Qualities of a good coach 

COACHING

By THOMAS HUKAHU
WHO is your best coach?
Why do you rank him or her as your best coach?
Coaches who are good at their job possess certain outstanding qualities, or traits, and in this feature article we will review some of them.
The theme of coaching came to mind last month when some of us did a course on coaching skills, particularly those related to the workplace.
The participants in the course included students at The University of Adelaide doing master’s degrees or are PhD candidates.
Coaches are vital in sports, academics and business
Do you realise that people who operate as coaches are found in various fields?
Apart from sports, there are good coaches in academics, or education, and businesses as well.
A good teacher that helps his or her students succeed in their studies is a good coach.
Additionally, a senior business manager that mentors a young business graduate to master skills in managing finance and people is also a good coach.
The Cambridge Dictionary (online) defines “coach” as someone whose job is to teach people to improve at a sport, skill, or school subject.
When you think about it, a supervisor in a work environment or a pastor can also act as a coach if they make it their aim to help people improve their skills or attitude in life.

My experience as a coach
My experience in coaching is mainly in sports and academics.
In different times in my life, I trained and coached junior and amateur football teams and for many more years coached students in schools I taught, particularly when it was approaching examination time.
In schools, I not only teach students how to solve maths problems or understand the physical laws, like Newton’s three laws of motion, I also give students tips on how to better do their exams so they gain the maximum marks.
So, what is shared in this article comes from me reflecting on what I have done in my professional life as well as remembering other good coaches that I worked with, or learned from their talks.
Now, let us look at the qualities of a good coach.
I will apply them more to a football team, but they could be appropriately applied to a team in a workplace, like a SME, a small-to-medium enterprise.
 
A good coach must be strict but fair
In our coaching skills course last month, the facilitator, who is a business lecturer and award-winning Australian author, placed us in groups and gave us a paper to write down the traits of a good coach.
One of the traits that I suggested was “being fair”, and that also ties in with other related traits.
Good coaches must be strict, that is vital.
They should do that to either maintain a high standard or raise it for the team and in the process to achieve its goals, as in winning matches.
Additionally, good coaches are fair, meaning they must not show favouritism. When someone, it does not matter who, breaks a rule, they must be penalised.
When I was in charge of an U15 soccer team in the Port Moresby Schools Soccer competition, it was our rule that anyone who does not turn up for training for most days in the week will not play in the weekend match. And if a player turns up late for any game, he is placed on the bench, and it does not matter if he is a star player, the rule applies to all.
In a 2015 Stanford Graduate School of Business interview video, former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson said that for him discipline should be the same for everyone in the team.
“My discipline is the same for everyone. I never treat anyone any different,” Sir Alex said in the YouTube video.

A good coach communicates well with players
Yes, a good coach must be strict, but that does not mean that they do not smile at or greet the players.
In the 2015 video, Sir Alex said that it is important that a coach must greet his players.
He also emphasised the need for good communication between the coaching team and the players, as in hiring coaches who speak Spanish or French to better communicate with their international players.
“It is very important to communicate with players in their own language,” Sir Alex said.
The late Joe Turia, a former PNG international footballer and national coach was someone who was approachable. As someone who learned from him as a junior footballer while attending university, I found him to be a down-to-earth person who mingled with his young University FC players back in the 1980s and 1990s.

A good coach must know how to motivate the team
This year, from April until August, I have had the privilege to work with a firm to film community Australian Football League (AFL) matches. Every Saturday afternoon, I go to the neighbourhood of Adelaide, in South Australia, with a camera and film a match.
Sadly, I have witnessed some AFL coaches screaming at their players and using foul language. The players also tend to use foul language when things go wrong on the pitch
In soccer, teams these days are penalised for using bad language, either directed at the referees or opponents.
It would not be good for a coach to be encouraging the use of bad language when tempers are flaring because of some bad play or a bad decision by a match umpire.
Good coaches do not use bad language, they learn to speak properly to their players and motivate them to give their best and help their team win matches.
There is the option of taking a lousy player out of the game instead of berating him with foul language.

A good coach must have goals
A team that wins is usually composed of players who want to win.
I have said to my friends that the French men’s national team that won the 2018 Fifa World Cup was composed of players who wanted to win the trophy, and they included everyone, the starting 11 and the others on the bench.
Equally important is that a good coach is someone who also has goals for the team, which is to strategise to get his or her team to win their games week after week in a season.
A coach who has goals will devise better plans to ensure that the team is better poised for each game.
(A good teacher or business manager thinks in the same way. They have goals for their class or team.)
I am of the view that the current French men’s team’s manager Didier Deschamps is such a coach.
In 2014, he and the team, which included Hugo Lloris, Paul Pogba and Antoine Griezmann, exited the Fifa tournament after losing to Germany 1-0 in the quarterfinals.
He must have thought through the processes and had the desire to win the trophy four years later, and that he did with generally the same players he had in 2014.
Deschamps incidentally was the captain of their national team in 1998 when they won the Fifa World Cup. He was an achiever as a player as well as a coach.
A good coach must give room for young people to grow
Good coaches also are good at spotting talent and then taking them on and working with them to help them develop.
That is a trait that only the best in the business have and their winning game continues for a long time.
Many coaches want to win but often they forget to take on younger people and train them to take on senior roles in the future.
In the 2018 French national men’s team, Deschamps allowed teenager Kylian Mbappe to be in the starting 11 in most games, including the grand-final match.
It may be his way of preparing the next top French players when the older ones like Giroud and Lloris retire.

You can be a good coach too
If you are leading a team in sports, business or school, you can learn from the discussion here and develop the qualities in your life.
Learn to work with your team so that they achieve their goals.
The success of the team depends on you to be strict and fair, you setting goals and you taking on young talent to develop for the future.
Be a good coach and add value to people’s lives.

• Next article: How to work as a team