By Rudi Webster
Once again, Cricket West Indies (CWI) is about to choose a new head coach for the senior team. Let’s hope they get it right this time. But what is coaching all about? Is it necessary? What can it be used for; when and how much can it be used; who can use it well and who cannot? What coaching applicant is best suited to design and implement a performance improvement programme that will arrest the team’s longstanding decline and return it to winning ways? These are fundamental questions that members of the selection panel ought to contemplate and answer before making their final decision. They should also remember that conducting interviews is not the best way to pinpoint the best coaching candidate.
As impressive as the coach’s knowledge and academic qualifications are they are not usually reliable predictors of good coaching performance. This is so because the skills of numeracy and literacy – acquiring and using knowledge – are different from the skills of operacy – doing things and getting results. A famous American football coach once said that coaches who can write down and explain plays on a blackboard are a dime a dozen. He said that the ones who win, get into their players and motivate. Coaching is an art that demands lots of practice and experience. It is also about knowing the players, understanding the physical, emotional, psychological and cultural environment in which they are operating and having an awareness of how these factors are likely to interact and affect each other.
The heart of coaching is unlocking the player’s potential and enhancing his performance. It is helping him to learn rather than teaching or instructing him. Learning how to learn is one of the most important skills coaches can pass on to their players. It is the foundation on which self-learning, self-coaching and self-reliance are built.
Unfortunately, there are too many inadequately trained coaches in the system and as a result they fail to meet the needs, expectations and aspirations of the players. Many of them do not fully understand the underlying performance-related principles on which coaching is built. Without this understanding they just go through the motions of coaching and fail to achieve success.
Most of our coaches, particularly those who are obsessed with the physical aspects of performance, coach from the outside in instead of from the inside out. Psychologist William James once said that the greatest discovery of our time is that man, by changing the inner aspect of his mind, can change the outer aspect of his life. James is saying that change is most productive when it comes from inside out.
Today, success in top-class sport is no longer possible with just ability and technique. Success must first be created in the mind, then planned and pursued diligently over time, it does not happen at once or in a straight line. It is a journey that takes time and energy, patience and persistence and is usually punctuated by ups and downs, successes and failures. Enjoyment of that journey is a key to good coaching and player performance.
In competition the athlete is often playing against two opponents, one on the outside on the field of play and the other on the inside in the athlete’s head. Good coaches will tell you that the one on the inside is more daunting and destructive than the one on the outside. But whenever the player can persuade the inner opponent to become an ally, saboteurs like lack of confidence, self-doubts, fear of failure and limiting beliefs lose their disruptive power. Unexpected natural ability and untapped talent then flourish without the need for much technical instruction from the coach. Instead of silencing the inner opponent and reducing inner obstacles many coaches unwittingly magnify obstacles like self-doubt and fear of failure.
Coaches can learn a lot from babies who are learning to walk. Babies, thank God, learn to walk before they can understand technical instructions from their parents. Each time they fall they get up and try again. They don’t give up. And all the time they are cheered on and encouraged by their parents. So why don’t they give up? They have no concept of failure so they keep trying until they finally succeed.
The West Indies team has been performing poorly for some time. The players are told that they are lazy, unfit, mentally weak, not good at this and below par at that. These notions become beliefs even though they only reflect what the players have learnt and what they have done in the past. They do not take into account what the players can learn or what they can become in the future. If the players accept these ideas as the truth about themselves they will act like the players they believe themselves to be. And as long as they hold those beliefs they will remain trapped and limited by them. This is why cultivating a healthy self-image and working from the inside out is so important.
Sometimes, solving a problem is just a matter of changing perception. Perhaps the new head coach and specialist coaches should broaden their perception or look at the challenges in West Indies cricket from a different angle. The following story illustrates the importance of this point. Three men each with a piece of wood in the hand let go of the wood at the same time. In one case the wood went down, in the second it went up and in the third it did not go up or down. You might say that this is impossible. And it is impossible if you assume that the three men were standing on land. But if I told you that one was on land, the second was under water and the third was in space you would have a different assessment of the situation. What seemed impossible is now possible.
Our coaches should continue to focus on the traditional things they have been teaching but they should also embrace different attitudes and understand that the underlying intent of every coaching interaction should be to build the players’ desire, self-belief, self-confidence, self-discipline and self-motivation. These are powerful driving forces that determine how well the player’s physical skills are selected and executed.
The coaches should also focus on 20 percent of the factors that will contribute 80 percent to the players’ and the team’s performance. And they should commit to mastering them.
Finally, the coach must not see himself as a sage on centre stage. He will have his best performances as a guide on the side – a motivator and facilitator.
