I get imposter syndrome constantly. What I have internalised as the image of a good coach is primarily composed of extroverted qualities. Movies, books, articles all tend to be charismatic and extroverted coaches. To further drive in imposter system, I know that these are other people's perception of good coaching qualities, and I know that I don't match up with that image.
The issue I have is that I get messages from people worrying that they're not the right type of person to be a coach. Coaching isn't personality based in spite of the image portrayed by popular media. Just like playing, it is skill based and some skills you'll excel at naturally, some you will learn and some you might struggle with.
I'm going to share some of the challenges I face because of my natural personality. All lot of the below is going to be negative, but the important thing is that I am a good coach. You don't have to fit a mould that you see or that you've experienced from coaches that you have had. You can be your own person.
I am an introvert and I am shy
These are similar but not exactly the same. You can be an introvert and not be shy, or vice versa. I'm definitely both. Common Introverted attributes that I have:
Reflective
Self-aware
Take time making decisions
Feel comfortable being alone
Prefer to write rather than talk
Feel tired after being in a crowd
Daydream or use imagination to work out a problem
Retreat into own mind to rest
Shyness, however, manifests itself as an awkwardness and discomfort around other people, particularly when I don't know them very well.
In lots of ways this is a terrible combination of attributes to have for a coach. More specifically:
Negative Impacts
I am horrific at individual feedback
This is always #1 item on my feedback from players at the end of seasons. I don't ever need to be told this, I'm acutely aware of how often I fail on this, and it's always top of my list of improvements to make. Unfortunately, me trying really hard to communicate better on an individual level is probably barely noticeable.
This is really a perfect storm of my shyness and introversion.
I don't feel comfortable interrupting people. I feel ridiculous even writing this - I'm the coach, it's literally my job and everyone expects me to do it. Hence the imposter syndrome.
As noted above, as an introvert I like to figure stuff out in my own head. Even though I know this isn't as true for everyone else it still kinda forms a mental starting point for me. I never jump in when I see someone make a mistake for the first time, and if I'm coaching with someone else and they do it, I feel pretty dumb for not doing it as well.
On a similar line, it was in vogue a few years back to gets teams to think about the different way people want feedback, when and how, etc. This was obviously all well-intentioned and there are plenty of coaches and players who definitely are way too eager to jump in and start giving feedback which isn't helpful. For me though, these conversations just fed into my anxiety and awkwardness.
I do actively work on this. I set targets for each session of how many players I am going to give individual feedback to. I even have all players listed in a notebook and I check off when I give feedback to them. It is still shocking to me how bad I am at meeting these targets.
Building relationships with players
It can take a long time for me to build a good relationship with players. The more players on the team, the harder this is. Every respected coach developer I know has developing relationships with players as top of the list of skills you need and every time I read or listen to these figures the imposter syndrome alarms are going off full blast in my head.
Burnout at tournaments
This applies to long training weekends as well. At the end of a full day of play or training I am a zombie and incapable of interacting with groups of people. Lots of teams want to hang out in these evenings as a group, and I recognise there are lots of beneficial impacts to the team here so I do try to get up the energy to join in. But I usually can't.
To balance that out though, I think there are some positives.
Positives
I let my coaching do the work.
Because I can't rely on my feedback giving skills to improve players, I have had to develop practice designs that can shape players and allow them to figure out solutions for themselves. Essentially the drills or games need to provide the feedback directly. This is probably a harder way to conceptualise practice design but it's ultimately more effective as players are learning in a more natural and complex environment, which is what they are going to need to do in games. As well as that, sometimes that solutions and adaptations players make are better than the ones I had in my head. A lot of my success as a coach has been from letting players show me what they are capable of, instead of me imposing my ideals on them.
Which isn't to say more direct individual feedback from me in these practices wouldn't be great - it would be. But I'm not sure if I would have leaned so heavily on this type of practice design if I was a conventional personality type for a coach - my limitations forced me down this path as the optimum way for me to improve my teams.
Conclusions
There isn't a single type of person who is suited to coaching. Anyone can be a good coach if they are willing to learn the skills involved. If an opportunity to try it arises, don't hold yourself back.