To complete an assignment for a class, I visited two other classes taught by award-winning professors. The purpose was to see the things that really good teachers do and learn from them. Both professors were excellent. However, they did not necessarily follow the principles discussed in our textbook, Learner-Centered Teaching by Maryellen Weimer. I emailed one of the professors, who replied:
I feel the same way. I teach a Teaching class and it is very difficult, as you said, to put into words what makes the difference between a good teacher and an excellent teacher. Everything we read in our book is so esoteric—connect with students, relate the topic to their lives, engage the unengaged, etc. They never talk about how you operationalize this. Also, personality wise, some people just naturally connect better than others—like you, I just don’t know.
How do we identify good coaches? After being turned down for several more jobs without an interview, I decided to make a video to demonstrate my coaching acumen. However, I am stumped. I don’t think that you can illustrate good coaching in a five-minute video.
Coaching is a process, not an event. I could capture myself demonstrating a great drill, but does my ability to do a semi-difficult two-ball drill make me a good coach? I could capture myself instructing a player; however, out of context, who is to say that the instruction is effective?
Good coaching occurs over a season, or longer, just as good teaching occurs over a semester, or longer. Good coaching starts with the unseen: the planning. Planning takes many forms. I rarely write out a practice plan when I train players. My talent, I believe, is my ability to evaluate and adjust a session based on what I see.
My planning for that one session took place over the last 15 years of coaching and training players as I learned, developed and mastered drills for different situations. Often, I do not use a specific drill that I have used previously, but adapt or adjust a drill to teach a specific lesson that I may not have faced previously and therefore had no answer. That creativity is another one of my talents, I believe, and once I create the solution, I have a new drill in the toolbox when I encounter a similar problem.
Because I spend a lot of time focused on movement and studying other sports, my solutions are often novel in basketball. Who teaches shooting footwork by using bounding exercises? How many coaches teach ball-handling through tag games? How many coaches use rugby to create a small-sided game? How many coaches teach free throw shooting to professional players with their eyes closed?
Often, these are not planned drills, but solutions to a problem at a specific time. The planning occurs in the reading and studying, watching many sports, practicing different sports and talking to experts. How would one videotape this to illustrate the effect on one’s coaching?
Videotaping one of these drills and watching it without context would lead one to believe that I was crazy, just as many people heard about Holger Geschwindner’s work with Dirk Nowitski and questioned it initially or some question Idan Ravin and some of his more unique drills. Only after people see the long-term success are people like Ravin or Geschwindner considered to be geniuses. If you take away the results, and simply showed isolated, out-of-context drills, many “experts” would question their approach and activities. It is the long-term effects, however, that matter, but you cannot capture long-term changes or improvements in a five-minute video.
The problem with videotaping a coach to illustrate the coach’s role or the coach’s ability is that coaching or training is not about the coach or trainer: coaching or training is about the effect of the coach or trainer on the player or team. How can you videotape a coach and capture the effect on the player?
Furthermore, what many imagine when they think of coaching has a poor effect on player’s learning. Constant and immediate feedback leads to learning that does not transfer as well to the game as delayed and reduced feedback. But, if watching a small clip of a coach, one cannot see the volume of feedback.
To develop a team or a player is more than fancy drills, gimmicks or get-rich-quick schemes. It takes time. Every day differs. Every player differs. A coach must be able to adjust his teaching to the athlete, the athlete’s skill level, the athlete’s mood, the athlete’s learning style and more. A short clip cannot capture these variables that dictate the coach’s or trainer’s actions.
I have spoken to a couple coaches lately who show surprise when I explain my difficulty in finding a position in the coaching world. A professional coach responded to my email, writing, “I understand your frustration. I can’t understand it …..your knowledge and education.”
I can illustrate my knowledge through my writing, my DVD, my books, etc. However, I have never considered my strength to be my knowledge. My strength as a coach, even when I was 18 and not very knowledgeable, was my ability to relate to players. As the professor wrote, some people just connect better than others. Whether coaching boys or girls, children or professionals, Americans or Greeks, Jews or Muslims, I always have connected well with players.
When I worked a lot of camps, players followed me around. Players assigned to other coaches asked me to trade for them. Players asked me to work with them during breaks. Players walked with me to the cafeteria. I was the coach that was there for the players, not to make connections or kiss the college coach’s ass to get a job, and the players sensed this. When you have an 8-person team for four days and you don’t know the players’ names at the end of the week, you’re obviously not there for the players. I remember camps at Snow Valley, Sly Park, Arizona, Stanford, etc. where one player would ask me to help her with something before camp or at lunch, and by the end of the week, I was running my own sessions with handfuls of players during the off-hours. Why?
