Mental Game Monday: Coachability
After several conversations with several college coaches, it seems like a good time to discuss a few of those things that are important for coaches, yet a challenge to define.
There are a few that come to mind, resilience, emotional awareness, character, and for today, coachability.
To me, coachability describes a willing to ask for feedback/direction, receive it, clarify as needed, understand it, integrate, apply, and revise based on application.
I have seen athletes that were great at asking for and receiving feedback, and then not much after that. The athlete did on Saturday the same thing they did on Tuesday, no matter what direction they got on Wednesday and Thursday.
There are several places in which the instructional/coaching feedback loop can fail - the challenge is diagnosing where that occurs, and how to fix it. Oftentimes the problem seems to be in the understand/integrate/apply portion of the adventure.
This then become a dyadic problem - for a coach to be effective, the feedback has to be comprehensible to the athlete, and the coach may need to revise the content or approach to meet the athlete where they are (coach the athlete you have, not the athlete you want to have). Coaches can ask the athlete to paraphrase back, demonstrate it, and one of my favorite - ask the athlete to teach the task/skill to someone else. This is a fantastic way to see where the message sent and message received differ.
How does this connect to mental game? Recall the practice/performance split. In practice, we want an open mind, filling with confidence and experience, and trying new things. Performance time - mind is closed, trust is locked in, and the athlete is tasked not with learning, just doing. Learning skills (low confidence) and executing skills (high confidence) are different mindsets - so both coach and athlete can be mindfully of when we want the athlete in learning mode (low confidence) and when want the athlete executing with high stable confidence (any 3rd bases coaches wondering if you’re overcoaching athletes headed for the batters box, its a good question to ask).
Part of coachability is timing, another is location. Another important facet is the context. If a high school sophomore is at a camp at their top echelon school, that’s a fine time to be as coachable as one can be coached. At a pre-tournament workout in front of a few college coaches, that is very much a time to be open to feedback and demonstrate how quickly you can integrate feedback - with a willing and open mind. Those college coaches are expecting to coach, train, educate, grow, advise, mentor, scold, encourage, and uplift these 16-17-18 year olds when they’re 18-19-20…23. Athletes that present as a finished product will certainly make an impression, perhaps not the impression we’re looking for. Being coachable requires a humble desire to improve.
So when a PSA is getting some guidance/coaching, be mindful of the parallel process, one facet is the skill being coached, the other facet is coachability as a skill.