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[Jamie]

Hello and welcome to Coachcast by England Football Learning, the coaching podcast that brings you insight from people across the game. I'm Jamie and as always I'm with Louise and today we're chatting with Geoff Noonan, a regional FA Youth Coach Developer, to hear about his journey so far and to talk about understanding and managing yourself as a coach. Well, hi Geoff. Welcome to Coachcast. Thank you very much for joining us. How are you?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I'm very good, thank you. Thanks for inviting me and thanks for having me as well.

[Louise]

Yeah, it's really nice to have you on, Geoff. And what we're going to do to start off with is just ask you a little bit more about what it is that you do. Can you just explain your role to us a little bit.

[Geoff]

Yeah, so I'm now a regional FA Youth Coach Developer, which basically means I work in the professional game part of the FA. I go in and support five professional clubs, academies, really doing coach development. So it's for coaches who are primarily on A licence, Advanced Youth Award and B licence. And then we do coach support for them within the clubs. And I also then deliver on the courses centrally at St George's Park as well.

[Jamie]

Ah, brilliant. Yeah, thank you very much for that, Geoff. Well, just before we kind of go into the main part of the show to discover more about yourself and your experiences, as this is a coaching podcast, coaches could be on the way to training while tuning into this. So we always like to give them some great advice at the top of the show.

[Louise]

Yep. And we call this the arrival activity. It's just a way of warming you up a little bit and basically we're going to ask you to give us as many top coaching tips as you can in 30 seconds. Are you up for that challenge?

[Geoff]

I am, yes.

[Louise]

Yeah, great. Well, we've got some music so when that starts you can begin.

[Geoff]

So I think first of all actually have a good arrival activity something that is game-like and engages the players and makes them want to be at training early. Have practices that are very game-like, they have a direction and they have goals in. You can also set some home practice for individual skills, for turns, for dribbles, so that we enthuse them away from practices. Use simple scoring systems, this will come out later on, but simple scoring systems.

[Jamie]

Look at that. Well, that's 30 seconds. Did you want to add any more to that last one or are you alright?

[Geoff]

Just one, if I can. It will come out in the podcast, I think. An intervention is an interruption. So be careful about how much you interrupt the players to recognize, yeah, an intervention is an interruption.

[Jamie]

Yeah, brilliant. Well, we'll dive into the rest of the show now, Geoff, and we always start this by asking our guests, what was your first experience of football like?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so I was a child in Middlesbrough in the Northeast in a certain decade. And I actually was lucky enough to watch Middlesbrough when they were quite a good team. At that time, they were in Division II, which was the second tier, but actually my first season watching them, they won that league and they won it very easily. So I watched a team that scored lots of goals, were exciting to watch, actually had very fluid formations. And I guess at the same time that enthused me to want to play the game as well. So lots of informal play with friends in the park and then lots of schools football, district football and then going on through that playing into non-league as well.

[Louise]

Lovely, sounds like a really nice way to kind of be engaged into playing football yourself is by seeing a team that you love kind of doing really well. On the other side of it, thinking about when did your appreciation of coaching come in and what made you want to go into it?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so I went to college to do a sports science degree. I didn't really know what I wanted to do but I just had a huge interest in football and in sports. So I went to Liverpool Polytechnic University as it was and studied there and as part of that course or as an extra we did the FA Teachers Award which was I think it was 10 evenings and I was introduced to Ray Hall, Neil Dew, Snipp, some real expert FA coach developers and was coached and probably for the first time actually because I was playing non-league football as well at the same time and probably realised that I wasn't being coached in the teams that I'd played for, but actually then being coached on this course about some technical detail, methodologies of coaching and it just gave me a real insight into it. And then within my college programme I went on and then did my prelim and wanted to learn more about coaching at that time.

[Jamie]

Yeah, what was that first experience like of actually coaching then for you?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so I think It was actually on an adult coaching course, which was quite challenging, I guess, because it wasn't coaching kids. So it was at the time where I got on a course before I'd realized that I wanted to coach children. And that's quite a hard peer group to work with, I think. But again, the way in which the FA2 has made me feel comfortable and supportive. We had a go on it and it was, by the time I got to prelim it was pass or fail. But yeah, just to have a go and enjoy it and learn things and try things. I think also as well we were shown, it was modelled, we were shown some ideas to then be able to have a go ourselves so it wasn't as if we were just thrown in at the deep end so it was clearly scaffolded as well.

[Louise]

It's interesting hearing like because a lot of people we speak to their first experience of coaching was children so it's quite interesting to hear like that kind of how it's different if you're coaching adults I guess and is it I guess it's a slightly different space where do people expect a little bit more from you or something like that?

