This article was provided by Coaches Network

Many of the keys to coaching are universal, but when it comes to coaching athletes of the opposite gender there are some extra considerations to keep in mind. Whether you’re a male coaching females, or a female coaching males, it’s important to be aware of respecting boundaries and understanding what is appropriate behavior. To make this easier, Dr. Cheri Toledo has provided some guidelines to follow in an article on Purpose2Play.com.

As a Certified Elite Life Coach with more than 15 years of coaching experience at the college and high school levels, Toledo has seen how coaching athletes of the opposite gender can provide some unique challenges. Much of this comes down to understanding how to effectively communicate with different athletes. And this can require some reading, research, and experience. One source that Toledo found particularly useful was the book You Just Don’t Understand by Deborah Tannen.

“[Tannen] found that boys focused their communication on independence, self-reliance and the avoidance of failure, while girls focused on connection, preserving intimacy, and avoiding isolation,” writes Toledo. “In addition, boys were most interested in sharing content, while girls were concerned with the interaction itself.”

This means that the way you communicate with your athletes is key. According to Toledo, female athletes generally respond better when you avoid yelling and ask them for their input, whereas male athletes often respond to motivational yelling or concise demands from a coach. While the content of what you say may be very similar, the way you deliver the message can make all the difference.

Practice habits may also differ. According to Toledo, research has shown that female athletes are often under-confident while males can sometimes be overconfident. Having enough confidence is crucial to performing at a high level, so in order to help female athletes overcome this hurdle work on improving their confidence during practice. In order to do this, try making practices more intense and reward players based on their effort and performance.

Toledo also lists some dos and don’ts in order to make sure you maintain an appropriate relationship with your athletes of another gender.

-Avoid one-on-one situations: To keep a player from feeling uncomfortable or getting the wrong impression, always have a third party present. If you are meeting in your office, have another coach there and keep your door open, but preferably meet in an open area. Also, never have a player stay over at your house or in your hotel room, and avoid driving a player home alone. Even though these things might be completely innocent, you don’t want to give the wrong impression.

-Be transparent: Communications with your athletes should be public, not private. Emails and text messages should be group conversations, not one-on-one. And when a player approaches you with personal information, it’s important that you still share this with either their parents, your assistant coaches, the athletic director, or a counselor at the school.

-All touching must be appropriate: A pat on the butt might be okay if you’re the same gender, but when you’re coaching athletes of another gender stick to a pat on the shoulder or upper back. Hugging can be a great way to show your athletes you care about them, but opt for a side hug rather than a front hug so that you don’t make anybody feel uncomfortable. In general, it’s better to use your voice than your hands.

“Coaches are in a power position – they need to avoid using that power to gain any inappropriate control over their players,” writes Toledo. “Remember, people’s perceptions will always override the facts.”

Click here to read the full article.

This article was provided by Busy.Coach

By Mandy Green, University of South Dakota.

The Pareto principle states that 20% of a person’s effort generates 80% of the person’s results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one’s results absorb 80% of one’s resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the coach’s challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Identify the high-payoff activities within your program.  High-payoff activities are the things you do that bring the greatest value to your program, team, or staff.  They are the three to five activities that lie in your “sweet spot.”  You do them with excellence.  These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, etc.  They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Being able to prioritize your personnel, time, and energy will allow you the freedom to produce more efficient results.

Here are a few exercises taken from John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader within You that should get you started:

Task Priorities

Determine what 20% of the work gives 80% of the return. These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, etc.  They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Make a list of the tasks that you are working on today, this week, and in the near future.

Place each task next to the appropriate category below.

• List of things to do now (High Importance/High Urgency). Tackle these tasks first;
• List of things to do (High Importance/Low Urgency). Set deadlines for completion and get these tasks worked into your daily routine
• List of things to delegate (Low Importance/High Urgency). Find quick, efficient ways to get this work done without much personal involvement. Delegate it.
• Low Importance/Low Urgency: Busy or repetitious work. Delegate it.

