End of Season Performance Reviews – Making a difference or Making a mistake

Spring is the season of re-newal, re-birth and re-generation.

And for many Australian sports – AFL, Rugby League, Netball and Rugby – spring is also the season of the Performance Re-view.

That time when players, coaches, management and staff sit down together and try to work out what went wrong, what went right and how to do it better next time around.

How do you make certain your end of season Performance Review makes  real difference to next season and is not a waste of time, energy and money?

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Message to the Sporting World – Do it your own way!

After the CLOSING ceremony of every Olympic Games, someone should yell out, “let the (real) Games begin”.

The real “GAMES”…………the junkets and fact finding missions the Sporting leaders from most countries embark on to find out what the USA, Germany, Great Britain, South Korea, China and Australia are doing to be successful in the Olympics.

The logic seems simple enough.

“Our country didn’t win any medals at the Olympics” says the Minister for Sport.

“Country XYZ won lots of medals at the Olympics”, says the CEO of the Sports Commission.

“Therefore if we want medals and we copy them we will win medals”, thinks everyone in the room.

“Hooray!!!! Problem solved – let’s buy some air tickets”. (more…)

To a Coach with a Hammer, Every Athlete is a Nail: Creativity in Sports Coaching.

Coaching is creativity.

To the successful coaches of the future, creativity will be a core coaching skill: right up there with communication, passion, empathy, commitment, the ability to engage athletes and sports specific technical skill.

But what does it mean to be creative and to coach creatively. And to coaches who are not naturally creative, can they learn to be?

Or to the coach with a hammer, is every athlete a nail? (more…)