A critical but often overlooked exercise, a coaching philosophy establishes a coachs guiding principles and how those values and objectives underpin coaching practices that, in turn, develop team structures and nurture athletes.
The fundamental question is, Why do I coach? One of the most important foundations of a coachs philosophy is that she owns it and that she expresses this belief system not only through words, but especially through actions.
In amateur sport, the vast majority of coaching philosophies Ive looked at all espouse the same primary point: service over success; winning isnt everything; put players first. An article on ethical coaching made the case with this quotation: It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Elite Australian rower, Bo Hanson, writing at AthletesAssesements.com draws a line in the sand: do you coach to win or to compete? I cannot stress enough the importance of educating athletes that it is more important to focus on their process of development and how they performed in competition rather than the results or outcomes that they achieved.
How does a coach do this? How does a coach teach good sportsmanship while generating a healthy sense of urgency that winning is indeed an objective?
A coach can develop a different set of goalposts, so to speak. One metric is athletic: ball control, stick handling, endurance, hand-eye coordination, etc. Others are cognitive and behavioural: sociability with teammates, respect shown to a referee, punctuality, determination, and so on. Still others are emotional: self-esteem despite a loss, fair play in the event of a big win.
Ultimately, the utmost objective of any coaching philosophy is a success rate that measures an athletes lifelong enjoyment of sport.
In the next Jock and Jill four-part coaching series: emotional intelligence.
Twitter: @MHStewart
