Ever had a “Hey, I did that too!” reaction when you read something?

Well, I had one when I watched Trevor his latest video on his hero Amy Edmonson. But first, I liked how he backordered a 2016 magazine because it had an article that set him on his Train Ugly journey. The material he shared in the clip was not all new anymore but he also told the story of volleyball coach Karch Kiraly asking his players “How can I do better for you?” as model behaviour for continuous learning and safety around asking questions. Here is the video from LearnerLab:

Then my a-ha, after a successful European Championship with the National Under 18 one of my players came to me to talk about how the whole campaign went and what made it so successful. What he thought was very special that during the season I said to the team: “I am not so confident in doing Line-Out work myself so I asked one of the best Line-Out coaches in the Netherlands to come and teach us.”. He said he admired that I had admitted that and that it gave him confidence to talk about what he needed to learn.

Roles in a team but a one-knows-all as a coach?

For many years I was more surprised that we always seem to struggle to ask for help as coaches while as players we very much understand we are all different and it is about the skillmix. So more reflecting on myself than the player who made the comment.

But now with Trevor telling me about coach Karch Kiraly it makes Donny’s remark far more powerful. Without realising it, I made it safe to talk about stuff we were not so good at (yet). For example, later in that campaign and three months away from the EC we asked the players to set-up a basic profile for their position and then to rate the individual items Red (= needs work), Amber (= okayish, do if we have time) and Green (= no need to do work). Donny and the other back-row players scored all their items Red, raising the bar and starting a discussion about how to go about those last three months. Going to try is more now:

How can I better for you?

How to create psychological safety in your rugby team

Amy Edmonson definition of Psychological Safety is that it is a belief that no one will be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.

How to keep it safe in a toxic environment: don’t ask questions, don’t admit weakness or mistakes, don’t offer ideas, don’t critique the status quo.

So let us turn this around and make this a little “Amy Edmonson Rugby Coach Checklist”:

• When a player asks a question, do I answer respectfully? do I impose my opinion? Is it an opportunity to show how much I know about rugby (implying the player who asks the question is stupid?);
• When a player makes a mistake, do I highlight this by “Do it again”, or a “The whole team does ten push-ups”;
• I run a video session showing all the mistakes we made in last game;
• If a player brings forward an idea and I do not like it, I do not want to try it out but I impose mine;
• When we loose a game, it is the players who messed up, it is not about me preparing poorly for the match, the concepts I introduced;

Instead we can:

• When a player asks a question, I first make sure I understand it and will answer respectfully;
• Seeing a mistake, I can advise players on improving technique. Or I can decide to spent more time on developing the technique with the whole team;
• I use video and look for mistakes to evaluate my program, I use video sessions with the team as educational tool and focus on decision making;
• When a player brings forward an idea, we can discuss how to try this out;
• I use a lost game to reflect;

Related material

• Trevor Regan’s LearnerLab website;
• Amy Edmonson “Psychological Safety” TEDtalk;
• Dan Coyle’s “Culture Code” book and Amy Edmonson “Fearless Organisation” book reviews;

Subscribe and get notified when I add new posts to the Blog;