Coach Survey Results read article

 The Many Ways Athlete Assessment Will Boost Performance read article

 The History and Development of Athlete Assessments read article

 The Teacher will arrive when the Student is ready to Learn read article

 

The Three Critical Facts All Sports Coaches Should Know

1) Research of the personal characteristics of Expert Team Sport Coaches identified:

• Persistent quest for growth and learning
• Strong work ethic
• Effective communication and emphasis on athletes
• Developing a personal coaching style
• Creating fun training and good teaching ability. (Bloom & Salmela, 2000)
  Note: there is no mention of technical or sport specific knowledge...

2) 70% of the “atmosphere” at training sessions is created by you, the leader.
(Hay Group, 2004) As a leader you are highly visible. Everything you say and do will have a direct impact on the performance of your athletes and team.

3) Physical training has a limit…
To improve athlete performance, effective coaches tailor their coaching style to suit the individual communication, motivation and behavioural style of their athletes.

 

 

"The Many Ways Athlete Assessment Will Boost Performance"

•  Reach your full potential - physical training has a limit

How much time do you currently spend training your body? For an elite Olympic class athlete this can easily be 30-40 hours a week. How much time do you spend training your mind?

The biggest gains in performance are attached to how well you understand what and how you do what you currently do. Self awareness is the corner stone of performance enhancement and an Athlete Assessments DISC Profile will give you insights into your own behavior and that of your team which you were not aware of. You will develop strategies to overcome mental limitations, ways to better manage performance related stressors, methods to improve your communication with your coach, team mates and even yourself. Yes every athlete talks to themselves, but how much of what you say is helping you? Athlete Assessments gives you a competitive mind advantage. We guarantee it, 100%.

•  Address limiting behaviors, build-on on your strengths

What are your strengths and limitations? Before you can change and improve you must know what they are. Are your strengths the way you stay focused and calm under pressure or the way you can stay goal oriented over a long season? Maybe you are a big picture person or are a perfectionist in your approach to training and competing? Did you realize that your greatest strengths can also be your biggest weakness? Whatever your preferential behaviors are, an Athlete Assessments DISC Profile will make you aware of them. And this is the first step in turning limitations into strengths and strengths into well managed strategies that create consistent performances.

•  Understand your motivational strategy

What really motivates you to achieve? Are you task focused or people focused? Do you enjoy the social aspect of your sport and the building of relationships or do you just want to win regardless. The reality is that to be the best in any sport requires close working relationships with a team of people, including your coach, team mates and support staff. Knowing what your preferred focus is allows you to be able to recognize also what is important to your immediate and extended team. This creates collaborative relationships that enable you to operate in an environment more conducive to high performance.

•  Get honest feedback from your team and coaches about how they perceive your behaviors

As part of our service to you, you can invite others to complete a questionnaire about you, as they see you. This also includes a section where they can write additional comments about your strengths, limitations and areas for improvement. This 360 degree review will provide you with more insight into your own behavior.

•  Improve your communication with others

Knowing your style of communication will enable you to tailor the way you communicated to suit those that matter most to your performances. By understanding your style, you will know why others can frustrate you when perhaps going too deep into details or maybe not deep enough. What about when your coach is explaining something to you and you can’t seem to understand it? Are they communicating the message in a way that is easy for you to understand? Once you have completed an Athlete Assessments DISC Profile, your coach will be able to concisely explain what they want and vice versa. Your team mates as well will be able to understand you and you in turn will understand them. This will go a long way to creating significant emotional team bonds that rely on deep understanding. In the heat of competition there is not room to debate points of direction. A common language must be firmly established before competition begins.

•  Improve your relationships with coaches and team members

Relationships in a team will either make or break the end result. When relationships are not as sound as they could be, tension exists between team members and this eventually wears down the coping mechanisms of all concerned. By understanding your Athlete Assessments DISC Profile, you will be able to better relate to your fellow team members, peer group, coach or anyone else that is important in your sporting life. You can even get so good at interpreting this vital information that you can quickly start to ‘work out’ your opposition and see their perspectives. Once you have this, you can pre-empt their likely strategies and moves. Maybe they are already doing this to you? After all we all know that individual athletes and teams have preferred ways of playing. It’s time to start putting two and two together and with the help of Athlete Assessments DISC Profile this adds up to more victories for you.

