Coaching success

Few of us will go through our working lives without some form of appraisal from our immediate supervisor.  Such appraisals usually take the form of an analysis of our previous performance (usually in the past year) with some goal setting for the year to come factored in toward the end. The tone of these meetings should be positive with the aim of reminding ourselves what we do well whilst providing some guidance on areas that we could do better at in the future.  The universality and success of such appraisal processes is in no small part due to the excellent work undertaken by occupational psychologists and human resource employees.  What if, however, our performance was open to scrutiny by the general public and those with limited or no experience in a similar role; it is such appraisals be they fair or otherwise that many of our countries top coaches are exposed to and the topic of this blog.

A friend recently sent me an article from Australia which took the surprising step of questioning Wayne Bennett's status as a super coach (here is the link to the article in the Sydney Morning Herald - http://bit.ly/SWKaR9).  For those of you unfamiliar with your Rugby League that is akin to questioning the status of Sir Alex Ferguson as one of the UK's finest coaches; Wayne has enjoyed notable success at club, state and international level.  Whether or not you agree with the findings of the article what it did do was attempt to bring some much needed objectivity to the practise of assessing those in the role of head coach.  This is not a new thing, I was lucky enough to hear a rather interesting talk earlier this year by an academic who had developed an algorithm for determining when premiership clubs should either part company or retain the services of their head coach.  The model was developed based on the team's previous performances, average points accrued and comparison to teams around them.  To the objectively minded scientists amongst you this may seem like an appealing development however I am unsure whether it would be received with such fervour amongst the coaching community who would maintain that their influence cannot be measured in numbers and figures.  This is something of course that intuitively makes sense, we all like to think that we bring expertise and individuality to our posts above and beyond that which can be measured statistically.  Interestingly enough however and in the field of economics where performance by numbers is key, research which is highlighted in Daniel Kahneman's book 'thinking; fast and slow' has shown that when the dealings of top hedge fund managers were analysed statistically over a period of 5 years their performance was only marginally better than might have been expected by chance.  Much of what we do can be analysed using statistics and quantitative analysis, the question is whether this is a useful way of ascertaining performance and in which fields it is most applicable.

Aspects on which coaches were assessed in the article were numerous, some which you would expect, for example relative success but also others which may not come readily to mind when we think about expert coaches.  One such area that was used to assess performance was the impact that the coach had had on others around him, to put it another way his mentoring impact.  This is not always something we rate highly on the roles and responsibilities of a head coach however it certainly should be.  Coaching, as with any discipline, involves a myriad of skills that must be developed over time with each coach given sufficient time to hone his techniques and practise his decision making in a range of contexts and situations.  The opportunity to practise however is only half the story and for practise and it's beneficial effects to be realised what each and every coach needs is a feedback loop.  Of course this can be driven internally by self reflection however is undoubtedly facilitated when assisted by another expert in the field.  There have been a number of examples from sports of coaches who have served an apprenticeship before going on to achieve notable success in their own right.  Michael McGuire worked underneath Craig Bellamy at Melbourne Storm before going to lead a successful Super League campaign at Wigan Warriors (incidentally it was under Wayne Bennett that Bellamy enjoyed his tutelage).  In a sport I am currently involved in there is an extremely talented head coach who is ensuring the long term success of the program by developing education resources for each coach within the network.  Examples of similar practise in Soccer are difficult to find, true Alex Ferguson has undoubtedly been a massive influence on a number of his ex players who have gone onto to forge careers in management themselves, for example Steve Bruce and Mark Hughes, however whether this was intended or by passive osmosis is open to debate.  Walter Smith and Ally McCoist seemed to get things right in their development plan however it is a shame that Rangers now find themselves competing in the third tier of Scottish football.  Before writing this blog one of the managers in the Premier league whom I felt was one of the best in the game was Arsene Wenger of Arsenal.  Despite an exceptional record in developing players for the club it is difficult to see a development plan at the club where Arsene is grooming a successor for his position.  Fans and aficionados of the club may want to prove me wrong here and I would be interested of hear your thoughts.

A further point raised in the article is whether the coach has had more success than might have been expected with the playing roster made available to him.  This represents a major issue when it comes to assessing coaches, do we want someone to develop talent with the proviso that absolute success may not accompany it or do we want a winning team.  As in school league tables teachers are not judged on the individual improvement that they oversee, or delta change in performance, rather they are judged on the end result.  As a result teachers in schools who recruit a generally higher level of intellect in their students will appear better than those in schools where the academic credentials are much lower.  Malcolm Gladwell addresses this point in a story in his book 'what the dog saw' where he makes the supposition that you are much better served attending a bad school with a good teacher than a good school with a bad teacher.  The English Premiership will certainly be interesting this season given the recruitment of managers over the summer.  Both Brendan Rogers and Paul Lambert enjoyed notable success last year with Swansea and Norwich respectively in relative terms.  Both did well in a league where perhaps they were expected to struggle without any absolute success, which seemed like a positive to their fans and stakeholders.  This year however under their new employers, Liverpool and Aston Villa, they will surely be expected to deliver results of a different kind, time will tell whether the two skills sets share common effectiveness in differing conditions.

Ultimately each club must decide what their goals and aspirations are both for the short and long term, employing a coaching (and administrative) staff deemed capable of delivering agreed objectives.  How they appraise the success of their staff is an internal issue however I would hope that with so many appointments subjected to trial by media and popular opinion those who wish to voice their opinions look at the different areas a coach contributes to a club or program before making their final judgement.  We all want success for the teams we support however on close inspection of a number of coaches and sports the impact that coaches have is often far greater than can be measured simply by results.  Developing a legacy of expertise, best practise and coaching philosophy is crucial for long term success, the development of which takes time, a commodity that is unfortunately not always enjoyed by coaches operating at the sharp end of competitive sport.