[Geoff]

I think because we were all in the same boat and we all were coaching each other to work and support each other on the course. I think that helped really and then probably what was interesting for me was having then done that qualification and then leaving college, I then got a job in quite soon afterwards in football, in a football in the community scheme And then that was the reality of coaching. And that really taught me a lot about group management, session organization, behavior management, and that classic, you know, working in a school, a primary school hall with a piano in the corner and wall bars and gym equipment in boxes with 30 kids and mixed ability, really trying to manage that, which was actually quite different from the old prelim course. The prelim course was quite tech tack heavy, but didn't give me as much experience in being able to deal with that. So a lot of that was just learning, learning as you went along really and making mistakes. But the beauty of that, I was quite lucky I got a job full-time early on. So it was literally out every afternoon, most evenings working in schools, grassroots clubs, birthday parties, holiday soccer camps, just getting lots of experience quickly which was great fun and great learning and lots of mistakes on the way.

[Louise]

I guess that shows that it's really important to get all that different experience, especially as you make starting out and stuff?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think so. And it's quite grounding actually now because I sometimes see coaches come straight from colleges, having done degrees and masters and straight into the academy system, but actually grounding yourself in trying to coach in that sort of non-elite environment, and not even that it's elite, but just working in schools, working with grassroots teams. I'd recommend it for anyone about doing that and experiencing it because It keeps you grounded.

[Jamie]

What is it that you most enjoy about coaching then, Geoff?

[Geoff]

I've actually moved away from coaching now, but when I did coach at the time, and my journey went from grassroots into academy, but I think the love of helping develop other people and seeing them grow, not just as footballers and not just tech-tack but as people. So we were very big on developing holistically. We talk about developing an all-round person, but children are people who are confident to speak, who can work with each of the socially good relationships, but also play good football as well. So really a four corner approach, I guess, to developing people and players.

[Louise]

You've mentioned a little bit there about some of the roles that you've had, but can you give us a little bit of insight into your journey from when you first started out to the role that you have today?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so it was that coaching experience at college doing a degree in sports science and getting a lot of the theories behind sports science as it is and coaching, doing my teacher's award, doing my level two at college and interestingly actually I failed my level two at the time at college. I then went and did it a year later. So I think this link to understanding self, it was quite important for me to go through that journey of actually realizing I wasn't ready. Going back and I learned so much more later on doing the course again, because at the time it was where you did the whole course again and I actually really appreciated that and was much better for it later on. So yeah and then I was lucky enough really to get a job straight away full-time in football which was the old football in the community scheme, which are now professional club foundations. Did 10 years of that, really covering everything, as I said, from holiday courses, soccer schools, birthday parties, evening stuff. Yeah, just lots of different age groups. And I actually coached quite a few teams in that time as well. I then moved across from there into Fulham's Academy and I worked for 12 years at Fulham's Academy, firstly part-time doing some age group coaching and then full-time really in different roles across the 12 years of managing the development centers. So looking at coaching curriculums, what's appropriate individually for players before they come into the academy and then managing different phases within the academy. So looking after the coaching program and coaches for nines to elevens, then nines to fourteens, and also doing a lot of coach development work. So trying to support coaches out on the grass when they're working with players. And I think that's probably been the exciting bit for me, the job of seeing coaches work with players now. That's quite powerful in that I think when I first worked at Fulham I realised I was influencing 16 players and one age group but actually by affecting the whole programme and affecting more players and more coaches I felt I could be more influential within the club and within the programme.

[Jamie]

Taking in everything you've learnt from that journey so far then Geoff, what advice would you give to your younger self to prepare them from stepping into the world of coaching for the first time?

[Geoff]

Be yourself, be authentic and don't try and copy anyone else and actually enjoy the journey. Looking back, I've worked actually now with some, actually an England player who was in the squad, having worked with coaches who work with him, but with a player in the England squad recently at the Euros, with some Premier League players, Premier League captains. So just enjoy that because it's a great feeling at the time but probably at the time I was doing it I was desperate for the players to be at the next point and I wanted the answer of whether or not our programme was going to be successful but you don't know so enjoy the journey as it goes.

[Louise]

What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received for yourself?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think it's probably from my mentor and I'll name him actually because he was he's really special to me. There's a chap called Jim Kelman and probably two things. One was don't try and copy anyone else as a coach, be yourself. But also his second thing, and it will come out later on when we talk about biases, he spoke about work on attacking play. Just make your attackers better and better and work on lots of attacks and trying to score goals because your defenders will get better through doing that. And he had a great management career with teams that always scored lots of goals. And interestingly, I think the reason I liked it, it did fit with my bias of watching Middlesbrough in the 70s score loads of goals. So yeah, that advice connected with me.

