COACHES' ASSESSMENT & FEEDBACK TOOL

The end of the season is usually a period of time to reflect, assess and evaluate the season to make adjustments and plan the next one. Part of this process should be to assess and give feedback to the coaches that work at your organization or club. Coaches should know the criterion that are going to be assessed on since the beginning of the season. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Following Dr. Wade Gilbert (2017) "quality program evaluation requires consideration of at least four factors: (1) identifying what should be evaluated; (2) collecting evidence from multiple sources such as athletes, coaches and administrator; (3) ensuring that the evaluation system and tools are practical; and (4) deciding how to communicate and use evaluation results." 

"The primary purpose of end-of-season evaluation procedures should be to help coaches improve" (Gilbert, 2017)

Here, I would like to present a tool designed by Hemmermeister (2010) and slightly modified. It is a questionnaire that contains 7 different categories (Philosophy & Ethics, Safety & Injury Prevention, Organizational Skills, Physical Conditions, Instructional Skills, Mental Skills, and Communication Skills). Each category has 4 items to be rated between 1 to 4 (ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree), therefore there are a total of 16 points per category. The total number of points that coaches can get is 112. The tool is used for the coaches to self-rate how well they modeled behaviors related to the club standards. Also, the Director of Coaching or Head of Coaching rates every coach in the organization or club. 

The first thing that the tool gives us is the total number of points (i.e. 85 points out of 112), and the breakdown for points in each category. We will obtain 2 scores, the score self-given by the coach and the score given by the Director of Coaching. Besides, a radar graph is presented to see the disparity or similarity between both scores (Coach vs. Director of Coaching). 

Once we have those two questionnaires filled in, the points per category, the total points and the radar chart, the process begins. I totally recommend a one-to-one meeting with coaches to talk about the scores. 

1) Total score: The organization or club could stablish a target for all the coaches (i.e. minimum of 80 points) to achieve at the end of the season or an even more strict one with more levels and some actions to take if the coaches are between those scores.

2) Points/category: These scores will give you and your Director of Coaching where coaches have room to improve and where are performing accordingly to the standards of the club. Again, here the club must stablish some policies such as coaches must get at least 70% of the points in each category, or no less than 50% in two categories...

It is important to clarify that there is nothing right or wrong. A coach could self-rate a number four on punctuality and the Director of Coaching rate the coach with a number one. Maybe the reason is because the coach just arrives to the session 5 minutes before the session time and the Director of Coaching expects him to be there 30 minutes earlier to set up the field properly. This disparity in opinions is the main reason why it is very important to have everyone on the same page, be honest with the questionnaires, set the club's standards since the beginning of the season and have an-end-of-season personal meeting with all the coaches to give them feedback and if needed take actions.