My players wait to be told what to do. How do I get them deciding for themselves?

Quick answer. Work out what’s missing before you change anything. Cedric De Vlieger says a player who is always looking at the coach for directions is lacking autonomy, and that the cause is one of three things: autonomy, involvement or competence. Fix the one that’s missing. Give players the skills before you ask them to choose, coach the principle and then let them make the decision under pressure, ask questions in review instead of giving the answer, and make it safe to get a decision wrong when the intention was right. Then check your own structure, because Shane McLeod found that even an Olympic-level team can be coached into waiting.

That’s the short version. Here’s where each part of it comes from.

Find out which of three things is missing

Cedric De Vlieger’s background is leading a police special unit, and the session Team. Trust. Culture. brings the idea of mission command from that world: the leader sets out the plan and the intent, then the people doing the job decide how. De Vlieger described the hockey version of the problem almost word for word: “if you got a hockey player on the field who is always looking at the coach to give directions or he’s not sure about something, then I think it’s that mission command and that autonomy that he’s lacking.”

De Vlieger doesn’t jump straight to “give them more freedom”. De Vlieger asks which ingredient is missing: “Is it the autonomy? Is it the involvement, or is it the competence that they’re lacking?” Freedom won’t help a player who doesn’t have the skill to act on it, and skill won’t help a player who’s never been asked for an opinion.

There’s also a test to run on your own team: “How many times in the last three games, let’s say, did a player make an independent tactical decision on, on the field without asking anybody?” The first answer in the chat during the session was zero. And De Vlieger is realistic about how long it takes: “We want ownership. It’s like you can buy it in a shop. 400 grams of ownership, please. Thanks. You have to grow it.”

Give them the tools before you ask them to choose

Competence comes first for Tsoanelo Pholo. In Why your best players still need to train the basics, Pholo’s example is a player who turns back instead of going forward because there’s no backhand to go forward with. That’s not a decision problem. The player has nothing to decide with, and Pholo sees giving them the skill as the coach’s job. A player with one option will always look to the sideline for permission.

Coach the principle, then hand over the decision

In a recent practice session on the guard player and counter cover, Pholo put it like this: “So what we need to coach as coaches is we coach the understanding of the principle, and we then allow the players to make decisions under pressure.” The coach’s part is the why and the picture. The choice in the moment belongs to the player.

Robert Noall does the same in 1v1 sessions: “I try to eliminate telling them how to beat the exercise from the start. I explain the exercise, explain what the goal is, but I try and give as much freedom as possible to let them think about it.” When a player finds a good solution, Noall uses that player as the example for the rest of the group.

Pholo describes what it looks like when it works, a player saying: “no, no, coach, I love what you’re saying, but I want to make this decision”. For a coach, Pholo says, that’s the moment the penny drops.

Ask, don’t tell, when you review

Jude Menezes reviews video by questioning the player rather than explaining what happened, so that, in Menezes’s words, “it’s the athlete who needs to understand the game, not the coach.” Alyson Annan builds the awareness a decision needs the same way: “It’s just asking questions, continually asking them.” Where’s your goal? Where are your teammates? Which goal are you going to shoot at?

Mathias Becher, in a 2018 Coach Chat, takes it a step further with team tactics: help players understand what the opponent is doing, and “then try to maybe develop a solution together with them” before you set the principles.

Make it safe to get a decision wrong

Players who are punished for every wrong choice learn to wait for instructions. Andreu Enrich says coaches sometimes have to let players make mistakes, “If these mistakes respond to a good intention.” He’s clear it isn’t a licence to do anything: there are actions the team wants in certain situations, and a well-meant attempt at one of those is what gets protected. Becher’s version is a culture where there’s no right or wrong answer, only good and better, which he says makes players more confident about finding their own solutions.

Check whether your structure is the problem

Sometimes the coach built the waiting in. When Shane McLeod took over Belgium’s men, McLeod found them “incredibly predictable, and they they played within, the roles too tight. And so there was no flair or spontaneity about how they played”. The first job was to free them up. McLeod’s rule for structure: “you have to design a structure as a coach that allows, their personal impression of how they can be important, has to be able to come through that.”

De Vlieger says the same about match day: “The moment they have to play, let them run their show, let them do their thing and give them the autonomy to play.”

Two questions this usually raises

Should I stop coaching from the sideline during matches?

Mostly, yes, if you want players deciding. Cedric De Vlieger’s view is that the plan is set before the game and players run it once play starts. Robert Noall gives players a lot of information before and after training and none during it, and with a substitute coming off Noall asks a question, such as “Did you realize that this player was free on the inside?”, rather than giving an order.

How long does it take before players start deciding for themselves?

None of the coaches puts a timescale on it. Cedric De Vlieger’s line is that you can’t buy ownership, you have to grow it. The three-games test is a way to see whether it’s growing. For younger players, Robert Noall starts with decisions that are very likely to succeed, using big overloads such as 4 against 1, and makes them harder from there.

The sessions below are where these coaches go into the working detail. Every masterclass opens free so you can see what it covers; the full session sits in the Coach subscription.