[Jamie]

And do you have a piece of advice to the listeners today to kind of help them make a positive impact on their players journey?

[Geoff]

Yeah and it's probably second-hand advice and I think it came from John Alpress via another FA staff member to me and sometimes we can drown in information of coaching But actually he just said two things, be nice and kind to the players and let them play lots of games. And he worked at a top academy at the time that produced a lot of players. So I think that's always stuck in my mind in amongst all of the stuff, Is the coach helping the players and are they playing lots of games?

[Jamie]

Yeah, I mean it's not bad advice to go by is it? Some really, really good key messages there. Now Geoff, if we mentioned the theme of today is around self-awareness and managing yourself as a coach. So kind of to dive into that topic, I suppose we'll start by asking what does self-awareness mean to you?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think self-awareness is about how you perceive yourself to be and understanding how others might perceive you as well. So it's your own actions, your thoughts, your drivers, your values, and really how that influences your own thinking and are you aware of that thinking and then the impact on others. So how you behave in a coaching session has an impact on others but yeah are you aware of it or not so that's really key for me.

[Louise]

And how important is it to be self-aware as a coach?

[Geoff]

Yeah massive I think when I look back on my journey across 30 odd years of coaching and coach development one of the things that I often say is has a coach had 10 years experience or actually has he had one year's experience 10 times? So are we just doing the same thing every year and we're repeating it or actually are we trying things that will make us different because learning is actually about a change or a semi-permanent change in behavior. But if we don't learn as coaches and help develop ourselves, it's then quite hard as coaching changes and learning changes, possibly learning methods that are we self-aware of how we progress as a coach as well.

[Louise]

It's a really interesting way of thinking about it.

[Jamie]

Yeah, and you kind of talk about learning there. In terms of your journey, how did you kind of then learn and help yourself progress then as a coach?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think probably if I can just go back one question as well, I think, on the self-awareness bit. I think probably a bit more detail on it, if I can give that. Yeah, absolutely. Some of the other self-awareness is the detailed bit of how does your body language impact players? How is your tone of voice? How are your gestures? Where do you stand on the pitch? Where does your eye go to as well? I think this is a really big one about what do you see when you watch a coaching session and a game? So I recognised in my own coaching world that I would only see attacking play. I couldn't see defending play. And I'll talk about that later on but does your eye go to attacking or defending? Does it actually also go as well to your own team and your own players or do you watch the opposition? Do you look at their tactics and strategies and formation first? And then the bit again on the course, especially on the B licence and upwards, we would talk about, are you looking on the ball, around the ball or away from the ball? So where does your eye go to to focus on? And yeah, we have some models that we use in coaching people may be aware of the six player capabilities so yeah can you zoom in on specific players to help them understand their timing movement positioning scanning all those sorts of things so what do we look at and when do we look at it is really part of being self-aware as a coach. And then, yeah, the other big one is match days. How aware of you are you on a match day of how you behave and your impact and are you actually a different coach on a match day to training? Are you authentic to yourself that what you say in training, does that then play out on a match day as well?

[Louise]

So that's really critical, isn't it, in terms of being yourself across all environments effectively?

[Geoff]

Yeah, one of the things that we've more recently done on our coaching courses is include game day observations. So in terms of our work now as youth coach developers, part of the A licence on advanced youth is that we will see coaches on a match day. And I'm always quite, I'm quite interested to see a game when I go to a game to watch a coach work, I actually want to see a challenging game. So I don't want to see a coach win easily, 5, 6, 7, 0. I want a game where, I saw one recently where the coach had a man sent off, or the opposition sent off in the first minute. So he's 11 versus 10 up but they couldn't score all the way through and it went right through to penalties. So how does the coach manage themselves in difficult times and in easy times? And when I'm a coach developer watching I actually want to see them in those challenging and difficult times as well because it's great for me to watch on how they behave.

[Louise]

And I guess it's those challenging times that as you mentioned before help you grow and not just stay in one one place.

[Geoff]

Yeah one of the things we also talk about is are you different when it is challenging to when it's easy or moderate? And part of that self-awareness is do you recognize how you become different when you're really up against it? And that's the true test of character I think and the true test of self-awareness. Yeah I watched the coach recently work at a tournament and we filmed it and then some of the behaviours actually he wasn't aware of in the tough and challenging times and it was really interesting to have that that cold conversation afterwards about did you recognise your behaviours in that game when your team scored or when the other team scored and that yeah that was a fascinating discussion as a coach development discussion.

[Jamie]

Do you have any top tips to help new coaches discover what their core values should be and understand like how they are acting and become more self-aware, I guess.