Staff/Team Oversight and Leadership Development

• Determine which people are the top 20% producers. Start by making a list of everyone on your team.
• For each individual, ask yourself, if this person takes a negative action against me or withdraws his or her support from me, how big will the impact be?”
• If their absence would hinder your ability to function, put a check mark next to that name.
• When you finish making the check marks, you will have marked between 15 and 20 percent of the names. These are the vital relationships that need to be developed and given the proper amount of resources to grow your program.
• Meet one-on-one with the people you checked above.
• Spend 80 percent of your “people time” with the top 20%
• Spend 80 percent of your personal development dollars on the 20%

Sit down and spend the time to find out how this principle applies within almost every aspect of your program, and you have the power to set the vital priorities which will mean the difference between failure, survival, and success. This principle will save you time, effort, money and resources, and take you further down the road to success.

Knowing what your high-payoff activities are and actually doing them, however, are two very different things.  Many surveys that I have read over the past several years have shown that the average American worker spends only 50-60 percent of the workday on activities specified in her or her job description.  That means that workers waste 40-50 percent of their time on low-payoff activities, tackling things that others with less skill or training should be doing.  Are you in this category coach?

By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more productive things done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

The more time you spend doing the high-payoff activities, the more value you will bring to your team, program, and staff.  By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more high-payoff activities done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

This article was provided by Busy.Coach, a great resource for tools to help coach increase their productivity.

By Mandy Green

I am speaking in a few weeks to all of the amazing coaches who will be at Camp Elevate.  As I am preparing my Time Management 101 speech, I am remembering a conversation that I had with a coach while we were out recruiting a few weeks ago.

It went something like this. “Mandy, I know that I am stressed, overwhelmed, busy doing random stuff all day, and not making the progress I want with my program.   I know I need to manage my time better and get organized, but I don’t even know where to begin.”

My response to this coach was that I believe all coaches need to approach time management in exactly the same way that they approach their practices.

For a typical practice:

1. Every minute of practice is accounted for and no time is wasted.
2. Everything is proactively planned in advance and organized.
3. Top priorities to work on take up the majority of practice and are worked on first.
4. Tasks have been delegated to other coaches based on their strengths.
5. There are water breaks in between activities.
6. Whistles or horns sound when it is time to move onto the next stage of practice
7. Coaches reflect after practice is done on what went well and what didn’t so they can make tomorrow better.

BUT, for some reason when it comes to getting work done in the office, a lot of coaches just simply go into their office with no plan, react to everything around them, take no scheduled breaks, and choose to do whatever grabs their attention next until it is time to leave the office! Doing things this way is very inefficient and a lot of time is wasted.  And worst of all, no progress is made towards building the program of your dreams!!

The more structure you have during your work time means you get more work done.  It means you get further ahead with your program.  It means you have to work less outside of your work time.

Ok, let’s plan your day in the office tomorrow just like you would plan practice.

When you start planning your day in the office, just like you would when planning practices for your team, make sure to strategically think about and write down what you could do during the day to move your program forward.

1. Plan everything in advance the day or night before. While there are exceptions to the rule, generally you can’t expect to just show up for practice with no plan of what you are going to do for the day and have it be a good productive practice.  The same holds true for the office.  Write down on a master to-do list all of the tasks you need to get done the next day.
2. Then decide which of those tasks that need to get done are the most important for moving your program forward and then schedule them into your calendar. Everything else can wait.
3. Coaches tend to set up their practices by doing their most important drills when they know their team is focused and has the best energy. Do the same for your most important work in the office and you will produce higher quality work in a shorter amount of time.
4. When a time limit is put on a drill, it creates urgency for coaches so they will work like crazy to get as much productive stuff done with their team in the time allotted. Like you do for your drills at practice, schedule all office tasks in 15, 30, 60, or 90 minute intervals and then keep to the clock.
5. How much more do you accomplish with your teams when they are paying attention and putting all of their focus and energy into what you are working on in practice?  The same holds true for getting stuff done in the office. The quality of your work declines and the time it takes to get tasks done increases when you not 100% focused on the task at hand.
6. Avoid multi-tasking. You would never jump from drill to drill as new drills pop into your head.  Once you start working on something in the office, continue to work on only that task until it is finished.

I could go on and on but you get the idea.

For you coach, once your to-do list is organized based on your goals and vision for your program, it becomes a map to guide you from morning to evening in the most effective and efficient way. This guide tells you what you have to do. It also helps you decide what is urgent and what is not, saving you a lot of time.  Time that you might have otherwise wasted on less important busy-work that isn’t necessarily going to move your program forward.

