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Tagged – Coaching Practice Practice Management
Have you ever been in a crowded place, and amidst the many chattering voices hear your name? You don’t hear the details or even snippet of any other conversation, but you always pick up the sound of your name. People are attuned to hear their own name. And yet, our basic form of address when speaking to someone is to put their name at the end of the sentence. “How’s it going, Mark?” “What time is it, Jimbob?” “Do you want fries with that, Sir?”
In that crowded place we just discussed, if I wanted to get someone’s attention, I would not say “How’s it going?”. There is no way for the person to understand in the din that they are being spoken to. First, I would use that person’s name. “Mark! How’s it going?”
It turns out it is not a function of the amount of background noise. If you try the experiment in a group with two other people who are not paying attention, for example playing with their phones, you will instantly see that the same holds. A person’s attention is piqued when they hear the sound of their name, NOT when you start to speak.
This seems like fairly important information for the coach. If you want to give an individual player feedback from across a noisy, or at least if you want that feedback to be understood, you need to call the name first.
A collection of 50 Coaching Tips can be found here.
For more great coaching tips, check out the Vyacheslav Platonov coaching book here.
At Home On The Court 
Your name is the most powerful word in the world. It commands your attention every time you hear it.
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I don’t know about you, but even if I know it, it is so unnatural that I need to be reminded of it every day!!
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True. But, in a small huddle, where it is not loud and distracting – I find it best to do the opposite. Ask a question, then say the name. That way everyone listens to, and hopefully thinks about, the question before you ask someone to answer it.
On the court: “Delaney! Great adjustment on that attack.”
In the huddle: “What defensive adjustment are they making on our middle attacks – Lexi?”
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If everyone is already paying attention, then name at the end is fine.
I was kind of focussing on the getting someone’s attention part. I’m sorry if that was not clear.
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I would actually double down on your point and say that if you already have the players’ attention, a nod or a look is enough to direct your comment/question to a specific player.
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Absolutely. I love it when the coach/player relationship is strong enough that you don’t need words to communicate. A raised eyebrow, a smile, a frown, just calling their name to get their attention – speaks more, faster, than any words.
But it takes a while to get there…
I had a new player join a team that I had been coaching for a couple years. Mid-season, we stopped for dinner on the way home from a tournament. We were sitting together and I asked how she was settling in with her new teammates. (I knew what I had been seeing, which was good stuff, but wanted to hear her opinion.) She said things were ok. But she was worried that she and I would never get to the point where we communicated without words like I did with many of the other girls. I assured her that if she stayed on the team, it would happen. Just give it time. Unfortunately her Dad got rotated out a few months later, they moved, and we never got there…
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