The COVID environment we’ve all endured has changed many perspectives over the last seven months. As I noted in earlier blogs, some for the better… some for the worse… But it’s been our specified intent to seek the good and find the benefits of new experiences and perspectives. One distinct change from my perspective is after coaching boys for more than thirty years, I’m now coaching girls as well.
Given this change, I felt a need to better understand how to coach the opposite sex. While the expectation to adhere to the performance standards of our culture remain the same regardless, I recognize communication (both verbal and non-verbal) may indeed be different. I have learned over three decades you cannot coach Generation Z the way you coached Millennials. Nor can us Generation Xers coach the way we were coached by Baby Boomers.
The key to coaching is communication. To effectively communicate with players you need to understand their differences. In doing some research on the topic, I found some excerpts from the book “You Just Don’t Understand” by Deborah Tannen. She states, “boys focus their communication on independence, self-reliance, and the avoidance of failure, while girls focused on connection, preserving intimacy, and avoiding isolation.” She goes on to state, “female athletes generally respond better when you avoid yelling and ask them for their input, while male athletes often respond well to motivational yelling or concise demands from a coach. Lastly, Tannen states that while the content of what you say may be the same, the way you deliver the message can make all the difference. That was just the advice that I needed to read.
Similar themes are echoed by Anson Dorrance, Hall of Fame head coach of the UNC Chapel Hill Women’s soccer team. Coach Dorrance has led the lady Tarheels to 21 of the 31 NCAA Championships ever awarded, and has amassed more than 800 wins, (a >90% winning percentage!) Coach Dorrance is very candid about the early lessons he learned transitioning from coaching young men to coaching young women. While concepts of common vision, values, understanding, and goals remain the same in developing team culture, Coach Dorrance helped me understand how differences in communication styles, humility, and perception are better tools for building trust, cohesion, and interdependence.
I’ve commented before how our role as coaches is to build teams, win games, and develop quality citizens who will graduate and contribute to our community. While there are many aspects of the COVID environment I have found frustrating, another silver lining has been learning how to create opportunity and serve the young women on our team who will contribute equally to our success and go on to be leaders in our communities as well.
Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time!
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