Positive Interventions

Becoming a more positive coach

I often think of my coaching career in two phases - from 2008-2013 and 2013 to now. There are a lot of different reasons why I separate out these blocks - I started doing more non-playing coaching, coaching national teams, coaching women’s teams, starting to prioritise games over drills - but one of the biggest reasons is I made a conscious decision to change my coaching approach to a positive one.

I was - and still deep down am - inclined to view the game negatively. That is to say, I focused a lot on what wasn’t going well and what we should be improving on. My coaching interventions either in a drill or a game were generally to tell a player or the whole team to stop doing something wrong, or to do something that they weren’t currently doing. And certainly not always with a smile on my face or a calm tone…

I do think that’s fairly normal. Most coaching I observe takes this negative form primarily, and that’s also reflected in a lot of online content and analysis which is geared towards what has gone wrong/what should be done better*. Despite focusing on positive coaching for 10 years I still internally battle to not do that myself - if I’m watching a game for analysis these days it feels way easier to point out all the things a team isn’t doing well, but it’s a lot more rewarding to pick out what makes a team or a player or a play work well instead. It was cool to listen to the Breakside Podcast with Tim Barzcak of Ulti_Breakdowns recently and hear that is a priority for him when he’s creating his videos too.

Changing to a positive approach was great for me. I had to completely reframe my perspective as a coach when watching drills or games - rather than watch and looking for things we could do better I started watching trying to pick out things I liked so I could encourage more of them. One book I read at this time summed it up in the title - Catch Them Being Good. (the title is the best part of the book by the way, I wouldn’t rush out to buy it)

What were the results for me? My teams played better, and more confidently. I was also much happier personally. I could enjoy the process of building strengths upon strengths across a season instead of feeling like I needed to fix things all the time.

Negative thinking is easy

There’s nothing simpler than pointing out that something went wrong, just after something went wrong. Generally players don’t need to be told that something went badly, and when I was really reflecting on this back in 2013 I realised a lot of the negative interventions I made were really to make myself feel better - an emotional catharsis of sorts. After a decade of trying to be a more positive minded coach I still have to fight very strong feelings on a regular basis that I need to call everyone in and tell them they’re doing a terrible job. But I don’t. Mostly…

The number of effective interventions I can make as a coach during a practice session or a game is very limited - I want players to practice when they’re at training, and I want them to play when we’re in a game. If I’m making an intervention it’s got to have real value. I want whatever I’m saying to stick with people and I would much rather they remember me telling them why something did work rather than why something went wrong.

This isn’t to say that you should never make a negative intervention. They absolutely have value when used sparingly. I do my best to reserve these for behaviour related issues - if I feel the team isn’t pulling their weight then I’ll remind them of the standards they want to set.

How to make Positive Interventions

Ok, so if you’re aren’t stopping drills or using breaks during games to tell your players or the whole team what they should do better, what are you doing instead?

At it’s core the answer is simple: point out something that did go well and ask for that to happen more.

This doesn’t mean lie to people (more on that later) because players quickly see through that. It’s fine to acknowledge the negatives. For example I say some variant of this a lot:

“We haven’t had a great start to this drill but that was a perfect rep from Sam and Aine** - we can all do it to the same standard so let’s do it for the rest of the time”

This can take some getting used to - certainly for me it usually felt more natural to step in when things were going badly than when things were going well. I think there can be a reluctance to step in when things are going well because you’re hoping they just keep going well. So it definitely took time to learn that I can interrupt when something went great to make sure everyone understands that it was great!

It only in typing that last sentence that I realise how backwards my instincts were. Players know when a mistake has been made and they don’t need me to tell them. Players don’t always know when something good has happened (or why) and they often do need me to tell them.

Finally, I particularly try to look for good habits to call out, rather than praising results. So I might say to a player “I don’t care that you turfed that break (again - don’t need to lie and say everything was perfect!) but I am super happy that you looked for it at that time, it was a great decision” or tell my team after a 1 possession point “I loved the deep goal in that point, it was super clean because all the cutters did an excellent job with their spacing - keep that up and we’ll have an amazing deep game”

Positive Interventions Breeds Confidence

Players love recognition. That shouldn’t be a surprise to you. It feels great to be told you did something well. You have limited interventions during a practice so it’s up to you if you want people to leave feeling great or feeling down.

Over the course of a season there’s a big multiplier effect for the confidence of the team from reframing situations to look at the things you did well. I firmly believe most teams would be much stronger if they did the things they were good at more often - that may sound very obvious but it’s not how most teams approach practices.

Avoid Positive Negative Reinforcement

When coaches or teams want to be positive they all make the same mistake. They lie.

Telling a player that throwing the disc away was good, or dropping an unopposed catch actually doesn’t ring true to them no matter their level of experience.

You might need some patience to wait for something to actually praise instead of filling the dead air with fake reinforcement.

You might be better doing something different instead of what you’re currently doing. A lot of classic static drills spotlight players in a horrible way - by this I mean there’s only one good outcome (you complete the throw/shut the person down/etc) and everyone is watching your rep. If you train using something more that has continuous action, that has more open ended possibilities rather than a single prescribed outcome then it’s a lot easier to find things that players are actually doing well for real and not because you are desperately trying to find something positive to say.

Getting Started

Two ways to get going:

1 - watch video of a game and only allow yourself to note down things that you liked that you think would be good to reinforce as positive behaviours. Bonus points for doing this with video of your own team, extra bonus points for doing it with the video of your most painful loss!

2 - challenge yourself to spend a whole practice only making positive interventions. Remove the ability to make negative interventions completely. If you’re starting at the same point that I did, where negative thoughts come a lot easier, this is a crucial step. You need to rewire your brain to see all the good things that are happening on the pitch because I guarantee you your team is doing a bunch of great stuff. Your job is to get your players to produce it more consistently.

Useful Resources

OK so this is just going to be plugging the Positive Coaching Alliance. I particularly recommend these two sessions they delivered the the Bay Area Disc Association and Skyd filmed. It’s incredible that these exist for free. The PCA also have a bunch of books, and I haven’t read them all so I’ll recommend my favourite which is The Double-Goal Coach

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*Which isn’t to say all negative analysis is valueless by the way. It’s also hardly an Ultimate problem - any sports analysis is rife with experts just saying a team messed up in some way.

**Plus you can take this in a few different directions - I like asking the team who saw what they did and can they tell everyone why it was good, or ask Sam and Aine to tell everyone if they aren’t too shy. It’s also a good way to teach your players to be watching everyone else if they aren’t directly involved.