Tag: coach the coach

If players carried the loneliness, imposter syndrome, abuse and fatigue that head coaches do, Royle argues we would spend whatever it took to ease it, so why not for the coach? He points to Silicon Valley chief executives who used Bill Campbell, and to Pep Guardiola, Eddie Jones and Ross Lyon, who each employ a fellow coach to manage the weight of the job, because another coach grasps nuance a sports psychologist often misses. It need not be a full-time hire: a monthly mentor or a peer swap counts. The full Coach Chat with Cody Royle is not on the subscriber site yet. Masterclasses on the same themes are, for Coach subscribers of The Hockey Site.

Looking back on his own time as a head coach, Royle lists what hurt his performance: external criticism, alcohol, refusing to let go, seeing himself as a coach first rather than a partner, communication that did not land, and poor sleep that dulled his awareness. His biggest error was believing tactics mattered more than belonging. With lungs burning five minutes from the end of a final, he says, players cannot recall a game plan; what carries them over the line is how much they care about each other. The full Coach Chat with Cody Royle is not on the subscriber site yet. Masterclasses on the same themes are, for Coach subscribers of The Hockey Site.

Royle defines coaching as helping people explore the outer reaches of their potential, and he prefers reaches to limits because, like space, nobody knows where the boundaries are. Asked how to identify those reaches in a head coach, he says there is no framework: you work alongside them, nudge them into things, watch them fall over and get back up, then push again. The key is helping them believe in their own talent, because almost nobody feeds a head coach anything positive. The full Coach Chat with Cody Royle is not on the subscriber site yet. Masterclasses on the same themes are, for Coach subscribers of The Hockey Site.

Asking for help is simple but not easy, and Royle admits his generation, men in particular, was taught to suck it up or drown any emotion at the pub. He argues that head coaches need to learn the actual words and communication patterns, reflect on them and practise saying out loud that they need help. Nobody is coming to rescue coaches, he says, so the profession has to start by reaching out to itself. The full Coach Chat with Cody Royle is not on the subscriber site yet. Masterclasses on the same themes are, for Coach subscribers of The Hockey Site.

Royle opens with a question most coaches never ask: why does anyone have a coach at all? He has lifted weights since he was 14, yet he still pays a trainer in Toronto, not for knowledge but as an accountability partner who gets him to the gym and squeezes out the one or two extra reps he would skip alone. Teams keep coaches for similar reasons, he suggests: organisation, accountability and someone to research the opposition, and every coach should be able to answer why their own team has one. The full Coach Chat with Cody Royle is not on the subscriber site yet. Masterclasses on the same themes are, for Coach subscribers of The Hockey Site.