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think that the top tips for their values is actually just first of all to try and break them down and it might be three or four things to start with and they might add to it, but recognising when they're in times of difficulty and when it's easy, what values are then challenged for them. So if they believe that trust is a really important one, but if they're then challenged at a time where trust is broken or have they broken trust, then that affects their values. So I think recognising what values you've got, writing them down and then going back to them. And then often I think we quite like acronyms at the FA and generally people find things easier to remember. So actually if you've got an acronym for your values and one that I like and use is, so my three might be honesty, integrity and trust. So it's HIT, honesty, integrity and trust. And how does that work for me in my work when I'm working with coaches. And actually for me it would flip around first of all that the trust part has to be built when I'm working with a coach and it's the same for a coach with a player. I need to build trust first that I'm not the traditional FA of the assessor and I'm going to pass or fail but I come from a point of view of support. So we build trust first through relationship, shared stories, shared experiences and really just understanding their context. And I think that's the same in coaching that does the coach connect to the players? That self-awareness bit, are they just delivering tech-tac information or actually are they connecting to the person? Are they understanding the child about what's their journey been like as they come in, what's their school day been like, what are their other interests outside of football, which teams do they support. So it really builds a relationship conversation rather than just I'm going to tell you you need to use your week of football because it's hard to do that. One of the expressions, it's a bit cheesy, but there's an expression, connect before correct. So if you haven't connected with a person or a player, it's hard to then give them information to try and connect something. So that's always stuck with me as well, that human relationships come first before coaching information and that's the self-awareness bit.

[Jamie]

That's brilliant and that's a nice easy sort of like top tip to take away for our listeners. Connect before correct, that's really good. Now Geoff you've kind of alluded to it already in terms of personal biases and the fact that you had an eye in terms of for the attacking side of the game more so than the defending side. So to be truly self-aware, how important is it to know of and understand your personal biases?

[Louise]

Yeah I think first of all people may not know what what their biases are so actually just starting to think about why you coach is a good question. So are you coaching because your son or daughter is in the team and you want children to have fun So therefore if you want them to have fun that then links to your behaviors and your practice designs. And then biases may play out in terms of one of the questions I often ask as a connection with coaches at the beginning is who coached them and why were they coached that way and what did they like about being coached by that person or didn't like. Sometimes I've seen coaches work and I might say to them, were you coached by Jim Kelman? Were you coached by that coach developer? And you can see they have been. So the bias can play out where it's very quite systemic and hereditary, where it's coach behavior can be passed down through courses, sort of a generation to the next one. So that bias can play out as well. Yeah, and then your bias is about what you watch when you watch the game. Is it in possession? Is it out of possession? Is it your team? Is it the opposition? Is it on the ball, around the ball, away from the ball? All the stuff that we've spoken about already, I think those are important things to look at.

[Louise]

It's interesting, so I guess it's almost like if you've been coached or you see things a particular way you might, everything that you do might be pushing you down that direction and everything else must be might be lost. So it's interesting to think of it that way. How much of a hindrance can it be if coaches aren't aware of them, do you think?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think a lot because we don't know what we don't know. So what some of the models that I'll speak about later on, we would talk about blind spots. So is a coach aware of their blind spots when they coach and how do they know that they've got blind spots, if any. So that's important. And also the impact on the players. Some of the stuff that the players receive and how they receive it might be different to what the coach thinks that they're imparting. So that challenge between imparting information, but how it's received and the interpretation of it can be really interesting as well.

[Jamie]

Geoff, can you give us any insight into any biases you may have had, and you mentioned those blind spots, and maybe how you came to be aware of those blind spots in your in your career?

[Geoff]