I was willing to give of my time and I connected with the players. They sensed my passion for helping players improve, just as I sensed the professors genuine concern for their students and passion for the subject in the classes that I evaluated. I could not pinpoint exact techniques or use the textbook to explain their success. However, it was easy to see in their behavior and the behavior of the students throughout a three-hour class. Unfortunately, there is no way to capture a five-minute segment to illustrate why either professor is great, as some of the things that I mentioned in my paper would seem hokey or wrong or incidental out of context.
Similarly, coaching is not something that can be captured in a picture or a short-time frame. Coaching is a complex process that occurs over a long period of time and involves many variables. Most importantly, the coach or the teacher is not the most important part of the equation. It’s the coach’s effect on the players and team that matters most.
RT @brianmccormick: The Coaching Process: http://bit.ly/eGGKzx Coaching is not a short-term fix; it’s a long-term process.
RT @brianmccormick: The Coaching Process: http://bit.ly/eGGKzx Coaching is not a short-term fix; it’s a long-term process.
great stuff Brian! @brianmccormick The Coaching Process – http://goo.gl/RYJXm via @Shareaholic
Brian,
You are completely right! Unfortunately, most people don’t take the time to get to know their prospective coaches. Rather, they base their decisions off of who they know or who is related to who. It is the same thing in our educational system. That is why we have teachers out there who don’t know what they are doing and yet we can’t get rid of them to hire teachers who do. The scary thing is that if you don’t get called back for coaching interviews, with your knowledge, experience, and passion for the game, who is getting the jobs? Are they the type of people that are going to help develop our players and prepare them for life or are they the ones who are perpetuating the problem?
Brian: I understand exactly what you are talking about. I too have had trouble finding a coaching position because I am more concerned with teaching the kids then networking or building relationships. Dont get me wrong, I want to get along with other coaches, but I want to teach kids how to play the game of basketball. You have a unique knowledge for the game, and as I stated on a coaching website the other day about you, (most had not heard of you, but you are the first source I come to for info,) I told them that you were 10-15 years ahead of the curve concerning basketball. Coaching is a building block process and you must be able to gain the confidence of the players and understand WHO they are. You must evaluate them and know where to start with each skill. And you cant use the same drill for each player. Once you know that, then I believe, you can teach them in a way that they understand the skill you are teaching. I have had difficulty trying to get interviews even though I know I have taught students the game in ways I have seen improvement in them, that other coaches would think I had lost my mind. But you cant tell someone that. They have their mindset made up. I had a coach recently trying to teach 7/8 year old group how to run set plays and a zone defense. In my mind that was the worst approach he could have taken, if he would have not shown up I thought they would have been better.
It is a who you know business and the ones who suffer the most are the players. Hopefully in years to come, coaches will be hired or evaluated on what they know and not who they know. Coaches coaching the way they were coached and hired because of who they know? From your previous article.
Josh:
What site? Coaches running set plays with 7/8 year olds is laughable. What’s the point? Why are children playing sports at that age? To learn plays? To win? They want to have fun, develop skills and meet new friends or play with their old friends. Why is it considered “soft” to acknowledge the needs and wants of the players? I do not understand this mindset.
As for the business, my girlfriend and I were talking about it today. It’s luck and timing more than skill. A great high school job opened last week; if it opened last spring, I probably would have had a shot as I was working in the district and won the J.V. league title with a program with no history. I would have had the backing of many parents and area coaches. Now, I’m out of the area and out of consideration. Timing.
Brian: It is a local youth league. And they wonder why the kids never win when they get to HS. They never learn any skills at the youth age. You have youth coaches who play zone and trap out front because at 8 years old the hardest two things for kids to understand is passing (because of strength) and spatial awareness and the coaches prey on these weaknesses. They trap the best player and play zone on the back, it teaches the kids nothing. I refuse to do it and it causes my team to lose every year even though I have the best player in the league. I could give you example after example. It is ridiculous. They sacrifice the short term for the future. It is a youth league FOR ADULTS.
I was in a similar situation as you 2 years back, I had a JV team that was suppossed to be the worst in the history of the school and they won 19 games, won 2nd place in a tough district and improved drastically. They went to the playoffs the year after, but I had moved and my father was sick and I had to take care of him. I could have found just about any position I wanted at the time. So I guess it is more timing and networking.
