Sandwich Your Criticism
Have you ever tried coaching your athletes hard and they give you attitude or shut down on you? It is frustrating when I can't coach my athletes the way that I need to coach them, and sometimes I don't understand why they won't let me teach them the way that I need to teach them without shutting down. But the NCAA transfer portal is one of many indicators that let us know how important it is to think about the way we communicate to our athletes in today's world. One simple thing that I have learned to do is sandwich the meat of the conversation - the hard stuff - between the positive stuff. As often as I can, I try to sandwich my coaching and criticism between positive comments. It helps. At the end of many practices, I do let my athletes know that many coaches in their lives won't be as nice in the way that they deliver their messages, and they have to learn how to find the message in the coaching, criticism, or yelling so that they are prepared for different coach...