One of the interesting ones I think, and I know that and I've always known my bias has been about attacking play, exciting players, and I would call them historically sort of twisty turny players, players that are very agile and can move well on the ball and flow well. So someone like Amusa Dembele who played for Fulham and then went to Tottenham but actually was a central midfield player but was very creative, clever and exciting. So that's often been my bias and I wouldn't have seen defending so much as a skill. And one of the other biases I think is on our A licence we present a game model of six phases. So we talk about build the attack, create the attack and finish the attack. And also then high press, mid block and low block. So that's a six phase game model. And so where is my bias about those six phases? Which do I find exciting? And then actually, which do coaches in clubs find exciting. And I actually think there's a bit of a whole game bias at the moment generally in academies and possibly in grassroots. I'm not around grassroots so much but this may be the case but I think one of the biases the game currently has is we're spending a lot of time talking about playing out from the back against press from the front. So when I'll go into a club and I'll ask what what sessions are you working on that's a very common answer for me I'm working on build out from the back against press from the front. I always describe that sort of session as playing out from the back is a numbers overloaded session. So when we play out we are probably plus one or plus two players. So that should be fairly easy. When we get into the midfield third, the numbers are normally matched plus or minus one, but when we get into the final third, we're often underloaded. So I often describe the final third as the hardest part of the game. So one of the challenges I guess I have in influencing coaches and clubs on their syllabus and philosophy thinking is how much time are you spending on the hardest part of the game. So the final third part, you know, we see it in all tournaments, putting the goal in the net is the hardest part of the game, but it's the most exciting. And I always say those players are probably worth the most money now as well in terms of academy development. So how much time do coaches and clubs want to spend on final third practices that are exciting, that go to goals, that challenge players and also will make defending better as well. So I think that's one of the sort of general game biases that we get. One of my biases and I keep having conversations with coaches and I think those that have known me longer probably know that this plays out. One of my biases is a shift from coaching towards decision-making practices and I think this came about probably through my historical experience of having done coaching and working at the community schemes and working in schools, I knew that I knew that children liked games-based practice. I then went into a club where actually the practices were something like 60 to 70% unopposed drill-like practices. And this was the syllabus we'd been given. And it was based on a French model at the time that had been bought across from Clairefontaine. So this model had a lot of bounce boards, it had a lot of mannequin work, and when I was coaching at the time, the players, I remember one player, our players would swing on the mannequins, they would be bored, they would mess about. And I actually started, you know, these players were in academies and I thought, you know, is it me or is it the players? Why are they not connecting to the activities I'm doing? And fundamentally, we were drilled into doing drills for 45 minutes. So I used to have to do mannequin practices for 45 minutes with under 10s, which clearly for me, just was not engaging and wasn't right. And that affected player behavior. But what it also affected was players' decision-making skills, players playing at speed, players having good reactions, good agility. So I was quite lucky, I think, in my time then at Fulham, when I went in, to be able to shift the syllabus when I was a full-timer and really being able to rewrite it to move away from a drills-based program to a much more games-based program. And then also at the time what affected me was a trip to Villareal. So again one of my mentors, a chap called Mark Hurst, I've been to Villareal about three times with him. And we went in round about 2006 and all of the sessions there were games based and it was all problem solving thinking sessions where players had to solve problems and work against opposition. I didn't see a single passing drill while I was there. And that again really got me thinking when I came back from there. So I've probably had this bias for about 18 years now and it's been interesting watching Spain go through the Euros with really good game understanding of when and where. So often now when I work with coaches I will ask the question about a practice design of does this practice design have when and where decisions or not? So if you're just doing a mannequin practice or a passing square, you're actually not practicing three of the six player capabilities. So you're not practicing disguise, you're not practicing timing, and you're not truly practicing scanning. So you might talk about those things, about check your shoulder, but you're not truly practicing those three of the six things. So if we believe that the six player capabilities are important, how many of them in your practice designs are you allowing the players to practice? And for me the longer in a session, in a 60 minute, 90 minute session, the longer that we can get players practicing all six of the capabilities, the better the players will be.

[Louise]

Really interesting hearing how some of your biases played out and kind of the things that have happened there in your reflections. Really interesting hearing about that.

[Geoff]

I think what's also then hard for me as a coach developer is to recognise my bias working with coaches to influence them in their programme. So I have to be careful that I'm not always just talking about the things I've just spoken about, about attacking play, final third play, creating skilful players, not looking at defending, drills and decision-making practices. So hopefully not becoming a preacher but having conversations that enable those discussions to happen and get coaches to think for themselves and reflect on what they're doing.

[Louise]

Yeah, I guess it can go like all the way up through the chain can't it, the kind of biases and yeah, really interesting. How would you say that you've managed yourself as a coach since and what impact has it had on your coaching?

[Jamie]

Having understood all of those biases, one of the things that happened actually in lockdown really challenged me was we were recording quite a lot of webinars and for some reason I was asked to be part of an FA staff group on a webinar on defending and it was about Wolves defending in a, they had 3-5-2 at the time under the manager. So I really had to go back and watch Wolves and look at the off the ball things and look at what was the back three shape, what was the back five, what were players doing away from the ball, what were their body shapes? And it was a really quite difficult challenge at the time because I thought, have I got enough to talk about within the webinar with other staff as well? And actually it made me look at the game differently, I think, about how do I see defending, what are defending actions. And it's, I think it's added to my knowledge now of coaching as well and the game. And then I think the other bit about the drills-based practice, about still having conversations with coaches where they will challenge me back and I really like those discussions where coaches in clubs can feel comfortable about a conversation of why they've done a practice. So The big question that we would use as coach developers is why? Why have you done that practice and what returns are you getting from it? What do you think you are practicing? So those conversations about their bias and actual, the sort of reality of returns of practice are quite important as well.

