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Framing the topic

A popular theme and topic across many of our coaching and coach development conversations over the last two years has alluded to the idea of coach creativity or stretching our coaches in their development. Coaching is an art, and with the increasing popularity of coach development programmes and frameworks, there is a lot of great work being done to enhance the quality of coaching. In this roundtable, we wanted to explore how individuals are looking to influence this process and approach some specific questions from the group.

Discussion points

1. Experienced vs. less experienced coaches: encouraging creativity

An interesting space is with newer coaches coming into a programme, where they perhaps don’t have a lot to draw on, which can change the role of the coach developer regarding how they either draw out or implement thinking around creativity with them. With more experienced coaches, often the challenge is having the window to put that creativity in and there is also an existence of more pressure to get results.
There will always be a ‘performance-driven’ element to coaching, so a question in terms of creativity is whether time and the makeup of the environment is made to allow for these sessions to happen. A challenge that follows this is how do you measure this and the impact of them?
For coach developers or people that support coaches, we should be looking to get across the power of creativity to not just coaches but also the athletes or those they are working with.
When working with less experienced coaches and providing them space to be creative, we also need to be conscious of ‘consistency of delivery’. With younger talent in particular, we know the importance of a safe and consistent environment, so if our coaches are constantly changing and haven’t yet worked up the knowledge of what is appropriate and when, it can create uncertainty.
The philosophy of the organisation you are in is key. The philosophy needs to be clear enough that there is direction but broad enough where people can explore things. If the fundamentals aren’t taken care of, the level of creativity can be limited.
Whether you are a coach, coach developer or just working with coaches, understand the approach your coaches are taking and why – from there, explore whether that is going to be effective in what they are trying to do.
There is a balance to be found with less experienced coaches in particular – they are more likely and willing to try new things but they don’t have the foundations that underpin their craft at this stage. However, on the opposite side, we don’t want to get into habits of no consistency at all which can stifle development. There is potentially an opportunity to promote and encourage creativity but within parameters. Parameters can provide the guidance around where the creativity sits and how it can still guide outcomes.
With more experienced coaches, if they have proven results from past experiences and they are in a high performance context, they are less likely to be creative because of tried and true methods. We have tried to challenge the coaches to try different things because it can provide a competitive edge. We ask our athletes to try new things, so the same can be said for our coaches.
Context really matters. Context determines your ability to allow creativity.
A good reflection for us is ‘Principles & Parameters’ – what is the activity, why are you doing it, have you picked it up from somewhere else, do you fully understand it and what are you trying to achieve with it?
Creativity doesn’t just have to be on the pitch. How are we thinking about the development of athletes or other staff around their day-to-day lives? That personal development can have a domino effect on their performance and how they prepare for performance on the pitch.

2. Creativity: for the athlete or us as coaches?

Sometimes we can change things a bit too often as coaches and it’s either not what the athlete needs or wants. Some athletes don’t need entertaining, they just need to know what they need to perform.
Are you communicating well to the athlete around what and why you are doing something? The risk is that we can apply creativity because we see our athletes a lot during the week and we as coaches are often the ones that feel the monotony at times with the process.
With coaches looking to be creative and mix up their interactions with the athlete, the natural tendency is to think that will help the athlete, but this isn’t always accurate. We still need to give the choice and flexibility to the athlete, but it’s important to articulate as a starting point the thinking behind mixing training up etc.
We’ve sought some feedback from our players on the makeup of training sessions and what they are buying into. It’s seems simple that if the score is high for a session or approach you keep it, but we are still finding that coaches want to change things as part of the planning process. We’re not sure if this is cultural or if they are trying to prove their worth too much.
We don’t want robots as athletes – we want some flair and creativity and it can be difficult to teach or coach at times, so there is an element of being creative in how you introduce creativity so athletes embrace it. It can often be the education around creativity as opposed to coaching creativity in practice.
How do you facilitate the abilities for athletes to explore what their capabilities are so they can develop in a creative way and so they can be creative themselves? It’s often not about us as coaches being creative in what we are changing, but instead what we are facilitating from a creative point of view.
If you are working with younger talent, include the parents around the ‘why’ – they can be a barrier. Young players often want to do what they enjoy doing and get success from, but it’s important they get exposure to different things (positions etc). Education and understanding for both stakeholders in this context is important.
Effective development plans are useful for athletes and having a purpose around what you are trying to do: why, how and what?
Creativity: for the athletes or coaches? The coach has to be creative in how they setup the tasks or session but then allow the player to be creative in how they solve that problem / mistakes they make in the way to solving that problem. It’s a balance of understanding what is the output you are looking for from the player.
Sometimes when you bring in change, the kickback can be that it is a change of thought process for the coach or player and there may be some reticence around that because they have a clear mindset of A, B etc; ‘but this time I’m being asked to do C first.’

3. Creativity: how are we measuring impact?

Communication: if we are not communicating the ‘why’ to the athlete’s or coaches involved in the practice beforehand, there will be inevitable challenges behind measuring the impact.
One of the measurements used at the end of national camps are simple feedback forms – we’re looking more at how we can be creative or how to get the same outcomes but with different ways of working. Some of the results are now improving in terms of the outcomes and experience of the athlete.
We can often get caught up in trying to measure anything and everything, but for athletes: are they laughing, happy and having fun? Can it be just as simple as that and do we often overcomplicate it?
The impact can often be measured by their discomfort because they are out of their comfort zone and having to think differently. If you are looking to influence the creativity in how they play, you can monitor more formally over a period of time but it comes back to their decision-making – making them uncomfortable to become more comfortable to make decisions when they need to.
We encourage coaches to outline their philosophy and how they set their teams up, but what are the key metrics to these and show success? When things are going well, what are the players doing well? How is that reflected in your training? In terms of creativity that can provide a numerical measurement, but alongside this, what is the feedback from the person? The feedback is key, have they enjoyed being stretched even though they were uncomfortable?

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