The most important thing to be focused on from the beginning is to create an environment of trust and respect in order to create the opportunity for good communication between the player and the coach much easier.

The 1st step is to ask the player:

Why did you choose me?
What are your expectations for me as a coach but also as a person?

The 2nd step is to for me to tell the player:

Why I accepted the challenge
Why I decided to coach the player
What are my expectations professionally and personally

An example of an expectation from my side is that: 2 things in our collaboration must be there. The respect and the work. As long as I have that in the relationship, we are ready to work together.

Let me give you a very simple example. The level of commitment;

Be on time, when you’re not agreeing with what the coach says answer politely, when you say you are going to do something do it. Regarding work, I don’t expect the player to do things right, I need the player to do the work that he/she committed to do. No more, no less.

The players have to show that he/she tries their best to complete what we have agreed upon doing and get closer to what we are trying to achieve. It’s not the result in itself at the end of the day. It’s that the player fully commits to the process.

3rd step for me is to adapt to the player. I will observe the player to get to know:

In what way he/she operates
What are the values in their life?
How is their capacity to listen?
How does the player express herself/himself?
What are their priorities/ambitions in tennis?
Why is it so important for them to play tennis?

In the start of the relation it’s crucial that you go through all of these things in order to

Understand in which way you are going to communicate to the player, because every player have their way and particularities.

For the coach, it’s extremely important to understand the way that the players are like in order to be more open to communicate.

The more knowledge I have as a coach on the player that I’m coaching the easier it will be to know how I can transfer my knowledge.

It’s good to know a lot of things, but if you as a coach don’t have the capacity to transfer that knowledge to the player you have no opportunity of becoming successful. That is why communication and relationship is so important.

You need to lead by example. You can talk and give a lot of advices to the player, but if you are looking for a player who will act committed, with respect and passion you have to show the player those abilities first.

If you want to be heard and understood, you must first learn to listen to the players, to know them and to take an interest in them.

It’s the only way that the player is going to trust you and is going to be ready to listen to you and try to build a strong relationship with you in order to perform.

Finally, how to manage the people around the player which e.g. could be S&C Coach, parents, boyfriends/girlfriends and friend. It’s extremely important that we can associate these people to the project. For most players their balance is heavily influenced by the people around them. We have to help the people around the player, even though it’s sometimes difficult because they don’t understand what we do, by providing them a clear and concise role. We have to try to meet them and explain what we do and inform them as much as possible. The worst you can do is to put them on the side and push them away as long as you make sure that they are not interfering negatively in your work.

Those are the steps that I try to follow for the first couple of months with the purpose of creating a strong foundation of the collaboration to be as successful as possible

(Inspired by the podcast episode #73: “Creating a Coaching Relation” w. Carlos Rodriquez on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in Tennis)

Want to listen to the full episode: http://shorturl.at/jktA8