[Jamie]

In terms of developing self-awareness, you think it's important to be involved in others? You mentioned there when being a coach developer and actually having conversations with coaches to get them thinking like, is that like just so important to get insight from other people to be a little bit more self-aware?

[Geoff]

Yeah, it's really important. I think first of all the self-awareness bit, as I've said, is it ten years experience or one year's experience ten times? So it's then the ability of the coach to reflect on themselves initially. One of the models now, I'll talk about some models later on, but one of the models now that we will get them to use is a 10-10-10. So actually what do they do 10 minutes after the session? We have the conversation, what are they thinking? And then 10 hours afterwards, what do they think the next day, what are they reflecting on, and then 10 days down the line, what you know. I always like it the fact that a coach then has another go a week later on a session before they then get my notes so we have a further conversation because actually having a go at something again quite soon afterwards is a really powerful learning experience. So I think that's that's part of of understanding self and I think the other bit there's a particular researcher called Sean who's done quite a lot on reflection in action. So actually during the session, what are you thinking about and what is going on and what are you saying to yourself and then what's going on afterwards. But I'm going to actually proceed all of that by it's hard to reflect if you don't know what you're reflecting against. So the initial part of coaching is in the planning and we would talk about planning for four corner outcomes. What are your tech tack but also what are your social psych and physical outcomes Because actually if you don't know them how can you reflect against them in action and after action as well. So having a clear plan that's simple, just some simple bullet points allows you to think about am I starting to achieve this. So one good example would be in the England DNA we've spoken previously about have a 70% ball rolling target that our players playing enough in the session. So if you actually put a number on it it's quite good to then try and aim for that if you believe that to be important. You can then reflect on that if you know what it comes at afterwards and that might then help and shape a change in behaviour later on on the next session. So that ball rolling target, actually, it wasn't scientifically developed, but fundamentally, are children playing enough in sessions? That's one of the big questions.

[Louise]

It sounds like this could be quite a lot of things to do to kind of be self-aware. So if people are feeling like it's perhaps a lot to do, is there like really useful ways that coaches can increase their self-awareness if they're limited on time to be able to reflect?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so I think first of all having a clear and simple plan, just a few jotted notes before the session about what do you want to achieve. In the session some of the best core coaching pieces of work I've seen is when coaches reflect with each other during the session. So a practice is going on and they might just walk around to each other. What do you think to this? Is it, you know, is it too big, too small? Where's the goal? Where are the defenders? What's Johnny doing in the practice? So having that coaching conversation with a co-coach is ideal. Now I recognize that not everyone might have a co-coach with them. So there is also a method called think aloud and it may look a bit strange on the pitch but actually talking to yourself as you coach. So it might be out of earshot of the players but actually right I've set up this practice it's a 3v3 game but I'm not sure if the offside line's right. The start position doesn't look quite right, but they're going into the goals. The goals are in the right position. I'm looking at Janna. She might be struggling on her defending, but I think she's having a go at the moment I'm gonna leave her for two minutes to see if she's got it so that think aloud protocol helps you to start to evaluate inaction which can be quite a powerful thing and then I think the after bit is important as well. So reflecting after action and this is always brilliant for me in my job because I might not see a coach work for six weeks at a time so I've got I've got a hot reflection time straight after the session. So if you're just coaching with someone, do you engage in a conversation with your co-coach immediately afterwards? And ideally it's not just a conversation that describes what you do. So we did 1v1, we did 4v4, we did a game. Because we know that you were there, you evidenced it, I saw it, but actually we did one v one and we didn't have goals, we could have put goals in because we want this, this and this, which relates to the plan. So that then becomes a deeper level of reflection. So reflecting either with another core coach who's with you is important. And I'll use the word but one of the best methods to help self-evaluation are the players. So one of my clubs in particular, after every session, uses the players to feed back to the coach. And it's so powerful to watch and I actually feel privileged that the club do a great job in this, that at the end of the session the players get all the equipment in, the players are given a few minutes as a group to come up with a mark for the coach, and also to come up with a mark for the players as a group. Initially they used a 1-6 scale. So on a scale of 1-6, how good was the coach as a coach tonight? And on a scale of 1-6, how good were we as a group tonight in terms of focus, attitude, hard work, whatever the key things that the club agreed on. And listening to the players and teenagers, under nines, seeing the players talk through this process is really powerful. And they've helped the players learn how to speak to each other in a supportive way. And then they get to the point where they'll pick a leader or they'll pick a player to feed back to the coach and it might be two or three players. And in the end what this club did, they scrapped the one to six scale and actually just said listen it's a one or a six it's either good enough tonight or it's not good enough. And I worked with a particular coach and he said, they just keep giving me six all the time. I'm always getting a six, they're saying it's good enough. And I said, that's fine because you need to build the trust where the players feel comfortable actually to say, you weren't good enough tonight as a coach. He rang me up this coach afterwards and he said that the players had given him a one and said he wasn't on it tonight, the players didn't like what he did. And when he asked the why question, the players said, "'Cause you messed about too much. You were joking and laughing a couple of times and doing things. And actually we as players, we were in the practice, we were serious and wanted to get on. So that was just a really brilliant bit of insightful feedback from players. So I think asking players in the moment at the end of the session or in the session can be really powerful because they're the ones who are doing it and I think that then also leads to longer term feedback about asking players feedback the every half term every three months Some of the clubs that I work with do a Google feedback form so it can be impersonal. They're not knowing who it's coming from, it's confidential. But yeah, asking players and co-coaches is important. And also parents as well, because I think parents will look at it from a parent's eye and involving them in it is quite important as well.

