In communicating with athletes, feedback from his players is of great importance for the coach. The coach can find out in a very simple way if the players understand his instructions during the match, if they understand his technical/tactical ideas and how they perceive his leadership. With an anonymous online or paper questionnaire, an athlete can individually answer the following questions evaluating the coach with grades ranging from 1 to 5:
1 – it does NOT completely refer to my coach
2 – it does not mainly refer to my coach
3 – it does not refer to nor refers to my coach
4 – it refers mainly to my coach
5 – it refers completely to my coach
- During the match, I clearly understand the instructions of my coach
- When the coach gives long instructions, I can separate the “essential from the irrelevant”
- I see a clear connection between exercises at training and what the coach is looking for at a match
- I am afraid of asking the coach to explain once again the technical/tactical element for he will think I did not listen
- When the coach explains, he often does not gather the team but only talks to a number of players while others do not hear
- Trainings are often monotonous and always the same
- The instructions given by the coach during the match are comprehensible and enforceable
- When the coach explains the technique/tactics, I do not often understand what he wants to say and I therefore compensate it with my own intuition and play as I find best
- In giving explanations, the coach uses simple and practical instructions/examples that I can understand and easily apply
- I believe that my coach has a high level of expertise
- During the match, the coach often says something just for the sake of saying, but I do not understand him at all
- During training exercise, I can often imagine myself as being in the same situation at a match
- The coach often uses professional expressions of which I do not know the exact meaning
- The coach has too high expectations in reference to my abilities
- At the end of a match, the coach often starts with what we did well
With this and similar questionnaires, the coach receives feedback on how his team perceives his leadership, communication and expertise. For example, if most players evaluate that the technical/tactical instructions are incomprehensible and difficult to apply, the coach can reexamine his manner of communication, set goals in a better and more effective manner in order to motivate athletes and enable them to see a clear connection between training and competing.
During a match, the coach must bring a whole series of technical/tactical decisions, communicate with his players and, at the same time, be selective when choosing the words that will best draw and present his ideas to single players. In group sports such as football or basketball where decisions are made from second to second, coaches often “are not aware of themselves”. In the charge and heat of the match, they cannot be aware of the words addressed to their players or evaluate when and at what moment to criticize, praise or give short tactical directions to single players.
Can a coach be aware of the thoughts going through his mind during a match and work on himself to be able to “be quick in thinking and slow and selective in speech”? Can he create within himself a space for choice between the outer event (i.e .tactical failure of the player) and the reaction time to the event? A coach cannot always control what is happening around him (i.e. referee decisions, wrong pass or bad reading of the defense player’s play) but his reaction to the event is always a choice. How many such choices can a coach be aware of during a match?
The 3-seconds rule enables the coach to “postpone his own reaction” with the goal of raising awareness on how the reaction to the event is a matter of choice and not an “ego need”.
Examples of 3 seconds follow:
