Effective Reflection for Coaching Growth
“What we do constantly, we often do with least reflection” (Doug Lemov, A Coach’s Guide to Teaching, 95).
Coaches are constantly making evaluations in the moment:
“That drill bombed.”
“That was a fantastic practice!”
“That play did NOT work at all.”
But what happens to the evaluation after that?
It usually gets forgotten in the busy-ness of coaching. After all, there’s always something else vying for top priority: scouting, planning practice, parent concerns, meetings with administration, booster club activities. Taking the time to intentionally reflect on the in-the-moment evaluation often gets pushed to the back burner and ultimately forgotten. How many times have you told an assistant coach “Remind me to come back to that …” and then you both forget until you’re sitting in your car driving home?
Whether this is your first season as a coach or your 20th, there’s always room for improvement, especially when it comes to purposeful reflection.
Observation as Evaluation
“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience” (John Dewey).
Many coaches go into a season and a practice with a plan for everything and a backup plan for when it doesn’t work. What often gets neglected in that plan is how they’ll evaluate. Coaches tend to believe that observation leads to effective evaluation. We believe a shooting drill “worked” because players made the required amount of baskets within the time limit. Or we think a player got better at dribbling because she didn’t dribble it off her foot this time.
Evaluation based solely on outcome observation can be deceiving, however. The players made the baskets in the time limit but did they have to deal with the distraction of a defender? What about our better ballhandler – was she dribbling better or simply going slower to save herself from the embarrassment of another mistake?
Effective evaluation requires more than simply observing the outcome. That’s a superficial approach as it focuses primarily on the what: what did you see? What happened? What’s another option?
Effective evaluation incorporates time of purposeful reflection that dives deeper into the why and the how: why did you respond to a situation the way you did? Why did a player struggle or succeed? How can you improve a progression? How can you communicate clearer or more effectively?
“From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action” (Peter Drucker).
4 Components of Effective Reflection
Purposeful reflection doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly complicated. It doesn’t require hours of your time. To truly maximize your reflections remember these components:
- Continuous – Reflection is an ongoing process. Simply doing it once isn’t going to yield productive results.
- Connected – If reflection is left to a whim, without structure, coaches run the risk of failing to connect the what and the why.
- Challenging – Are you being objectively honest in your reflections? If your critiques only result in simple, surface level changes you probably aren’t challenging yourself to truly improve.
- Contextualized – Are you focusing on what’s really important? For example, if you realize athletes are not getting enough reps, one approach is to increase the time allotted for the drill. Perhaps a more effective approach would be to find a way to adjust the drill to get more players involved so there is less standing in lines. (The 4 C’s of Reflection (University of Guelph))
3 Methods for Reflection
Reflecting should be an active, intentional process. We ask our players to reflect on their performances through film and feedback. Coaches can use similar strategies to develop their own effective reflection practices.
Journals
If you aren’t a big writer, your coaching reflection journal could be as simple as taking notes on your practice plan during practice. Then, when practice is over, look through your practice plan and use it to help you adjust for the next session. Some simple starting questions: What worked? What didn’t? Who do you want to follow-up with? What constraints/adaptations/layers should be tweaked?
Peer Observation/Group Discussion
Ask an assistant coach or administrator to observe you coaching a practice. Or offer an “observation exchange” with a coach from another sport in your school – there’s so much to learn from other sports and other coaches’ experiences. Especially for high school coaches, tap into this valuable knowledge pool!
You may want to ask them to solely observe how much time you spend teaching or how you communicate with your athletes. Or, if you’re daring, you can leave it completely up to them to simply write down what they notice about your coaching. But remember: when they are giving you the feedback, you asked for it. It’s important to not get defensive or try to justify your actions. Listen with an open mind – just like we want our athletes to do!
Film Study
With all of the technology available these days, videos for reflection are becoming much more common. You could be fortunate enough to have a set-up like Hudl Focus to automatically schedule and record your on-court actions. If not, set up a camera on a tripod in a corner of the gym, or ask an assistant coach to whip out their phone and record a few minutes of a drill or your speaking. Videos allow you to objectively review what happened – freeing you up from trying to remember in the moment – as well as making it easy to track your development.
Whatever route you take, find the one that works best for you and adjust it as needed. After all, coaching is a little bit of art, a little bit of science, and a lot of fun.