[Jamie]

Out of interest Geoff, how do you approach reflection and are there any models or tools that you use or would recommend coaches to use to help them reflect?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so again, I've worked with a couple of coaches. One coach would actually record himself on a voice note and he would actually do it on his drive home. So I think that immediate reflection afterwards, either writing things down, so straight after the session just do some hot feedback notes, what are you thinking? Just a cognitive download of things you're thinking about, or a voice note if you're driving if you haven't got time just what are you thinking and what will happen initially I think is coaches will just describe what they did but then it's the next level thinking of what happened but why did it happen so I think that's important as well So yeah there are I think there are three or four good models that that coaches can use that don't necessarily take a lot of time but just help you think about where you're at. So one of them is Rolf I think it's called and it was the what have we done and so what but actually now what so what's going to drive the change from from what's happened so I quite like that one about helping coaches understand what's gone on and then the other interesting bit about it is the feelings questions connected to it So that may link to a coach's values about what they believe to be coaching. So how did that session feel for you is sometimes a question I use or how do you think it went but a feeling question can be emotive and that's quite a powerful reflection tool to think about and if you ask a player how did it feel, oh it didn't quite feel right, I was bored or I didn't feel engaged. So feeling questions I think can be really helpful. I think I've spoken already about the Sean process of reflection in action and then reflection after action. And I think the after action bit, one of the things we do on a B licence is we get coaches to reflect. They do a 12 week programme of sessions and they have to do evaluation of the sessions and what we sometimes find with coaches is that on their evaluations early on they will just evaluate the players. So they'll say we didn't attack well enough or we scored lots of goals but reflecting on yourself as a coach just describing what you did will help you to see patterns. So the principle of the BeLicensed project is that over 12 weeks of session plans and games, you evaluating yourself, there should be some patterns in there of what are you spending too much time doing, what are you spending not enough time doing and I'm sure there's some artificial intelligence now where if you put these words into some process you could probably actually see what's coming up a lot more often. We're actually just putting them in a list and doing a tally chart of did I talk too much, did I speak to my favourite players more often than my less players or my defenders, things like that. So I think that process of writing things down, looking back is really important as well.

[Louise]

Would you say that reflection helps you to understand your behaviours as a coach?

[Geoff]

Yeah, this is a great question that I speak a lot about with clubs. It's one of my concerns at the moment about coach development and coaching generally because I think we're at the point where coaching is it a science or an art is the question. So do we want to measure things that a coach does? And over the years I've seen tally charts done of a coach has done 25 commands, 15 questions, 63 drive bys, lots of hustle. And we can code that and we can show it back to a coach to say you've done these behaviours these amount of times. And that can help in developing an understanding of coach behaviour. So actually are you always an on the ball coach? So that that can be helpful. But I think there's another principle and it's called the Morabian formula and the Morabian formula says that our behavior is not just measured in the words we say. So basically 55% of the information that I'm giving now is through my body language. So I'm waving my arms about, my head gestures. This is interesting for people listening to it on the radio, on the podcast, who can't see me, but there are gestures to go with this, but also there's the tone of voice. So I often say to a coach or a coach analyst who's measuring things, it's quite hard to code behavior. So if I'm coaching and I just say good, good, good, good, brilliant Johnny, well done, that's fantastic. That last piece of information was very different to the first four goods, because the first four goods were all quite neutral, but my fifth one had a change of energy, a change of tone, it might have a touch on the shoulder, it had a facial gesture. So I think coaching is a real human connection behavior piece that it's how we make players feel and gestures and tone can give that. So we have to be careful that data can help in coach awareness but data is only a part of the piece of the human connection bit of coaching.

[Jamie]

How do you kind of use that insight then to manage your behaviour as a coach, coach developer or any advice to help our listeners manage their behaviour with this insight, whether it be at training or match day?

