Seeking Feedback from Athletes

One of the easiest traps in coaching is assuming that because you said something clearly, your athletes received it clearly. Those aren't the same thing. You can have years of experience, know your sport inside and out, and believe you're an effective communicator while completely missing how your instruction, correction, tone, or body language is landing with the people you're responsible for leading. Coaches spend plenty of time asking mentors and other coaches how to become better leaders, but there's another group we should probably be asking more often: the athletes actually being coached by us.

Proverbs 1:5 (ESV) says, “Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.” This verse isn't specifically about coaching or soliciting feedback, but the principle absolutely applies. Wisdom doesn't assume it has nothing left to learn, and good leadership shouldn't be threatened by information that exposes an area where we need to improve. If anything, coaches should be willing to ask harder questions because we're asking athletes to do the exact same thing every day.

Think about how often we correct athletes. Move your feet faster. Get your hands up earlier. Communicate louder. Change your approach. Fix your attitude. Watch your body language. Take coaching better. We expect athletes to receive that information, make adjustments, and come back better, yet some coaches get incredibly defensive the second feedback starts traveling in the opposite direction.

That's a problem.

If I expect an athlete to hear correction without treating it like a personal attack, I need to be capable of doing the same thing. That doesn't mean athletes dictate how practices are run, determine playing time, or get a vote on every coaching decision. There's still a coach and athlete relationship, and leadership requires making decisions athletes aren't always going to like. Listening to your players doesn't mean surrendering your authority. It means being secure enough in your authority to recognize that you don't experience your own coaching from their side of the net.

Athlete feedback can also expose things coaches can't see from where we're standing. Was today's practice challenging and productive, or did it become repetitive without accomplishing much? Do the athletes understand why we're running a particular drill, or are they just going through it? Is my correction helping them make the adjustment, or have I explained the same thing five times in a way that still isn't connecting? Do they understand their roles? Do they know what they're doing well in addition to what needs improvement? Those questions don't weaken coaching. They give us information we can use to coach better.

That becomes even more important when we consider how differently athletes process instruction. I had two middle blockers who were a great example of this because I couldn't coach them exactly the same way and expect the same result. One processed information much better visually, so I needed to demonstrate the movement, let her see what I wanted, and sometimes repeat that process while giving feedback until the concept connected. Another responded much better to short verbal cues that reminded her of something we'd already worked on. Giving both athletes the exact same instruction in the exact same way would've been easier for me, but coaching isn't supposed to be about what's easiest for the coach.

We also need to be careful with rigid labels like “visual learner,” because research doesn't support the popular idea that people learn better simply because instruction is matched to a fixed learning style. Athletes can absolutely have preferences and respond differently to demonstrations, verbal cues, repetition, video, physical practice, or combinations of those methods, but our job isn't to put each player into a learning style box. Our job is to pay attention to what helps that athlete understand the skill and then teach it effectively.

That's where knowing your athletes becomes part of knowing your sport. You can have the greatest technical knowledge in the gym, but if you can't communicate that knowledge in a way your players can understand and apply, your expertise has limited value to them. Coaching isn't proving how much you know. It's helping somebody else learn.

One of the more useful systems I implemented was designating a “Coach Captain,” an athlete who had permission to give me direct feedback about my coaching. I wanted feedback on more than drills and practice plans because communication involves much more than the words coming out of my mouth. I wanted to know about my tone, body language, motivational approach, and how certain messages were being received. There were going to be things athletes noticed about me that I couldn't see myself, and I'd rather know about a blind spot than protect my ego and keep repeating it.

That kind of feedback only works if coaches actually want the truth. Don't ask athletes for feedback and then punish them emotionally when they give it. Don't become cold, defensive, sarcastic, or start explaining why every criticism is wrong. If players learn that honesty creates consequences, they'll stop being honest and start telling you whatever keeps the relationship comfortable. Then the coach walks around believing they have great communication because nobody is complaining while the locker room is having an entirely different conversation.

Creating space for athlete feedback also doesn't mean every piece of feedback is correct. Athletes see situations through their own experiences, emotions, roles, and limited information just like coaches do. A player who's frustrated about playing time may interpret a situation differently than a coach making decisions for an entire roster, and a freshman may not yet understand something an experienced coach has seen play out dozens of times. We can listen seriously without automatically agreeing, and we can respect an athlete's perspective without allowing that perspective to make every decision.

That's part of mature leadership because listening isn't the same thing as surrendering judgment.

The age and experience gap between coaches and athletes makes this even more important. Coaches may believe something is obvious because we've spent twenty years around the sport, while an eighteen year old athlete is experiencing it for the first time. We can't expect young athletes to automatically understand our intentions, terminology, standards, or decision making just because those things make perfect sense inside our own heads. Sometimes what looks like resistance is confusion, what looks like a lack of effort is uncertainty, and what looks like an attitude problem is an athlete who doesn't know how to communicate what they're struggling with.

None of that means lowering standards. It means becoming better at helping athletes reach them.

Coaches constantly ask players to be teachable, accountable, self aware, and willing to make adjustments. We should be willing to live under the same standard. If several athletes are misunderstanding the same instruction, eventually I need to consider whether the problem is my communication. If my body language consistently makes players afraid to approach me, I need to know that. If something I'm doing is killing confidence instead of creating accountability, I should be willing to examine it.

Athletes aren't always right, and neither are coaches. The strongest teams I've been around aren't built by pretending otherwise. They're built when people can communicate honestly, disagree respectfully, receive correction, ask questions, and trust that everybody involved wants the team and the people inside it to get better.

If you're a coach, ask yourself how often your athletes actually get to coach you. Not control you, not make your decisions, and not tell you whatever they want without accountability, but give you meaningful feedback about what it's like to be led by you.

We spend our careers studying the game and learning how to make athletes better. We should be willing to study ourselves with the same intensity because sometimes the adjustment that changes the team isn't one of our players making a correction.

Sometimes it's us.