This article was provided by Coaches Network

There is no question that coaches have to deal with a multitude of different athletes throughout their career. And they have also probably noticed that not all of these athletes respond to the same type of feedback or practice style. It’s important to get to know each athlete, so that coaches can meet the needs of each personality in a motivational way.

In a blog for Training Peaks, certified triathlon coach Bethany Rutledge describes four different athlete personalities and processes to help coaches meet individual needs.

The Number Cruncher

When working with these athletes, don’t automatically assume that everything you say is understood. Chances are if you are vague in instruction, they will come back to ask for clarification. You should try to be as specific as possible, even when describing how athletes should treat a workout.

“For example, perhaps you want them to run by feel and take it easy if they’re feeling a bit worn out or run up to a moderate effort if they’re feeling good. You can turn that into numbers by saying, “If you’re feeling 80 percent recovered, run up to Heart Rate Zone 3, if you’re feeling less than 80 percent recovered, keep the effort Zone 1 and 2 only” says Rutledge.

Quantitative instructions and feedback are also more useful to these athletes. Be more specific than simply saying “Good Job” or “Nice effort.” Instead, tell them exactly what it is that they did right and how they have improved.

A number cruncher may be more likely than other athletes to be distracted and preoccupied by small details. This can cause an issue when you do not want them to be as worried about numbers, like on an easy day. Giving them a specific range can help to keep their effort at an appropriate level.

The Type A Max

This type of personality is common among high achieving athletes. While they may be successful, determined, and committed, these athletes do need to learn that they cannot set a new record every single day. Similar to the number cruncher, this athlete can get distracted by numbers and details, and miss the qualitative signs of success. You will need to reassure him or her that doing any kind of work towards improving is a victory.

“In order to move past their hyper-competitive mentality, you may want to advise them to do some solo training or stay off of athletic social media. If they train in groups, you may want to suggest they [work] with the C group instead of the A group,” says Rutledge.

The Perfect Student

These athletes will do their best to follow every step of your instructions. They want to do everything perfectly, and respond well to positive feedback. In general, this type of athlete does not need to be reminded or pushed. Instead, they may need you to warn them when they need to relax.

According to Rutledge, “They need to be encouraged to let you know if they are tired, something is hurting, or if they are feeling impending illness and not wait until the issue becomes full blown.” The best way to help these athletes is to make sure that you are always involved in conversations surrounding their life and health. In reality, doing this with all of your athletes is an important way of keeping up with their daily lives.

The Type B

You may find that this type of athlete is lacking in engagement. They are not entirely concerned about training and they tend to not care much for feedback. For most athletes, this attitude is not based on maliciousness. Instead, they probably have good intentions, but are busy with other aspects of their life. As a coach, you need to have an open and honest conversation with this athlete to find out what is keeping their engagement at bay and what you can do to help.

The Ideal Coached Athlete

Any of these types can fall into the ideal athlete category. However, some other traits that the ideal athlete may have are intrinsic motivation, patience, and a desire to improve. These athletes know that they cannot always be the best. Instead, they are happy with progress while understanding that there is always room for improvement.

While it may seem impossible at times, it is important as a coach to try to engage each of these personality types. By getting to know each athlete both inside and outside of the sport, a coach can make sure that they are doing all they can to reach every individual on the team.

Click here to read the full article.

There is a new breed of leaders and coaches in the world of sports.

They insist on cultivating healthy, strong relationships where deep caring, respect, integrity, trust, love and loyalty are forged.

These coaches are the ones doing great things.

They are inspiring their athletes to do great things on and off the field. The athletes that play for these coaches are reaping great rewards for their participation.

In the video clip below Dr. Jerry Lynch, internationally known expert in the field of applied sports psychology conducts a panel discussion with a group of athletes.

The athletes are discussing what qualities they look for in their head coach.

This clip is from a complete DVD on how to lead in sports. For more information about the DVD click the link How to Inspire, Empower and Lead in Sports: Perspectives from Athletes and Coaches

The YouTube video has sound, so please make sure that your sound is turned on and that you have access to the site.