Episode XII: Purpose, Culture, Managing, Creating and Elephants

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you!”

Every week, I share a couple of things that I’m reading, learning or actively doing in my personal and professional life. This week, we dive into:

• Podcast: The Coaches Club Podcast with Michael MacKay

• Practice Idea: Time your weakest player’s activity rate

• X’s & O’s: Chaser Lay-Up Build Up

• Leadership Thought: People Around You

• Recommended Article: Maker vs Manager

• Reflective Question: Elephant in the room

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Podcast: The Coaches Club Podcast with Michael MacKay

Every time I listen to Coach MacKay, I find something valuable to take away. This podcast’s main takeaway for me was the ACE feedback framework.

• Appreciative

• Coaching

• Evaluative

It reminds me of a time when I was coaching a group of U18 girls in Ireland a few years ago. There was one player on the team who was just incredible for our team doing a tonne of different things that held the team together and help them perform better. Unfortunately, we had a really strong team that season, and she didn’t get on the court a lot.

One day before we started practice, I connected with her and just told her how much I appreciated what she was bringing to the team. It had nothing to do with technical or tactical instructions. I just wanted her to know that I saw the value that she brings to the team.

I found out later that she was on the verge of quitting and that single moment of interaction had changed her mind. Not technical instructions. Not an evaluative one. Rather, it was a comment that showed her that she was seen and appreciated. Thankfully, she stayed on the team and we were able to have a good season and she even joined our coaching staff a few years later.

As coaches, we can get too caught up in the technical instructions or in always trying to correct a mistake that we forget to say thanks or connect with our players on an emotional level.

The ACE feedback framework can help remind you to provide what the player needs most at that time.

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Practice Idea: Time your weakest player’s activity rate

In a conversation that I had last week with a fellow coach, we were discussing how some players don’t actually get as many reps in practice. The coach comes in and is offering instructions, correcting, providing feedback etc., however, there is no flow to the practice and it is very choppy.

This is not an unusual situation within youth sports and practice sessions.

An idea that my fellow coach suggested was timing the weakest players activity rate.

Here’s how best to do it - Ask a friend or colleague of yours to come and watch your next practice. Highlight to your colleague ahead of time who several of your weakest players are. Then, allow your colleague to focus on one.

Your colleague will then start the stopwatch every time that player is active in a drill. If the player is standing, watching, observing or listening to instructions, the clock doesn’t tick. At the end of the practice, connect with your colleague to see how active the player was.

This is a really interesting idea. Are our players as active as we think they are in practice? How much time do they actually get to rep out techniques and get better?

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X’s and O’s: Chaser Lay-Up Build Up

This week’s X’s and O’s are looking at how we used a dynamic advantage start to build up one of our practices last week. From the warm-up all the way through to our 5 on 5 play, Chaser Lay-up was used to give us an initial advantage and then we played out of that.

I’m a big fan of using constraints and games to teach our players the technical details and concepts that they need. They are some downsides to this style of coaching, but for the most part, it has a lot of positives.

https://rendsportsacademy.com/2021/11/15/weekly-xs-os-chaser-lay-ups-build-up/

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Leadership Thought: People Around You

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you!”

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Recommended Article: Maker vs Manager

This is an excellent article on how your daily schedule should look like. One of the things that I have been conscious of is my daily schedule and I have been effectively adapting it over the last few years.

Essentially, I try to do some deep work in the morning when everyone is asleep and I can have a few hours of interruption. Then, during the day, when the chaos ensues, I become more reactionary, only able to perform light work that doesn’t require deep thinking.

As I prefer in-depth work, I can be quite short during the day, but the article highlights some things that I can incorporate into my schedule and why it makes a difference.

https://fs.blog/maker-vs-manager/

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Reflective Question: Elephant in the room

What is the elephant in the room that you need to address today?

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That’s all for this week. If you found this interesting, I would appreciate you sharing it on your social media accounts.

Until next week.

Nabil Murad