Wednesday, October 20, 2010

BILL WALSH THOUGHTS ON WORKING WITH PLAYERS

Have answers.

Be an expert in your specialized area.

Isolate the skills and the techniques that are essential to each position.

Develop a plan on how best to teach these skills and techniques.

Treat each player as a unique person.

Demonstrate sincere interest in each player.

Gain the players’ confidence by working with each athlete to help him reach his full potential by enhancing his level of abilities.

Determine how each player best responds to instruction.

Be sensitive to and flexible with the players’ moods and demeanors while teaching and coaching.

Search for and implement new ways to teach and impart information and to get and maintain the attention level of the players.

Move on quickly to a different method of handling the situation if your current approach to dealing with and teaching your players is not eliciting the intended level of results.

Exhibit strength and persistence in your dealings with your players. Hold your players to the highest expectations.

Be personal with your players, but not too familiar. Excessive familiarity, in a misguided attempt to be socially accepted by your players, will prevent you from fully developing their performance potential.

Avoid attempting to communicate with your players in their vernacular or their 1990s dialect. Be natural in all of your dealings. Anything else will be perceived as phony.

Remember that praise is more valuable than blame. Remember too, that your primary mission as a leader is to see with your own eyes and be seen by your own troops while engaged in personal reconnaissance.

Use every means before and after combat to tell the troops what they are going to do and what they have done.

Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.

Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice. They must be preeminent in courage, deportment and dress.

General officers must be seen in the front line during action.

There is a tendency for the chain of command to overload junior officers by excessive requirements in the way of training and reports. You will alleviate this burden by eliminating non-essential demands.