"Delivering Feedback to Your Athletes"

By Bo Hanson - 4x Olympian, Coaching Consultant & Director of Athlete Assessments

All athletes at some stage perform at a level under their best.  How coaches manage this impacts the athlete's future performances.  Studies into coaching effectiveness continually suggest everything we say and do as a coach impacts our athlete's performance.  This article provides two simple feedback mechanisms to use with your athletes to ensure their performance improves with your coaching feedback.

The Feedback Sandwich

The first technique is called the feedback sandwich. It is a simple model for giving constructive encouragement and feedback.

Here is it:

Imagine the sandwich is two pieces of bread with some meat in the middle (for sustenance!)

Begin your feedback with a positive opening statement.
For example, "Jenny, the match you played on the weekend against Sue was a real step forward in becoming a tougher competitor."

Next comes the meat in the sandwich.  Be specific with your coaching advice and use examples the athlete can relate to.  Then, ask for their input too.
"In particular I thought you did a great job controlling your shots and selecting when to hit a winner. Next time, I feel the two areas you could improve further in are mixing up your shot selection during a game and also adding a more effective placement on your backhand shots. Often your back hand went directly to Sue's forehand and this became predictable for her. As a result, Sue won numerous points this way. What do you think about these suggestions?"

Next comes the final piece of the sandwich:  The positive overall concluding statement.
"All up though, Jenny, it was a great contest and you proved you have come a long way. I believe you showed yourself to be a great competitor and we can look forward to even better results in the future."

This model of a feedback sandwich is very effective. The number one rule when using it is to always be genuine with your feedback. Your true intention is to assist your athlete improve. As such, care is to be taken on how you pitch your feedback in regard to your tone of voice and body language. Ideally, we want our athletes to walk away from a feedback session with two main thoughts in mind.

1. They are to feel good about themselves and their chances of becoming an even better athlete. This is their self-esteem and self-confidence.
2. They are to have at least one or two ideas on what they need to improve in to create better results.

Enjoy using the feedback sandwich. Try to mix up how you use it.  By that, do not just perform it as a technique. Occasionally, give your athlete only praise without the meat. Other times, ask the athlete a question on what they think they did well and where they can improve.

For example:

"Jenny, think back to the match against Sue on the weekend. What do you think you did really well?"

"Where do you think you can improve further? What are your thoughts as to how you can improve?"

"Well, Jenny. I thought the way you played demonstrated how much you have improved. Well done."

Using the questioning technique is useful for more experienced athletes. In fact the use of this technique is an illustration of the use of the "sharing style" of coaching.  Some athletes require this.  Others do not.  Knowing when to use this style is the core of what AthleteDISC and CoachDISC is all about. To understand more about how to apply this, read The Importance of Sports Profiling.

This article is from the Coach e-course, available to you free on the right hand margin of any page on our website.  Sign up to benefit from the rest of the series.

Where to from here

For more information or if you have any questions, contact us to find out how we can help you.  If you want to know more about the AthleteDISC profile (to understand more about your athletes to bring out their best) or the CoachDISC profile (to understand your coaching styles), go to the pages specifically for athletes, for coaches and/or for performance consultants.

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