Allen Fox: Coaching Control: Measure of Success

Successful coaching: making players do what the coach wants.

When people are asked what attribute of the successful coach is the most important, answers usually include "knowledge of the sport," "personal relationship with the players," "organization," "commitment to the team," and the like. Of course all of these are valuable, but superseding all in importance is the need for control.

To be successful, a coach must, above all, be able to induce a player to do what he or she wants. Without control, a coach can have all the technical knowledge and great ideas in the world and it will do no good because it won’t translate into changes in behavior. In fact, underlying much of the value of the other excellent attributes listed above is their role in augmenting the coach’s degree of control.

Technical information is useless to a coach who can’t make his players act on it. It is similar, in many respects, to the issues faced by parents of young children Most parents have the best interests of their children at heart and have a pretty good idea of what will help or harm them. Young children, on the other hand, are emotionally driven and simply…