Stepping Out of the Echo Chamber: The Importance of Independent Coaching Evaluations
As a coach, you are the orchestrator of your team.
Every day, you work with your players, developing their skills, designing practice plans, scouting opponents and installing plays. You guide young players and mentor your assistant coaches.
But who helps you develop? Who highlights possible areas of weaknesses or opportunities for you to improve? Who coaches the coach?
Recently, my team was at an Easter Tournament in Vienna. The tournament, which is one of the biggest youth basketball tournaments in Europe allowed a unique opportunity for me.
Colleagues of mine, who reside in other States, would be there with their teams competing. It would mean that I could have access to their insights in a way that I normally don’t have.
Therefore, I sought an outside perspective. I roped in a colleague, someone familiar yet detached enough to provide that unvarnished feedback I craved.
Yes, it was a bit like asking her to grade my homework, but the insights were invaluable.
Why Seek External Evaluation?
In the world of coaching, it’s easy to get wrapped up in our methods and strategies, creating a sort of echo chamber where our ideas are constantly reinforced.
But just as a ship needs a compass to find its way, coaches need external evaluations to ensure we’re on the right track, or at least provide unbiased feedback.
It’s about gaining fresh perspectives, discovering blind spots, and sparking growth that might otherwise remain dormant.
Sculptors & Tunnel Vision
Consider a sculptor working on a piece of marble.
From one angle, the sculpture seems flawless, but a fresh pair of eyes might reveal a different story from another side. This outside observer can see what the sculptor, so focused on their work, might miss.
As coaches, we’re sculptors of our team’s potential, and sometimes it takes another artist to point out the parts of our masterpiece that need refinement. We are working with our teams, day in and day out, to the point where cognitive biases may form.
We begin to see only what we believe we will see, and this can be detrimental.
Reflective Feedback
The feedback from my colleague wasn't just a list of do's and don'ts.
It was a mirror reflecting back at me, highlighting areas of strengths and pinpointing where growth is needed. Her feedback highlighted certain aspects that I agreed with, but it also provided insights where I disagreed with my colleague.
Positives:
One of the things that I feel my team does remarkably well is get their energy from our full-court defense. This energy then extends to our offensive execution, team morale and general attitude.
It was good to see that a colleague who only had a snippet was able to also recognise this.
Need to Improve
I also believe that as a team, we are normally good at getting in the help-side position and covering the second line of attack. This is something that my colleague highlighted as a negative, meaning that we didn’t do a good job of it.
Based on this feedback, I have to reflect and see what I am missing.
Why do I believe that we do a good job of something that she highlighted we don’t?
This feedback will help me be more deliberate in scanning and evaluating this part of our teams’ performance.
Style of Play
Also interesting is what is not highlighted - As a team, we want to have a unique identity in our playing style.
We want to play a fast, uptempo game. We want to attack the opposition within eight seconds and failing to do so, we want to flow into our half-court offense. We also want to be an aggressive full-court defensive team.
While the external reflection highlighted the full-court defensive aspect, there was no mention of our intent to play fast. Therefore, it is clear that we are not hitting the mark on this specific part of our identity.
If we are, it should be obvious to anyone who watches us for them to think, “Wow, this pace of play is ridiculously fast!”
Therefore, this is another area for me to reflect on and decide if I want to double down on or not.
Encouraging Reflection Among Coaches
To my fellow coaches, especially those working with young athletes, I can't stress enough the value of seeking independent evaluations.
Whether it's inviting a colleague to observe a session or even recording and reviewing your coaching, the goal is to break free from the echo chamber. It’s about creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement, not just for our athletes, but for ourselves as well.
Excellence is Never Static
In the pursuit of excellence, our journey as coaches is never static.
It’s a continuous loop of plan-do-review. By welcoming external evaluations, we open ourselves to growth, ensuring that our coaching not only meets but exceeds the needs of our athletes.