Gathering feedback
Gathering feedback is one of the most important tasks you should do periodically. Here are some different methods for you to add to your practice
As a coach, it’s important to balance players’ wants and needs. It’s important to show you listen to players and take on board their feedback and incorporate their voice within training.
However, how you gather feedback can be tricky. It’s important to try and listen to everyone, not just the more dominant voices within your team.
I use a few methods and try to vary how often I use them.
Development plans
You can design development plans in a way to suit you and the players. I call mine ‘goal cards’ and get players to write down 3 ‘superpowers’ and 3 ‘even better ifs’.
The superpowers help player see what they’re good at. Instead of improvements, I like to frame it as ‘I would be even better If I could…’ This helps players who may struggle with confidence and aids them to reframe their goals.
Reviewing both the superpowers and even better ifs helps give you an idea of what players currently enjoy and what they’d like to work on.
You can then give players a range of challenges to help them achieve their goals. You can also work on your next block of training around those goals, what they enjoy and what you identify as their work-ons.
Whiteboards
Anyone who knows me, know I love a whiteboard at training. They can be great for setting up questions for players to answer at they arrive, remind them of the session theme or give them tasks to do.
If you want to know what players would like to work on, you can also ask them to write it down on the whiteboard. This gives everyone a chance to write something.
It also helps players see what their teammates have written. This could give them their own ideas or they might agree with it. It also helps other players’ thoughts be displayed.
Having everyone write something means all opinions are seen. You can also respond to it as players are writing them down. This helps players feel seen, they know you’re taking their opinions on board.
This could be something simple as “yes great idea”, “ let’s add that in for the next couple of sessions” or “I’ve got a great small skill activity that will help you work on that”.
Group chats
Polls on group chats work the same way as asking players to write it an answer on a whiteboard. However there are benefits to using a poll on Whatsapp compared to a whiteboard.
Asking players on Whatsapp using a poll helps you define the parameters meaning you can list a few specific improvements from areas you’ve already indentified.
A poll also means more people may be able to answer. Using a whiteboard at training means only the people who attend that session can write down their thoughts.
It can also help spark engagement in the group chat with people sharing ideas and thoughts.
Anonymous feedback
You can gather anonymous feedback a few ways. You could ask people to write down some thoughts on a piece of paper and drop it in a box at training. You could also send round a survey. (I find these helpful at the end of a season or as a halfway through point)
It’s important to stress to the players that the method is anonymous. This might give them freedom to open up to you about things they’d like to learn or aspects of training they’re struggling with.
With any survey, it’s important to set the right questions. Think about what your aims are and what you’d like to know. At the end of the survey, leave one question open that enables players to write anything they’d like.
You’ve gathered the feedback now what?
One of the reasons for asking for feedback is to show vulnerability. However, it’s important to not just ask for thoughts and then do nothing with it. Otherwise, it just becomes a box ticking exercise.
Tell players that you’re taking their thoughts on board. If members of the team said they’d like to work on their confidence at the breakdown, the next time you work on rucking mention that you’ve planned the session partially based on player feedback.
You don’t have to mention players by name. The act of saying your session is informed by feedback is enough. If a player has written that they’d like to improve their tackling, follow up with them in person.
You can also ask that player if they’d like to watch some videos of their tackling. This can then help the both of you discuss the skill together.
When receiving feedback, the temptation is to incorporate all the points immediately. Doing this, however, might not be the best choice as it might mean your season planning is disrupted.
Instead look at your current plans and see how you can include the feedback within it. This makes your sessions inclusive and proactive, not immediatley reactive.
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