[Geoff]

Yeah, so sometimes I ask the coach to look at the players. So when they're doing a coaching session, we'll just say, right, come on, let's bullseye in on this particular player. What are they doing in this practice? Are they engaged? Are they not? What actions are they practicing? So I think that's important and then it's the same for me as a coach developer. When I reflect back about how have I worked with the coach, what questions have I used? Have I used a data approach? Or actually, have I used some feelings questions? So those bits, I think, to get coaches to reflect are quite important there.

[Louise]

Do you have any top tips to help coaches manage their behaviour to ensure that they have a positive impact on their players?

[Geoff]

Yeah, a couple of ones here I think. First of all, one is that an intervention, so a stop in a coaching session if you're going to stop it, is an interruption and it might be an interruption to learning. So if you're really going to stop a game for everyone, it's got to be impactful and if it's then being stopped, is it just one bit of information or two at most? It doesn't need to be and this and this and ifs and buts. So I think recognise an intervention is an interruption. Yeah, and then some other tips I think is just being clear and concise when you go in. And I think that's important as well. The other bit is to try and avoid what we might call joystick coaching or commentary coaching. So when you're watching a game from the sideline, not to just talk through good pass, run, dribble, shoot, pass, turn, because that can just become background noise as well. So actually recognising periods of silence are important, which makes it more impactful than when you do go in and coach.

[Jamie]

Looking back at everything we've discussed, Geoff, and we've talked about a range of different things today, can you summarise the key top tips that you want coaches to take away from the episode?

[Geoff]

Yeah I think to develop self-awareness be prepared for it because it's it's uncomfortable and it can be challenging and difficult to get feedback and start to self-reflect and then get external feedback. So use the plan do review process, have some plans written down of what you're trying to achieve with your group for the year actually, so a long-term plan and then session to session. That will then help you reflect in action, are we achieving our stated aims at the beginning? And then at the end, be comfortable with a hot review, either with a co-coach or with players, and then use the time afterwards in the week before the next session, just some time to go back and reflect cold. Writing things down helps, but then using some of the learning to go into the next session or into the next week so that you're prepared to try and change things and have a go at some new things. Brilliant.

[Louise]

And what we've been asking our guests to do is kind of set the listeners a coaching challenge. So based on what we've been talking about today, have you got anything that you'd suggest people go and try to kind of start them off on this journey of self-reflection and self-awareness?

[Geoff]

Yeah, I think work on your values and beliefs and again commit them to paper. So understand what your values and beliefs are and then does that come out in your coaching. Have a clear plan of what you're trying to achieve which will allow you to reflect and be prepared to speak to others on it as well. Be open to feedback that you might get from anyone and accept difficult feedback as well.

[Louise]

And we'd love to hear if that's kind of helped you in your journey at all, or kind of the things that you've been reflecting on. If anybody wants to let us know how they're getting on, we'd love to hear that.

[Jamie]

Absolutely. Well, as people will guess, we are coming up to the end of the show now, but that does mean it is time for our swift session feature.

[Louise]

Yep, so this is our final challenge for today. It's a 30 second challenge and we're asking you to explain to us a session idea in 30 seconds. Are you up for that?

[Geoff]

I can do that, hopefully.

[Louise]

Yeah, we'll give it a go. Okay, once again, once the music starts, you can begin.

[Geoff]

So it's a shooting reaction game. The goals are very close in, normally about 30 yards apart, with a 15-yard halfway line. 6v6, it might be a 3v1 or 4v2 in each half. Goalkeepers are in, and really, balls served from different parts of the game to get lots of fast reaction shooting over head kicks, volleys, deflections and it gives players decisions about shooting from 15 yards out and beyond or close in.

[Jamie]

Perfect, That was really good. Have you got anything else that you want to add to that to kind of tie it up now that the time has stopped at all?

[Geoff]

I think just that is one of my favourite games because players love it. It's the classic question that players ask, you know, when can we have a game? When are the goals in? So that game just, it should enthuse and excite all players because you've got attacking, defending, skill, excitement. So yeah, it's one of my favourites.

[Jamie]

Brilliant, yeah, I like that idea. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Geoff. I hope you've enjoyed being on Coachcast for the first time. It's been a pleasure to hear about your journey and to have your insight into a really important topic of self-awareness. So, yeah, thank you very much.

[Geoff]

Thank you for having me.

[Jamie]

Right, that's all we have time for today, but don't forget to check out the description for the transcription of this episode and for all the links to our platforms. There, you'll be able to click through to the England Football Community, and this is where you can post your coaching questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or just simply to connect with loads of wonderful coaches.

[Louise]

Yep, we'd love to help you out with your coaching questions so please do check it out. We'll be back soon with another episode of Coachcast so if you haven't already, hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode. From all of us at England Football Learning, thanks for listening.