Coaching Tips From The Best

Let me tell you a story about football. Well, it's not really about football; it's about a football coach you may have heard of, Vince Lombardi. What he did with the New York Jets and then the Green Bay Packers is legend, and he's often looked at as a role model for coaching.

"He made us all better than we thought we could be." - Jerry Kramer on Vince Lombardi

Like all coaches, Lombardi had team meetings where they would watch and discuss film of the last game -- the radio equivalent of going over an aircheck. Lombardi would point out mistakes, where they could have done better and what they should stop doing. Then he noticed an interesting thing happening: The number of mistakes per game began to increase. Play suffered overall, and the men didn't look like winners.

At that moment, Lombardi decided on a strategic change in how he coached. He decided that he would now emphasize the positive -- what the players were doing right, and celebrate even small improvements. It wasn't just correcting mistakes; it was any movement toward playing the way Lombardi wanted that was applauded.

"His enthusiasm, his spirit, was infectious." - Frank Gifford on Vince Lombardi

The rest, as they say, is history. Once Lombardi shifted the minds of the players to what they were doing, they could envision what they could do. They became a powerful force in football. Lombardi taught us that the goal of a coach is to encourage the players to be better and do better.

What kind of coach are you?

I see a lot of what are called aircheck sessions, talent sessions, coaching sessions and critiques that do the exact opposite. The aircheck is stopped to examine a mistake. The emphasis is wholly on what's wrong, and what they need to correct. Often it's simply the PD implying the talent should just do it the PD's way. There's not much encouragement in that, and you can expect failure to continue.

"Respect wasn't a one-way street with him. He demanded it of others, but he also gave it." - Pete Rozelle of Vince Lombardi

A lot of you are saying, "Yeah, but I'm no Vince Lombardi." Wrong! All of us have a choice of motivation and encouragement or correcting and discouragement. It's a choice, not nature. It's also the realization that, in a true coaching session, it's being done for the talent, not the PD. Your job is to encourage them into better performance, not to beat them into submission.

human nature is to move toward what you reward, and away from what you ignore

If you adopt Lombardi's perspective, and focus on what your talent is doing right, you'll see swift improvement. As the book "The One Minute Manager" suggested, you need to become a "good-finder" instead of a mistake-finder. When you review an aircheck, focus on what you want, or progress toward what you want, and forget the mistakes. Very rarely is a mistake something so catastrophic, you need to focus on it. What you'll find is that human nature is to move toward what you reward, and away from what you ignore.

It's a decision ... and it's up to you. Focus on the positive and wait for the results, or focus on the negative and see more failures.