Relentless Courage
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Coaching Sales Page
  • Client Scheduling Page
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Coaching Sales Page
  • Client Scheduling Page

Do You Coach Using Negative or Positive Language?  It Could be the Difference Between Failure and Success.

6/23/2016

0 Comments

 

Do You Coach Using Negative or Positive Language?

What's that supposed to mean you might ask.  I’ll begin with an example…

When coaching 4th grade house league baseball kids do things that make you go “Huh”?  One example is when a player is up to bat and they swing at a ball over their head, like way over their head. 

​There are two ways to address this and coach the player through learning the strike zone and swinging at pitches they can hit well.  One way is to say something like, “Don’t swing at the high ones.  Let them go if they’re over your head!”  That would be the negative example.  Kids don’t hear negatives.  All they hear is “swing at the high ones!”  They don’t process or know how to not do something.  In fact, driving players to not do something tends to encourage them to do it more.  There is no solution in a negative message, only criticism. 

Now, let’s flip that upside down and use positive coaching in the same situation.  Instead of “Don’t swing at the high ones.” we might say “Look for a pitch in a very specific spot… One that you can hit hard somewhere.”  In the positive example we’ve implied that the pitch the player swung at was probably not a good one to swing at.  To think they don’t already know that is somewhat silly in itself.  Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.  And instead of relaying a negative message with no solution we give our players something to replace the mistake with.  We ask them to swing at pitches that they can hit hard somewhere. 

For every player this might be different.  Some players might like the pitch higher and some players might hit a lower pitch better.  If we give the power to the player to pick one out that they like, they’ll swing at pitches they know they can hit well. 
​
This coaching message transcends the baseball diamond.  It moves into all sport and certainly applies in leadership.  When we constantly hear about things that we shouldn’t be doing, it creates resentment and some of us gravitate to that behavior.  When we present a message that includes a solution that helps us and those around us see success everybody wins and people have a much more positive experience.
Buy 4S Hitting System - Foundations Course HERE
Picture
0 Comments

    Archives

    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    November 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    RSS Feed

Relentless Courage  LLC