5 Tricks To Repair A Rocky Coach – Player Relationship

April 23, 2020
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You’ll have seen some of the sport headlines in bold letters; “fall out between coach and
player(s)” or “players lose respect for coach”. It happens at the top and it certainly
happens down the bottom. Your ability to repair suffering relationships is a vital skill
whether you are a coach, manager or player. For things to change, you will need to
change your thinking and approach.

Your ability to cultivate emotional intelligence and control will give you a competitive
edge in your own leadership and empower you to be much more effective under
pressure.

When things are rocky, it’s very easy to get sucked into the chaos yourself. Sometimes unintentionally this leads them or you to pull others into it with you and it can get messy very fast. So however you got here, is how you got there, NOW it’s time to put the brakes on your own reactions. “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”. This is very true when dealing with others. Your tonality WILL be a difference maker. In your mental rehearsals for the interaction, imagine yourself using a soothing, downward inflecting “Late-Night FM DJ Voice”. The interesting thing about using this voice is that calms both them and you down. Getting others to calm down is a much better place to start from.

Don’t shy away from potential uncomfortable conversations. Prepare yourself for a hard conversation by anticipating your coach/player(s) negative overreactions and create labels to defuse them pre-emptively. Remember people are not their behaviour. It is reasonable to assume they might they unfairly overreact to them being benched, suspended, changed position etc. Equally, what might they wrongly assume about you coming into the conversation? Take stock of everything your gut instincts are sensing you might need to deny, and then instead of denying them, simply label them. Labeling these negatives in no way, shape, or form means accepting responsibility or that they’re even true; it simply means addressing the elephant in the room. The negative label, “I’m sure it looks like I/we are being hard on you here,” anticipates a perceived negative and drains it of its power. If you didn’t make a good first impression, a label like “it may seem like I’m the biggest jerks you’ve ever encountered,” acknowledges their point of view without assigning responsibility. Key thing to remember, if you label negative reactions that aren’t there, you don’t create them, you actually inoculate yourself from them. As you approach the moment of your conversation, do a quick read of the individual(s) and compile an accusation list a head of time. By doing this you will reduce their otherwise negative) impact and help get your relationship back on track.

The word STOP, whether verbally or visually actually momentarily acts as a pattern interrupt for our brains. This gives you the opportunity to derail un-resourceful thinking. In the heat of the moment when you’re either yelling yourself or being yelled at, it’s difficult to control your emotions, and even more challenging to think clearly. In those instances, you will want to interrupt your thinking followed by mirroring. Mirroring—or repeating back the last one to three words that your counterpart has said using upward inflection at the end (like asking a question) — is a great way to regain your composure and buy precious time. We want to optimise your potentially limited brain power available to you when you’re riled up. Mirroring doesn’t require much brain power, and it will give you a moment to process new information so you can come up with strategic labels and calibrated emotional intellectual questions.

We all want to be heard and perhaps more importantly, your coach/player wants to feel you genuinely get how they feel. If you’ve laid on the empathy and are still met with silence, what you’re really being told is that you’re on the right track, you just need to go farther. By using tactical empathy to demonstrate an understanding of the person’s perspective, it’s possible to provide a sense of accountability without assigning responsibility. Consider using labels that relate to their core emotional issues. Also when you speak, speak “future” focussed move them out of ‘right now’ to further change the dynamics of the conversation. Changing the beginning of a label in this context from “You seem…” to “I know…” can be appropriate. Labels like “I know you want to make good decisions for our team”, “I know integrity is a big part of who you are and continue to strive towards” and “I know you’re concerned with preparations moving forward,” can strengthen their confidence in you. Be relentless with your use of tactical empathy.

You may need to follow up with an emotional calibrated question. Asking “What are/do you?” and “How do you?” questions gives your counterpart the opportunity to speak addressing the problem at hand and provides them with a sense of control. It also gives you the chance to learn about their core emotional drivers and invite their help in working toward a solution. Simple and straightforward questions like “What are your thoughts?” or “How do you want to proceed?” or “How do you think we should fix this?” can absorb the energy of an attack and shift the focus back to them. As you prepare emotionally calibrated questions prior to the conversation, remember that every question has a flip-side label that can accomplish the same thing. For example, the question, “How do you want to fix this?” can be turned into the label, “It seems like you have an idea of how to fix this.” As you grow more familiar with these communication questions and techniques, it becomes easier to transform questions into negative and positive labels (and vice versa) and quickly adapt in the moment without losing focus.