Affirmations

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

This article continues the spring theme of Teaching here at SmarterVolley. Last week I opened some discussion of the book Coaching Athletes To Be Their Best by Fader and co.

In that article I talked about the concept of the Strengths Lens. Although Error Correction is one important coaching skill, we don’t want to turn into Deficit Detectives, who only remind athletes of their shortcomings.

On the flip side, we don’t want to coddle athletes. We don’t want to tell athletes, “oh no, that was actually a great hit,” when they hit a ball out of bounds. CATBTB cites the danger of excessive praise. Excessive praise can actually sap motivation, increase the fragility of athletes, and lower confidence in tough moments… exactly the opposite of what we intended when we praise athletes!

So what technique allows us to wear a Strength Lens while avoiding turning our players into coddled, fragile, praise junkies?

Enter Affirmations

The guest coach for the next SmarterVolley Live clinic.

Praise is a subjective value judgment. That was a GOOD hit. You did a GREAT job.

Affirmations are close-to-objective-as-possible statement. Affirmations also tie into deeper character traits, rather than more surface level feelings about what just occurred.

I will crib a couple examples here, but seriously, get the book.

Praise: “ I thought that was a great game you had today, well-done.”
Affirmation: “You seemed to keep your composure when under pressure.”

What’s interesting about these two statements is that the first one is more directly complimentary, but you’d probably feel even better to get the second one. The first one is nice to hear. Everybody likes to get praised. But the Affirmation ties things in more deeply. The coach isn’t even saying that keeping your composure under pressure is a good thing. She doesn’t need to! She’s just making a statement of fact. If you’re an athlete who thinks that’s a good thing, you’ll be fired up to hear it.

And, more powerfully, affirmations help deepen your self image as someone who keeps my composure under pressure.

Scold and Coddle

The vast majority of coaching, especially youth volleyball coaching can be described as, Scold and Coddle. The coach points out all the mistakes, while occasionally saying, “oh but that was a good try,” and sometimes, “you played great out there.” I think the self-image this creates in players is:

I’m a fundamentally weak player (mistake! mistake! mistake!), who needs to lower her standards, (“you didn’t get that ball, but good try!”), and sometimes gets luck and, “plays great.”

Challenge and Affirm

But I think there’s another way and Affirmations are a core part of it. I’ll call this the Challenge and Affirm way of coaching. In this method of coaching, the coach teaches what is necessary for success at this level of competition, he challenges players to meet that standard, and he affirms the underlying qualities of a player when those qualities emerge in practice or competition.

The self-image this creates in players is:

It’s not easy to have success at this level, so it’s not surprising that I’m having some failures. But that fact that I played well the other day must mean that I have some real strength inside me.

I know which self-image I’d rather my players have.

We Become What We Do

We all know that this is the best scene Batman Begins¹:

“It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.”

I had the wonderful opportunity to be an assistant coach for the great Marv Dunphy at Pepperdine, shortly before he retired. We were a strong team headed by a legendary coach, and Marv had an open door policy for visitors. This meant that there would be a visitor to the gym most days for practice. These visitors might range from famous figures in the volleyball world to a beginner coach from the middle school around the block.

The expectation was that, at some point before, during, or after practice, every player (and staff member, manager, etc), was expected to go over to that visitor, introduce themselves, and shake hands. I’m sure at some point back in 1983 this was communicated explicitly, but by the time I was on staff, it didn’t need to be. The younger guys saw the older guys do it and they got on board.

That’s the challenge element. There was a clear expectation of conduct. Specifically, this provides a physical manifestation of an internal quality. You may say that you want to be humble, grateful, curious, or just an all-around good guy. That may be who you think you are underneath. But do you express those values into action? When a guest comes to the gym, do you express gratitude that you play at a such a strong program that people come to the gym to watch your team play? Are you humble enough to realize that you’re just a small piece of this great legacy? Are you curious enough to listen to what that guest has to say and the possibility that they might have some real insight from an outsider’s perspective?

And Affirmations? Affirmations are what connects actions to internal qualities. How you affirm will depend on you and the individuals you are affirming. As CATBTB points out, this scales with age/experience/proficiency: “Don’t affirm experts for breathing.”

Broadly speaking, the younger and less proficient an athlete is, the more immediate and direct your affirmations should probably be. For example, after a hitting drill where they made several errors in a row and finally took a good swing into the court, you might be tempted to say, “great swing!” but what you are really trying to do is affirm (and reinforce) the quality of grit. So as they come off, you could say, “you showed some grit there to keep going.”

On the other end of the spectrum might be a simple comment the next practice following a tournament. “You’re all proud of that last win and you should be. Great teams stay calm, even the other team makes a run.”

Training The Strengths Lens

In the previous article on CATBTB, I mentioned a few activities that can help athletes express their strengths. So now imagine this sequence of coaching:

1. As an athlete joins their team, you ask them to express some strengths. What do they think they bring to the team?

2. In the early season, you affirm those strengths by connecting them to actions you see in practice and competition.

3. In the mid-season, you meet again with that athlete. They feel even more confident bringing their strengths to the team. They even express a new strength that has emerged.

4. As the team makes their late-season playoff push, every player has 2 or 3 core strengths that have been affirmed by coaches throughout the season. Before a critical match, the players huddle and each player looks each other in the eye and finishes the statement, “when this match gets hard, I will…” with a short action connected to their strengths. When they take the court, they know they might not win, but they definitely know how to bring their full self to the team that night.

Pretty powerful, huh?

1. Remember the good old days when a superhero movie was still somewhat novel?