•  Tailor coaching style to bring out the best in athletes

Coaches all want to coach their athletes in the most effective way. The reality is that what is effective for one athlete is not as effective for another. If you ever talk to a highly successful coach about their methods, one aspect they all have in common is their ability to interact with individuals on an individual preferred basis. This helps to make the athlete feel important and this in turn enables them to have more self esteem and a stronger belief that they can achieve their goals.

•  It is easy, automated and all at your finger-tips

Athlete Assessments is backed by an efficient online system of administration. From email reminders to individualized Home Pages, the administration is all done for you, so that you can focus on applying the results!

•  100% Money Back Guarantee

If you are not completely satisfied, receive a full refund AND keep the reports. Send an email within 30 days of signing up to accounts@athleteassessments.com explaining in detail why you are dissatisfied and we’ll organize your refund as soon as possible.

 

"The History and Development of Athlete Assessments"

Athlete Assessments was developed in response to an athlete’s need for information. During his athletic career, Bo Hanson four time Olympian, searched for a better way to understand the behaviors and interactions of his team in an effort to maximize their performances.

Trained and accredited in DISC and the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicators, Bo began using standard DISC profiling to gain insights. It proved useful, but findings always needed to be interpreted by an accredited and experienced DISC professional and even then they did not meet the specific needs of sport. So together with a team of passionate experts including sports coaches, IT developers and DISC accredited professionals, Bo developed the Athlete Assessments version of DISC.  In so doing, they created the first globally recognized sports version of DISC personality profiles, which is now available to you, online and within minutes of completing your assessment.

About DISC
Historical and contemporary research reveals more than a dozen models of our behavioral differences, but many share one common thread: the grouping of behavior into four basic categories. The Athlete Assessments DISC Profile focuses on patterns of external, observable behaviors using scales of directness and openness that each style exhibits. Because we can see and hear these external behaviors, it becomes much easier to “read” and “understand” people. This model is based on the internationally recognized and respected work of Dr Tony Alessandra.

Co-founder and Developer of Athlete Assessments – Bo Hanson
Four Times Olympic Rowing Representative for Australia | Three Times Olympic Medalist | Specialist Coaching Consultant | Corporate Training Consultant and Presenter

In 1992, Bo became the youngest ever rowing Olympian for Australia and since that first Olympics, he has won bronze medals in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games.

Utilizing his learning experiences from the Olympics as well as formal university and training & development qualifications, Bo founded and developed with his team, Athlete Assessments. In so doing, they have created the first online sports specific behavioral profiling tool for athletes, sports teams and coaches.

In the commercial world, Bo has been training and presenting to premier companies such as American Express, Bain Consulting, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Macquarie Bank, Insurance Australia Group, Telstra and many others. His expertise is leadership development and all aspects of teamwork, such as goal setting, team attitudes and communication. Bo draws unique parallels between the world of elite sport and high performance business.

Bo is highly educated and accredited in the use and administration of the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator, DISC Profiling and Emotional Intelligence (Emotional Competence Inventory 360).

In key note presentations, Bo regularly speaks about leadership and teamwork and how we can develop our skills using behavioral profiling, emotional intelligence and other tools to create greater success in our personal, sporting and business lives.

 

"The Teacher will arrive when the Student is ready to Learn…"

I read this quote after my competitive rowing career had finished. Maybe I would not have understood it had I seen it when I was rowing anyway. Looking back on my days as an elite athlete, I think of how differently I would have approached many situations. As we become more experienced that should be the case with all of us. With experience and knowledge we can make better choices in how we behave. Of the things I would change, none of them relate to how I applied myself in terms of the effort I put in. I can look at myself in the mirror and honestly say, “I gave it everything I had to give.” Preparing for an Olympics demands nothing less than this.

