Interview with Coach Tim - Part 2

In our second conversation with Coach Tim, he talks about coach education, creating positive group dynamics, and what his training sessions look like.

Coach Tim, you have extensive work as a coach educator. When you run coach education courses, what exercises do you do and how do you sequence them?

Well context is important. If I know that I’m going to see you for twenty-four weeks, and in that time period we meet twice a week for two hours, then I can map out the journey that we’ll take together.

It typically starts with some observation so I can understand where you are in that moment, then I give individual feedback that has some specific pieces within it to improve your knowledge. Building a great learning experience is built around where people are right now, how I can help them move forward, and part of that discussion is challenge. How far do I think they can go and how much can I challenge them?

But the sequence is the same. You want to provide knowledge so that they can apply it and perform the skills. Then you give them feedback and a chance to go out and do it again, and then give them some video or audio recording so that they can observe what they do. That’s basically the learning spiral as I see it.

One of the aspects of coaching that draws me in is the ability to bring a group of people together. What are the strategies you use to create good group dynamics?

If you truly want to make a team great, it’s all about the connections you build and the culture you create. There’s a piece by Thorp and Thomas which basically says that if you get a team to really connect they’re about 30% more effective. You won’t find a drill or exercise that ever does that.

For coach education courses I assign people roles within each group. One of the specific roles is to be a hugger or a caregiver. They’re my emotional empaths. We’re going to live in a challenging environment and at some point people will need a hug because we care about each other. Their job is to recognize those moments and pay attention to how others are feeling.

Other people are note-takers, some people are organizers. I always give them some glue to build the initial relationships around. In any team or group, we agree on and state the fundamental values that unite our relationships. For the DOC license, always being honest and humble are two of the ones we use. We can give each other honest feedback, we’ll be humble when we listen to it, and therefore we will try and grow. Once you use this glue to unify a theme I find that teams can go to great places.

That’s an interesting idea. One of the biggest hurdles to creating a team is individuals feeling uncomfortable. So by giving them specific roles to fill, they gain a sense of comfort because they know what their job is.

Exactly. If people feel like they belong you’re halfway there.

Can you give an example of how you use this with the players you work with?

One of the key pieces is that every practice starts with us showing how much we care about each other. So you don’t just say hello, you ask how people’s days have gone – and that includes them asking me. I make sure that caring is built in to what we do and I show them how to make this idea actionable. When a teammate is sick, everybody sends them a message. When somebody is upset, people go straight over to help them. A lot of them go to school with each other so I’ll check-in and ask “Did you see Mia today on the playground? Did you ask how her day was?” These are just little examples from my 9 year-old girls.

What do the first and last 5-10 minutes of your practices look like?

My players always get there early and they always have two things to do: either juggling or working on in-step striking. I give them a goal by asking “Can you have 50 shots with a rolling ball before I bring you in?”

So they have activities to do and they have to connect with each other while I’m setting up. By the time I bring them in they’ve connected, they’ve had their chance to do everything they need to do, and they know practice is going to start.

Practice always starts with a dynamic activity and I mess around with methods. I’ll do progressive ball work, play-practice-play, small-sided exercises, street soccer, gamification. There’s a whole set of different methods to make sure learning sticks.

And the last ten minutes of practice is always the same. They review with a friend about how practice went, the key ideas we’ve discussed and how we did within it, then we’ll unpack some of those conversations they had.

I like to use small groups, but I always mix them up because you don’t want to build silos within your team. So we’ll use partners and we’ll use functional groups. If we’re playing 7-a-side it’s basically two diamonds, so the bottom diamond will get together and talk about problems and the top diamond will get together and do the same. Kids talk together to solve problems that way they learn how to read the game. I don’t stand in front of them talking, that’s just me chatting.

With older players there’s more cooperation needed between the positional groups. As an example, you can ask a back four about how they’re dealing with the twin forwards of the other team, because they have some soccer knowledge to support what they’re doing. Do they pull a fullback in to match the pace of the 10? Does one of the central defenders become the cover?

Once the back four have talked about dealing with the front two, they’ll say to the midfield group: This is how we’re going to solve it. Obviously the midfield will be impacted so they get to listen and give feedback to the defenders.

It also lets you know as the coach what are the gaps in knowledge that you left open. As long as you listen carefully and actively, it can be a great learning exercise for players and coaches.

You mention the term gamification. What is that?

Gamification is applying principles of video games to soccer coaching. Look at the work of Amy Price on this topic because it’s wonderful. There’s a YouTube video I put out at the national convention about gamification as well. It’s got levels, it’s got secret powers. Gamification is about metacognition and it gets players thinking about thinking. They’re thinking about how they’re solving problems and kids love it.

It’s a very good and effective method in many ways. A bit of a challenge for people to learn, but there you go. That’s a good thing.