Mastering The Moment

“I spoke to one player and as someone who has experienced it, I would term it as post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Reading Eamonn Devlin’s excellent article in The Telegraph earlier in the week, it was shocking (but not totally unsurprising) to learn the extent that players may even suffer from PTSD from sitting in the changing room at half-time.

He points out that “anxiety & loneliness is a significant problem” in players at half-time; often reminiscing over an error they’d made in the first half.

 Mastering Your Craft

 Working with a head coach in rugby over the past eight weeks, one of the central areas he wanted to focus on was his half-time message delivery. A critical element of a coach’s craft.

 We’ve had our weekly call & an in-depth review of the sixth video he’s had one of his video analysts record & send through as well as three previous matches before applying focused work on this area.

 In summary, he was speaking on average for 5.43 minutes delivering over 9 tactical messages (which accounted for less than 25% of total messages delivered) whilst also making over 7 pieces of individual feedback to players. His non-verbal body-language was ‘tense’ when they were winning (stiff, jerky movements & leaning away) whilst more ‘animated’ when his team were level or losing (more non-verbal cues, gestures & movement).

Some initial feedback was:

-       If we speak at the average rate of 130-150 words per minute, he was averaging about 850 words per delivery.

-       Research findings vary but for a 6 minute speech, players are like remembering less than 50% of what’s said (given player fatigue & their experiencing amplified emotions, we can predict it to be substantially less).

-       Using Mehrabian’s 55/38/7 rule where 55% of communication is non-verbal, 38% in the tone of voice & only 7% in the said words; body language is critical!

Uncovering Some Deeply-Entrenched Truths:

 When seeking my help, we initially explored several questions to uncover his philosophy, decision-making process & awareness at half-time.

Amongst these were; what he believed to be the primary purpose of half-times & his role in this?; what his preparation looked like & gauging the needs of the players emotionally?; and what he believed to be an optimal environment for enhancing team performance?

As Devlin found in his research; coaches often don’t believe their half-times can significantly affect the game’s result whilst, conversely, players believe a well-structured & engaging half-time can play a pivotal role (this head coach was no different!)

 A Framework for Delivering:

 We collaboratively formulated a process for him to follow at half-time dividing the period into three phases; preparation, first five minutes & delivery.

 Underpinning this, we had two objectives for his half-time:

1.     The Critical Few- he’d focus his attention on the 2-3 tactical messages that were critical & how he’d deliver these.

2.     Lift The Energy- the players should leave the locker room with heightened energy (physical, attention, emotional etc.)

Preparation:

-       A coach’s attentional capacity is effected by their emotional regulation. Instead of getting caught up in the emotion of the game, focus on a key tactical area & compile valuable team or individual notes for half-time. Having 2 or 3 assistant coaches should mean you’ve got the key areas of the game covered (your on-field messaging will likely be more effective too!)

-       Not rushing into the locker-room grants players more time to recover & discuss the half whilst allowing coaches time to align their messaging- ridding the chance of ‘information overload’ & acting as a time to reduce emotions.

First 5 minutes: (this may depend on the length of the half-time window)

-       The moment you walk into the locker-room, players’ eyes are looking for cues. Being aware of how you hold yourself can disarm concerns. Music can also slow heart-rates down.

-       Which players do you speak with for in-put? There’s nothing worse than delivering one of your critical few to responses of “yeah, we spoke about that under the posts”.

-       Look to give the individual feedback at this point (in as fewer words as possible) & don’t underestimate how far positive reinforcement can go.

-       The first 5 minutes give you a chance to gauge the collective emotion & respond accordingly. Is encouragement required or would a clear tactical intervention be more important?

Delivery:

-       Body language; reviewing yourself on camera is uncomfortable but highly beneficial- as is, rehearsing how you might deliver a message (remember Mehrabian’s Rule!)

-       Be purposeful with your language- does it convey belief in your players, reinforce the values & behaviours you seek or will it demotivate & add to the anxiety? 

*When working with head coaches, we’ll often workshop scenarios & explore different methods but a lot of the focus is directed at delivering the message concisely.

-       Football coaches are used to delivering three half-time speeches in a seven day period so how can you add variation to increase engagement without losing structure? Using technology to visually highlight a tactical point is popular with players whilst you might also pose some questions during ‘player time’.