What I would change is how I interacted with my crew mates. I considered myself a team player and an effective leader. There were still occasions though, where I struggled to ‘play and lead’ effectively. There were many times I struggled to communicate, understand and combine effectively with my crew mates. I would say at the time, I had a personality clash with them. I thought I was ‘right’ which meant they could only be ‘wrong’.

When I started studying DISC behavioral profiling, I began to see where I was making some vital errors. This was in terms of how I communicated to team mates, attempted to motivate them and generally associated or not with them. I really did think that ‘my way’, that is, my behavioral style, if not the best way, was certainly pretty close to it. I did not appreciate at the time, how different we all were. It is in this difference that we all needed to understand how to change our behaviors in order to create a better team result. It is not about being the best person in the team. It is about being the best person for the team. This is a massive change in thinking.

In the 2000 season, we were training up to 16 times per week and spending more than 45 hours dedicated in some way to our Olympic preparation. For most of that season, we felt great pressure to succeed at our home Olympics. It was a Gold Medal only, any other result would be devastating. When in stressful times such as this, understanding the unique styles and needs of your team members becomes critical. Not understanding you team adds to the stress in the environment. Achieving high performance can become impossible. I did not realize, that a lot of what I and my crew mates did in our behavioral styles, added to the stress enormously. For example, the reason I rowed was primarily to win. I was purely motivated by the result. I am a high “D”. This means, task orientated and fast paced. Two of the other crew in my team were both high “I/S”. Their motivation was based around “relationships”. Of course they wanted to win, it is just that the relationships were a primary motivator. They were also slower paced than me. This combination of different styles can create conflict. Such as speed of decision making, time management, sensitivity to feedback and the list goes on.

There were actually times, when I thought that the way my crew mates were behaving was specifically to infuriate me. This of course was never their intention. I know that now. But at the time, when I missed that vital understanding of my team, well, you can see how things can be misinterpreted.

When I studied DISC, I realized that there were some very obvious potential clashes. We just needed awareness and understanding in order to completely dissolve these issues. The teacher had finally turned up for me. I also realized that what frustrated me in my crew members, were all the things that I personally lacked or unconsciously wanted to be more like myself. Such things as, more attention to detail to the precise boat set up. As well, a more free spirited approach to live each moment at a time instead of thinking about the future results and to enjoy the company of the great people around me. I missed a large part of the journey in 2000. When I rowed at the 2004 Olympics and won another Bronze medal, I truly appreciated what I was doing. I wanted to win and also enjoyed the process. I appreciated the people I was rowing with and enjoyed being in the crew. In short, I did not change who I was, I just changed what I did and it gave me better results. That is the power of this lesson. To be able to change what you do is only a behavioral challenge that every athlete must be able to understand.

Today, I have developed in all of these areas as I have spent a great deal of time and money investing in knowledge about myself. As we all get older we can aspire to be more well rounded individuals by becoming more self aware of our core values, strengths and limiting behaviors. This is a journey and like all other journeys it takes commitment and courage to look at one’s self and admit that there are areas for improvement. Then to actually do something about it. We are all a leader in some way. Few things are more inspiring than to see athletes improving themselves.

 

Coach Survey Results

Top three challenges you face as a coach:

1.  50% rated “Understanding individual athlete’s personality and how to best motivate them” 

2.  46% rated “Personal life balance – managing sport, career, home and social etc”

3.  31% rated “Team/squad dynamics and managing relationships within the team/squad”

Top three characteristics of a phenomenal coach:

1.  61% rated “Focuses on their athletes as a ‘whole person’ (to develop in and outside of the sport)” 

2.  55% rated “Strong communication skills and ability to ‘teach’”

3.  53% rated “Persistent in looking for new ways, techniques and tools to improve performance” 

The average proportion of time spent by a coach is: 

71% Dealing with sports related issues

29% Dealing with personal/other related issues

74% of coaches believe that greater funding of sport would reduce the ‘obesity epidemic’

When asked whether ‘social drugs’ are having a direct impact / interference with athletes in your sport:

71% responded ‘None’ or ‘Small or isolated incidents’

21% responded ‘Somewhat of an issue’

8%    responded ‘Big issue’

Click here for more information about the coach survey results

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