The website I was referring to is texasbasketballcoaches.com. It is a good site, it is texas hs basketball coaches, in fact you have to be a current, looking, or retired coach in the state of Texas to become a member. There are some good guys on there and alot of good basketball minds. But there are a good majority that refuse to adhere to anything outside the box and they teach the way they were taught, I am sure I am guilty of the same at times, I try very hard to think outside the box and not just do something because “thats the way its always been”. I want to know why and how this is going to improve them in the long term. I dont talk much about your thoughts on the site, I have brought some stuff up from time to time, but I am trying to keep it for me.
Keep it up man, I love your articles and thoughts about sports. My favorite of yours is Basketball IQ, that is one heck of a book. That book got my mind thinking in new directions. I am ready for the next. I have all your books and love them all. You are definetly ahead of the curve in basketball. Good luck on your doctorate.
Josh:
Thanks for the kind words.
I used to say that youth league are like live-action fantasy sports for adults now. Rather than play their hands at being a GM through online fantasy leagues, they can play their hands at being a professional coach with 8-year-olds! Some of the stuff is insane, and I agree that youth leagues are built upon taking advantage of the inherent weaknesses of the age, not developing skills. However, as I wrote in one article, some of the blame goes to the team being trapped too, as learning how to deal with a trap and learning to pass are essential skills that need to be developed. I hate when children get an inbounds pass and yell “no press” as soon as someone tries to play defense. Sure, it may be a good rule not to allow presses with young players, but the players still need to learn to handle those situations rather than relying on made-up rules.
Are you the coach that emailed me and asked me to find a way to speak at the Texas Basketball Coaches convention or clinic? If not, someone on my newsletter list emailed me and suggested that I should speak at the clinic/convention. However, I never heard from the association.
Anyway, hope your dad is doing better. Good luck and thanks for the comments.
At last, someone comes up with the “right” asnwer!
Speaking of the difficulty in capturing a “thin slice” of good teaching, have you seen this 2008 essay by Malcolm Gladwell?
Most Likely to Succeed
How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?
by Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
I have read the article previously. I thought that I had written something based on it, but I can’t find it. I tend to agree with the premise of lowering entrance requirements. I constantly hear about the need for good teachers, but I would have spend two years and thousands of dollars to get a credential before being allowed to teach. What if I hate it? Instead, I have a full stipend and scholarship to pay for a doctoral degree which will not qualify me to teach children or high school students but enable me to teach the people who will teach children and high school students. It does not make a lot of sense. There have to be minimum standards, but if the goal is to attract talent, creating artificial requirements that may or may not enhance one’s quality in the field is not a way to attract talent.
What made me think of the Gladwell piece, was your mention of getting turned-down for coaching jobs without an interview. AD’s are in the position of hiring coaches, without necessarily having a clear picture of what makes a good, effective coach. How is an AD to know who is likely to succeed as a coach? Is it even clear what evidence to look at?
Agreed. I have written several times on past sites about how to evaluate a coach. If you read message boards, people believe certain things. (1) People believe in experience and past success. Therefore, the natural progression is for a coach to “work his way up” from 3rd assistant to 2nd assistant to 1st assistant to head coach at a small school to head coach at a medium school to head coach at a big school. However, how many times does a successful coach at a medium school move to a big school and get fired within a couple years? Look at Keno Davis at Providence. He spent one season, I believe, at Drake, if I remember correctly, did very well, became a hot name and went to Providence where he last three years. Last season, people thought Oregon had failed in its search because it hired Dana Altman. Altman was a hot name 3-5 years ago, but not last year because Creighton didn’t make the tournament. Is he a worse coach now than when he was a hot name? Most people never would have been happy with Butler’s hiring process. You lose a hot coach and promote a 29 year-old with only a couple years of assistant coaching experience? Butler was known as a great job and could have attracted another head coach or a “hot” BCS assistant coach.
We assume that a coach’s success in one’s job is due to his successful prior experience in his past job. But, when the coach “fails,” we do not assume that his failure is due to his past experience. When he fails in a job, suddenly it’s an individual thing – poor recruiting, didn’t relate to players, couldn’t win over fans, etc. However, we never attribute the success to these individual traits, skills or talents. If a coach is successful, it is logical because he was successful at his prior job. But, why was he successful at the prior job? Why were Buzz Williams, Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens the hot names this spring? Just because they won? Or, are there other similarities that help explain their success and predict their success regardless of where they coach? The problem is that different coaches win with different personalities, different coaching styles, different strategies, so it’s hard to pinpoint the commonalities beyond experience.
