Coaches only succeed by getting "buy-in" from the players. Buy-in requires great relationships and trust, beginning with communication. Our legacy begins with our communication skill, capacity to add value to a player's life.
What makes communication effective? Science.
1. We have to capture our audience (players) with effective 'storytelling'. The speaker demonstrates the importance of shared meaning. Effective teams live through shared experience and shared goals.
2. The same meaning, provided via different words, produce similar brain responses on functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).
3. What happens in the speaker's brain - the mind of a coach? "The stronger the similarity between the speaker's brain and the listener's brain, the stronger the communication."
4. Better reproduction requires clarity and specificity (detail). We literally build a pattern in the brain by hearing and telling the story.
5. To amplify and resonate our communication, we need SHARED BELIEF SYSTEMS. In studies of college players, a distinct minority listened and understood the coaching beliefs and similarly a minority embraced those beliefs. Players need to internalize our teaching to achieve a SHARED REALITY. Our job is to identify how to capture their attention and change their beliefs about basketball.
"The people we are coupled to define who we are."
