours and I try and create the feeling of mutual respect between myself and all members of the group.
On occasions when certain members of the group failed to provide me or the other coaches with the appropriate respect, they were very often corrected by a peer, rather than a coach.
I feel this is a direct link to the way I interpret respect to the group.
Cheers
Hi Ben!
I like how you have interpreted the 10 commandments of coaching. I had to change mine to fit my coaching style and philosophy, for example ‘treat players equally’ seemed difficult for me as some players didn’t earn as much respect as they could have done throughout the year!
Did you find that these fitted your coaching style well? And if not, did you find you had to change them accordingly?
Cheers!