Developing a Picture of Your Coaching Style
What are three of the most important characteristics in developing a coaching style?
- Knowledge of the Sport
- Motivation
- Empathy
There is no substitute for knowing the rules, techniques and strategies in coaching your sport. Lack of knowledge in teaching skills risks injury and frustrates your athletes. Your ability to properly teach and coach the skills of your sport properly will earn great respect from the athletes. They will value you and the experience. This respect also gives you credibility that you can use in teaching athletes how to behave off the playing field.
As a coach, you can have all of the skills and knowledge in the world in your sport, however this means nothing if you are not motivated to teach and coach the athletes on all you know. Be motivated enough to take the time with athletes to work with them on learning drills so that they can perform better.
Empathy is the ability to readily understand your athletes by being aware of their feelings, thoughts and emotions and how they impact the athletes' performance and conveying your sensitivity to them. Make the effort to understand the athletes' joy, frustrations, anxiety and anger.
Now that you have answered the two most important questions, what are my objectives and how will I coach, you have begun to create your coaching philosophy. The key is to know who you are and to continually assess how your coaching experiences fit into your value structure.
The following exercises will help you see where you are as a coach and help you determine the attributes you might want to develop as a coach. Click the "Next Page" link below to proceed to the first of these exercises.
