Introduction
As dependable coaches, you must ensure that the spirit of your players is always high. This is referred to as keeping your players’ emotional tanks full. When players’ emotional tanks are full, they are capable of achieving anything no matter how hard it might seem. It is also undemanding to coach such players as they are always willing to listen and respond to your instructions. Such players are ever optimistic and this adds to their capability of attaining their goals. In case of any problem, they are capable of addressing it and recovering with minimum problems. Many times, coaches fail to recognize their responsibilities in coaching. This topic helps in fostering skilled coaches as well as ensuring cooperation between players hence improving the team’s capabilities. To use this technique in your coaching, one needs to come up with a measure for players’ performance that is to be used in commending them as well as establishing varied positive criticism (Positive Coaching Alliance, 2009, Par.1).
Filling players’ emotional tanks
To attain the right equilibrium between particular commend, fact and precise positive censure, formal researches have cited that there is a ratio of 5:1 with five praises for every one criticism. This ratio has been seen to promote a good environment for players to learn. Most coaches find it hard to concur with this research. From their skills, they believe that the essence of coaching is to correct players rather than praising them. They believe that by praising their players, they would be doing more harm to them than good. However, by them learning to fill their players’ emotional tanks, they will be capable of correcting them effectively. The main issue here is to avoid praising your players before they have done something commendable. Coaches must ensure that their praise of players is genuine and precise. Non-verbal cues also play an important role in boosting players’ morale. Coaches fill emotional tanks when they listen, grin, applaud and nod at their players. Ignoring your players, glowering, shaking head and shouting at them might lead to their spirit declining (Positive Coaching Alliance, 2009, Par. 2-4).
Coaches spend most of their time video-recording their players as they play or practice. From this they are capable of highlighting and criticizing some of the mistakes they commit as they play. It is advisable for the coaches to also take some time to videotape themselves as the coach. Through these they will be able to know how effective their non-verbal communication could be in motivating or demoralizing their players. Apart from ensuring that the coach and his assistance strive to fill their players’ tanks, it is vital to ensure that even players participate in filling each others’ emotional tanks. It might not be an easy task particularly when dealing with a tremendously aggressive team and where time spent in playing is minimal.
It is the wish of every player that they play well in every game. To accomplish this, each player needs to ensure that he or she plays a role in motivating his or her fellow player. Through this, they can be able to overcome the possibility of some players giving up during the game. For instance if your teammate makes a mistake in the middle of the game, there is need for others to cheer him or her up rather than shooting them down. Criticizing or being rude to them would make them feel demoralized. Consequently, it would kill their confidence leading to them performing even worse in the game. It is not wrong to criticize your associate player but the criticism needs to be presented in a way that will not hurt the player. For instance if players miss shorts, one can encourage them by reminding them that there is still a chance for them to improve in the coming shots. Other ways of filling your teammates’ emotional tanks are through encouraging them whenever they perform well in the games or whenever you see them be devoted to the match. If there are some of the teammates showing significant improvement in their performance, it is good to acclaim them. This would make their endeavor to improve even more. Listening to your teammates as they share ideas also helps in filling their emotional tanks. No one would be happy to feel as if he or she is being overlooked (Responsible Sports, 2009, Par. 4-6).
One of the main aims of filling the players’ emotional tanks is to help them become more confident in themselves. Another way of filling their emotional tanks is by teaching them how to praise themselves. Help your players develop individual self-belief strategies. This may be through allowing them to have a fan practice or revisiting a precedent experience that would stimulate their spirit. Before your players embark on a game, they need to have a mind depiction of a past game that they played well. This would make them feel superior hence performing well in their future game. It is important to ensure that these players do not have time to revisit some of their worst games as these would lead to them doubting their capability thus performing poorly. Various techniques can be used in filling the players’ emotional tanks. Some of these include the playmate system, positive charting and winners circle (Responsible Sports, 2009, Par. 2-5).
It is not merely the duty of the coach to fill the players’ emotional tanks. Through this system, coach pairs his players before the game begins. Each player becomes a partner to the associate player. The aim of these is to allow them to improve each other’s abilities. When one does a mistake, the partner is responsible for helping him or her recover without hurting his or her emotions. In case one does a commendable job he or she is congratulated by the partner. At the end of the exercise, players are given an opportunity to share the words that their partners used to correct or motivate them during the game. Through this, players learn how to motivate one another during the game leading to excellent coordination among them during competition. Positive charting helps in identifying various incidences when the players performed exemplary. It may consist of grids listing all the players with sections to record some of the instances when each player performed well in the game (Responsible Sports, 2009, Par. 1). Through this sheet, coaches are capable of highlighting some of these instances as they praise specific players. It is wrong for coaches to assume that they develop their players only when they correct them whenever they do wrong. It is necessary to commend them whenever they do well and to support them so that they continue improving their techniques. The charts can be filled by the coach, assistant coach or even players who are not participating in the game. It is important to read these charts to the players before they start their game as this would help in filling their tanks.
At the end of the game, it is significant to gather all the players in a winners’ circle. The group can be divided into smaller units with respect to the number of players. Here, the players are given a chance to highlight things that they saw their fellow players do well during the game. The coach makes his or her comments after all the players have exhausted their views. He or she is expected to make specific comments and acknowledge those players that are not commanded by their fellow players. By regularly organizing for winners’ circle, players yearn for these hence performing well in the field in anticipation of being acknowledged at the end of the game (Responsible Sports, 2009, Par. 3).
Conclusion
Through practicing all that is taught by this topic, coaches can be able to bring together all the players developing a culture of teamwork within the team. They also understand how detrimental some of the comments they make might be to their players hence giving them a chance to change the way they conduct themselves during and after games.
Reference list
Positive Coaching Alliance. (2009). Fill the emotional tank. Web.
Responsible Sports. (2009). Filling Players’ Emotional Tanks. Web.
Responsible Sports. (2009). Filling Players’ Emotional Tanks Tools. Web.