"Better ingredients, better pizza." - Papa John
Nothing belongs to humanity more than communication. Communication permits the division of labor and development of society. There's only one basketball.
Better communication challenges us every day. Effective communication requires both a speaker and a listener. Simplicity, clarity, tone, and especially non-verbal messaging matter. But communication also requires accuracy. The reason for 'readback' is that one of eight messages is not clearly heard and understood.
Communication should make a connection and be constructive. How many players and teams simply "tune out" the messenger and the message?
In Monday Morning Leadership David Cottrell makes several critical points:
1) "The main thing is the main thing." Do our players and teams know the main thing? If we ask them, can they articulate our core philosophy, our culture, our identity? If they can't, that's on us.
2) "People don't quit jobs, they quit people." It's easy to be on our 'high horse', my way or the highway, but when people are voting with their feet, is the whole world wrong or am I? Leaders inspire, engage followers, and increase purpose.
How can we communicate better?
Know your people. If something feels wrong, explore. "I don't know but I'll find out." Is there illness or injury? Is there a school or relationship problem? Players have a lot of voices in their head - family, friends, AAU coaches. Maybe the AAU coach tells them to defend the pick and roll differently. Solutions don't drop like manna from heaven.
Catch people in the act of doing well. Some coaches throw 'attaboys' around like manhole covers. "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar."
Praise the praiseworthy action. Praise drives effort. When correction and criticism are necessary, we can separate "bad play" from "bad player." Better yet, we can use the Pete Carroll approach, "this is how we do that." We don't overlook errors, but the goal isn't to demoralize our players and teams.
Listen. Connection is a two-way street. We're not always right and we don't always have all the facts. It's our job to know what is going on and not listening can be our failure. Very few of us have the cachet that we can run roughshod on people without ever caring. We need to give and get feedback. Even if we could, is the Macchiavellian "better to be feared than loved" the best path?