I know I dont say it enough, but I echo Josh’s words. Brian you are ahead of the curve and I owe 90% of my coaching thinking and philosophy to your work and ideas
Brian- speaking from a myelin standpoint alone it’s safe to say that you are one of the very best coaches this country has to offer. But you seem to think that beause you understand how to teach basketball that you should be offered terrific opportunities to do so all while being praised by people who generally do not understand your methods. This will never happen as the organizer/manager coaches do not get the process of talent development within players and thus see you as a strange bird within the system. Try to be more humble about your own ability, because even to someone who understands it, it comes across as arrogant. Those who get what your saying already know how important your books are. Keep doing well at whatever opportunities come your way and eventually you’ll have a plum position in the coaching world without ever having to join the fraternity of organizer/managers that stifle talent.
What terrific opportunities are you referring to? I sought two jobs last summer. The first was a professional team in Europe. A coach who I know who coaches professionally in Europe emailed me and asked if I would be interested in the job. The club was his son’s club. He wanted a good coach to develop his son, so he emailed and asked if I was interested and submitted my name to the board.
The second was a D1 program. Again, a D1 assistant coach who I know called me and asked me if I would be interested in the job. I had not thought to apply. The D1 assistant had been talking to the hiring head coach and thought that I was perfect for the job, so he called me and then passed my name to the hiring coach with his highest recommendation.
Otherwise, the only job that I pursued was a DV (small school) high school job.
This spring, I applied for one D1 job at the request of a player and her father (the team went 3-26); I applied for a last-place junior college job; and, I offered to volunteer for a D1 program and offered to help in any way that would help the head coach.
So, I have no idea what you’re referring to when you say that I “seem to think that because you understand how to teach basketball that you should be offered terrific opportunities to do so all while being praised by people.”
I have given up on applying for assistant coaching jobs because I apparently intimidate coaches (even at top-20 BCS schools). I am, as you imply and as an ESPN analyst told me last week “too far outside the box” for most coaches.
Does that mean that I should tell coaches to teach things incorrectly so I can be more accepted and more like everyone else? If I tell a verbally abusive head coach how good he is, do you think he’ll hire me? Gosh, will he? Please. If I bite my tongue when a coach tells me about her pre-practice static stretching routine and off-season 5-mile runs, can I join the club and help her make players worse?
Seriously, I feel like you’re suggesting that doing less research, knowing less, thinking about things less, finding less optimal solutions, and generally being a worse coach in every way possible is the way to get a job. If that’s what it takes, I’m not interested.
The process of getting a head coaching job is so asinine. The common method is to serve as an assistant coach, holding someone else’s clipboard, not developing any of your own ideas, and hope that you do that long enough with a enough successful programs to make enough networking contacts that will eventually land you a job. I personally think that being a head coach at a lower level is much better preparation for advancing to a head job at the college level than being a college assistant is. I know that thinking goes against the grain though. Most people trying to break into coaching just focus on the best way to GET a job rather than the best way to PREPARE themselves to be successful at a job.
Brian you have obviously established yourself as a great source of new information/ideas. Rather than intimidated by you I would say that most coaches are scared of you, because you think outside the box, and anything outside the norm is scary to people. I do think those opportunities that you mentioned are in fact terrific opportunites though – there are a lot of people who pay a lot of dues before they even get a shot at a D1 job or a pro job in Europe. I know a lot of people who think they are just around the corner from a D1 job and “around the corner” turns into 15 years of waiting. For every 10 college assistants who fall into that category there is a guy like Frank Allocco, who was coaching youth CYO leagues in the bay area for 15 years before he got a job at a terrible high school and 6 years later won a state championship in California with them. Same with Jim Calhoun and Bo Ryan, those guys started at the high school level, beat the begeezus out of everybody, and slowly moved up, rather than trying to break in at the top. I think there is a lot to be said for that route – even though it’s the path less traveled because everybody in coaching (even probably most who visit this website) think they should be offered a great job tomorrow, rather than take what they see as a lower level job now. The most important thing I believe for all of us is to keep doing what will make us the best coach today, focus on continuing to improve ourselves, making a positive impact on kids wherever we are at, rather than worry about the coaching job we don’t have. In short, to stay process oriented and to avoid becoming results oriented.
James – I hope you know how well this stuff works. While so many other coaches start practice with 3 line layups because they don’t know what they are doing Brian is using things like small-sided games to make real improvements. This stuff works!
Ray:
My point was not that the jobs last summer were not terrific opportunities, but that I did not expect to get them or even attempt to get them until someone pushed me for the job. Like Allocco, I started with 5th and 6th grade girls CYO basketball. I’m not looking for my first job – I’ve been a head coach for at least 15 seasons at every level from u9s to professional teams.
