Dealing with Coaches:

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Dealing With Coaches

It’s the oldest excuse in the book, but a lot of times it's totally justified. “I should play more… but my coach ". “I should _____….. But my coach”.

You can substitute a lot of things into that blank, and I've heard most of them. Every single year I have played, I have seen people negatively impact their own career/playing ability because of their inability to manage a relationship with their coach. It is mind boggling to me to see people be unable to deal with their coach and have them knowingly hurt their careers by being unable to navigate the player to coach relationship.

Your coach might not like you, which most cases of this I have seen are incredibly avoidable. It’s usually because of one of a few reasons:

• Lack of Communication (#1 and it’s not even remotely close)

• General demeanor/body language

• Tone when speaking

The first one is the easiest one to fix, as it legitimately only takes effort on your part to make sure that the coaching staff knows that you and them are on the same page. The easiest way to ever do this, and something that you should be doing every single day anyway, is coming to practice and hitting your coaches with a simple “How ya doin coach?”. It literally could not be more simple and easy to make sure they know you exist and don’t mind talking to them.

Your coach is mean and scary? Cool, even better. If he’s some hardo that tries to be tough all the time then he probably respects a “hey coach” with a fist bump even more. This is literally the easiest thing ever and after like 3 days it becomes darn near muscle memory. In pro ball, you don’t walk by your manager/coach without saying something, if you do it just makes you look bad.

Social skills are the name of the game, and 100% holding a ton of people back from getting a fair shake. You don’t even need to suck up to coaches, you just have to be the guy who says hi to them every day. It makes them think you like them, regardless of if you do or not, and them thinking you like them will go a long way.

Part 2 of the communication issue: Injuries/playing time.

These talks are way harder, but can be made infinitely easier if you already do step 1 and have a good rapport with the coaching staff. Having coaches that at least like you a little bit makes these conversations infinitely easier.

Now, a story:

A friend of mine, one of my very best friends, was the best player on our team. The coaching staff loved him and they had a great relationship. Midway through the season, he started experiencing some pain during games and toughed it out and didn’t tell anyone- coaches, medical staff or even the managers.

Fast forward two more weeks, he is sidelined because the injury became worse and stopped him from being able to play the game completely. So now, an already struggling team was going to be without their best player for weeks, simply because he didn’t communicate and get ahead of things.

Fast forward about a month, he’s back in the lineup and the first weekend with him back goes great and we get a big win after a while of being on a skid. Everything is great, until the very next weekend.

We play our rival, he completely takes over the game and wins it for us, everyone is fired up. Once everything cools down, we find out he’s been playing through extreme pain for nearly half the game. And despite multiple check ins with coaches, he told everyone he was fine and that he was good to go.

And just like that, he’s back on the shelf and our team is without its best player once again. Once the coaching staff finds out about it, they're frustrated with the player and at odds for the rest of the year- so bad that at times I would have to be the middleman in regards to communication because the two wouldn’t even speak. Do you think you’re going to get the most out of your career if your coaches don't even want to talk to you? NO.

We go on to lose a bunch of games to finish the year and everyones mad. The relationship never truly heals and honestly neither side gets the best of one another. Coaching staff now has to wrap him in bubble wrap every time he plays and doesn’t let him go for his full potential, and on top of that, he then doesn’t have the best line of communication the next year with his coaches because the relationship was already fractured.

Luckily, he was far and away the best player on the team so his career is still intact and he never once had a doubt about playing time. This most likely isn’t you, it sure wasn’t me in college. So how about we go ahead and have good communication so that we get what we want and help our team a lot in the process?

Lots of research shows that dealing with hard conversations and potential issues in a straightforward way builds more trust than never having issues at all.

Key takeaways:

• Say hi to your coaches every day (basic social skills).

• Tell them the truth, get out ahead of possible issues.

Demeanor/ Body Language-

This one is by far the hardest to fix completely, as a lot of our natural emotions/reactions to things are instinct/subconscious.

The easiest things to fix are these: eye contact and head movement. Simply put, look your coaches in the eye literally no matter what and nod when they speak to you.

This is basic human psychology. Look them in the eye so they feel as though you are respecting what they have to say, nod so they know you are listening and taking in what they are saying. The next thing I am about to say is possibly the biggest and most important thing you could ever learn regarding managing a relationship with a coach.

Here goes: 99% of coaches are former players, all of them have an understanding of what it’s like to play a sport competitively and deal with coaches. They want to be a players coach, they want you to like them. ALMOST ZERO coaches decide to coach because they want to make players' lives miserable and be disliked by their players.

Imposter syndrome is a real thing, and it affects almost everyone in some way or another. Coaches suffer from it just like everyone else, they are not immune just because they’re in a position of authority.

Talking with them and practicing basic social skills will go so far as they want to give you the benefit of the doubt and they want to be a players coach.

This last one takes some paying attention to, but goes a long way when dealing with coaches.

Spot the Difference:

“Why aren't I playing?”

“Hey coach, I feel like I've been working hard lately and the team has been struggling. I want to help the team, what am I not doing that needs to be done for me to find the field?”

Okay, that should be easy to see the difference. **It’s literally the exact same question** except one goes about it the right way and one doesn’t. In these tough conversations it’s really easy to come off as ungrateful, demanding or rude. When tensions are high, the extra words/context go a super long way.

Coaches won’t hate you for trying to get better, and they understand that the basis of your question is “why aren’t I playing?” but rather than demanding answers that only benefit you, putting everything through a “team first” lens will help you so much. I’ve seen way too many careers get negatively impacted strictly because they don’t know how to manage relationships. All of these things are really simple, and are more or less a choice.

If you:

• Say hey to your coaches every day

• Get in front of tough conversations

• Have good body language

you will be amazed at how things start going in your favor. I’ve seen people snake their way into positions they don’t deserve strictly because coaches like them, and I've seen players end their career because they don’t get the playing time they deserve. Vast majority of the time it is avoidable, make sure you avoid it.

Good luck,

John