Talk in Positives
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Loading ...I’ve written about ways to talk to keep your players in a better performance state here already, but allow me to put it more simply:
Talk in positives.
I mean, instead of focusing on what DIDN’T happen when things went wrong, focus on what now needs to happen to make things right.
I mean, instead of talking about what NOT to do to avoid screwing up, talk about what is working well and what should continue to happen.
It’s really, really easy to fall into the trap of saying “guys, we’ve been getting hosed by the deep hucks” but that sort of thing is already understood if it’s so bad. Just get to the meat of it–”we’re going to try throwing more of a straight-up mark early in the count to stop their hucks off of flow they’ve been getting.”
Along the same line, take that same approach when you scout your own team’s effectiveness, too. You might key in on the other team’s 6’7″ receiver who’s bringing down everything in sight, but if you simply think “he’s unstoppable” you’ll be missing the opportunity to key in on those times you’ve pressured the thrower, taken away his deep look with your mark, and D’d up the dump, which is a strategy you can encourage going forward and find some success in.
If you don’t have anything strategic to say, and can’t think of anything nice to say, default to “run harder” or similar energy-boosting rallies. You’re better off saying nothing than calling attention to the negatives.
Live in the positive. And keep playing hard.
yo mackey, thanks for your comment on my cutting post a couple of weeks back… sorry it took me a bit to even recognize that i had a comment (the gmail account connected to this blog is pretty much all junk mail at this point…)
as a senior on my team, i’ve been really seeing more and more how much the attitude and presentation from the leadership affects team morale. bottom line, ultimate has to be fun for even the most elite of players, or once midterms and bad weather roll around, it will seem like a chore.
i think another real sticking point for remaining positive is not immediately talking about what should have happened when a bad decision works out. i have a tendency to nitpick, seeing error even when things work out well for my team. at club regionals a few weeks ago, i watched one of our girls team rookies make a spectacular grab on a deep cut, only to stand up and immediately jam a throw into the endzone. luckily the receiver was a vet with good reaction time and hands, but my response was to tell the coach that he should tell her not to look dump there. he pointed out that all of her teammates were surrounding her in celebration and asked which would do more for her development: being congratulated for her sweet play or scolded for her error that didn’t even produce bad results. point taken.
*tell her to look dump there
Hey JDN,
I can sympathize with you. As a senior, you definitely have a lot of pull with your team, whether you realize it or not.
Trying to talk the way I’ve described here is something that myself and many of my classmates had been working on since our sophomore year, when we noticed a decided lack of positive speak (or rather, a prevalence of talk focusing on the negatives). It’s not necessarily something that can be changed overnight, but with work it can definitely be improved.
In the situation you describe, yeah, the results make it hard to talk to her. Either way I think you want to approach it the same way, in one of two ways:
1) Talk to her one-on-one. Acknowledge the good play beforehand, and acknowledge her desire to jam it in there (“I know it looks appealing, and that will work out for you sometimes,”) before getting to the relative meat of what you want her to take away (“…but we’re likely to run into teams with better D than this and we’re going to score that more consistently in the long run by looking to dump and swing, using both halves of the field until we find an easier pass to take.”).
With one-on-one conversation I like to use a technique my friend calls the “compliment sandwich–” open with a compliment, slip in your constructive criticism, and close with a compliment (even if it’s as simple as “good work out there, you’re running really hard” or the like).
The other way is to address it on a team strategy level. This can work pretty wonderfully if one player’s actions are symptomatic of the whole team. In such a case you never want to name names or even allude to a single person being responsible. Phrases like “a couple times out there we…let’s really try and focus on…” tend to resonate with the individuals in question and will draw the whole team’s attention to the goals for improvement in question. Hopefully this means next time her dump is talking to her to move the disc, etc.
Whoops, there’s another blog post.
So true. Talking in positives is key for goal setting too. I’ve heard that when you remember sentences, your mind often doesn’t remember the negative words as much as the nouns, so the take away image from a sentence like “Let’s not get broken anymore” are “get broken” or for “We need to stop getting beat deep” you end up with “beat deep.” Not that helpful…
I really like to set goals that people can get behind even when things don’t work out. For instance, against a team that likes to look deep, Fury would talk about a team goal of having at least two of our jerseys under every deep huck. Even if the other team caught a few of those passes, we knew that we were pushing the odds in our favor if we were able to get more of our players on every deep pass.
Another thing I would add to the “talk in positives” point you made, is to avoid assuming the mental state of the team. People in huddles rarely seem to comment on how great the focus is on the field or how loud your team’s sideline talk is or how confident people are playing. Instead focus, sideline talk and confidence only seem to come up when a leader senses there isn’t enough of it on the team.
I hope you don’t mind I seem to be commenting so much on your blog these days. Clearly I need to start blogging myself more…
Agreed.
As far as focusing on focus, energy, etc, goes, Dartmouth has had many games and tournaments where our game focus is exactly those things. It’s super-useful, especially on a college team where you almost always have young, inexperienced players who get little pt, to keep them engaged in the game. This also generally had the great side effect of our cheers being so persistent that the other team would wind up annoyed with our cheering or otherwise be psyched out by our energy. “Winning the sideline battle” became just as important as winning the on-field one.
The comments are great. Far from minding it, I appreciate the contributions! Thanks.