Look, my dream job when I was completing my undergraduate degree was to teach the Special Education class at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles and eventually coach basketball there. The teacher who had been there for 20+ years retired my senior year of college and asked the school district to hire me. I knew all the students. I ran a Special Olympics program and more than half of the students were in our program. The school district said I was unqualified. I tried to get a high school varsity coaching job at Santa Monica High School because several of the players that I coached during my 3rd and 4th years of college were finishing 8th grade and moving to SaMo. I actually got an interview. They hired someone else and told me that I did not have a credential (I was not the most qualified applicant or the best choice; my boss applied and should have been hired, in which case I would have served as her assistant assuming she would have hired me). I would have been happy to coach at SaMo forever; the last girl who I coached as a youth (8-year-old) graduates this spring. Instead, SaMo went through 3 coaches in 4 years, and the most talented player from the 8th grade class transferred and ultimately dropped out of high school and other top players chose a private school. That’s all I wanted; special ed at Dorsey or girls’ varsity at SaMo.
Instead, I was hired at a D3 college as an assistant. I started to work camps. I learned that college coaches are nothing special. They’re coaches. They’re not mythic figures. I was a 23 year-old nobody, and I talked to some of these coaches and realized that I knew the game as well as they did. That’s when I decided to make a go of it as a coach.
A college coach advised me yesterday to pay my dues. This from a coach who went from playing college basketball to a 3rd assistant position at 23 (making $35k+) and has never coached anything but college basketball. I thought that I paid my dues traveling the world to get experience, working dozens of camps, being a head coach of every team that would have me, training any player that called me, mentoring any coach who asked, etc. What I have learned is that when people tell you to get experience, they really mean to attach yourself to a fast-rising coach or a big-name coach. It has nothing to do with getting experience in terms of getting better as a coach and everything to do with networking so someone will vouch for you. I did things all wrong. I thought being a Head Coach in a professional league in Europe at 25 (and again at 29) and coaching in the All-Star Game, making the play-offs, making recruiting connections, etc. would mean something. Instead, I learned that I would have been better off if I had volunteered as a “video coordinator” for one year so I could use a Hall of Famer’s name on my resume.
Having/have not “paid their dues” is the most arbitrary reason talent gets kept down and no talent moves up.
I dont agree that you come off as arrogant, obviously its just frustration.
Whats not clear to me is what your dream job is now. What level do you want to coach at? I think the situation with administrations and players and parents is more important than level of coaching, to me anyway.
I dont have many contacts, but the more we know about what it is you specifically want (ideal situation, location, boys/girls, salary, teaching/no teaching, etc) the more effectively people can help.
Couple of thoughts:
1. How come you havent started your own club team? Or maybe you’ve thought about it IDK…
2. If you’re willing to move anywhere in the country (I guess not possible because of your doctoral program now) it seems you could have your pick of many many head varsity coaching jobs. There are 3 openings within 60 miles of where I live in Kansas.
JL
Josh:
My dream job, at this point, is a developmental job. The soon-to-be (but never actually elected) president of the Trinidad & Tobago Basketball Federation offered me (though he had no power to do so) a job as the Technical Director for T&T. That’s the kind of job that I would like, either with an NGB or a big European club. Something that involves working directly with players and coaches within a developmental system. Secondly, I’d like to be the Head Coach of a small club in Europe where I would oversee the underage coaches and players within the club through the development system. I think these positions are the best use of my skills.
My problem with starting a club is that California just changed the rules, so high school coaches can work with their teams year-round. Therefore, adding club basketball to the high school basketball tends to against my beliefs about over-competing and under-training. More than a club program, I have looked into starting a basketball facility in three locations over the last five years, but it just doesn’t make sense financially. I haven’t been able to make the numbers work. I am also a terrible businessman, so I would need a good partner. I have had no fewer than five people approach me and tell me that they were building a facility and wanted me to be their basketball guy, but none has, to my knowledge, followed through and built the facility. I am, again, looking into this possibility, but I have yet to find a location that makes sense based on finances, desirability and contacts. It’s a lot of money to go in blind. There is one area where I have had semi-serious discussions with investors, but it didn’t work out, as of now.
Brian – It is always a pleasure to read and exchange ideas with you over the years. Hang in there – and what about changing over to volleyball and working with me at USA Volleyball. I have a position opening up in my department this summer, when my son heads off to Princeton to start playing for the team there (he is now 6’5″ and touches nearly 12 feet, so they will have a good outside/opposite attacker-blocker). I’m serious. Our focus is to help clubs grow the game, for youth, teens, and adults in the indoor 6 person game, Paralympic sitting volleyball (including the Wounded Warrior programming), beach doubles and outdoor options, and Deaflympic & Special Olympic. We have won all our Olympic and Paralympic medals by using the science of the sport, facts – not opinions – and you get all that. Give it a thought! You know how to reach me.