Contributing to the success of sports coaches

What makes a basketball coach a winner?

Why do some coaches tend to achieve their goals more than others and become professional coaches?

These are the questions I asked myself when, after a few years as a basketball player, I decided to complete my studies with a master’s degree in “Physical Education” and “Science and Techniques of Preventive and Adaptive Motor Activities” to become a physical trainer and, hopefully, continue to contribute to the success of Series A basketball teams led by winning coaches.

Basketball is an ever-evolving sport, where athleticism and technique evolve hand-in-hand, so coaching methodologies must also be updated. I agree with my former coaches that winning requires a good mix of coaching, team building and consistency, enriched with various other technical-tactical aspects. But beyond the undisputed importance of the above factors, I wanted to look at the emerging contribution to team success that the soft skills of coaches and players are also able to offer in the world of basketball.

Soft skills are in fact those transversal competences that allow a coach to relate to his team and his players, that allow him to interpret the game and to direct it in the direction that suits him best, but also those that allow him to manage conflicts, to adapt to a situation and to solve the problems that may arise during a sports season. In order to carry out my study and make it scientific, I needed a practical, reliable and flexible tool that would allow me to carry out a large number of evaluations of the soft skills of the coaches of the Italian professional league, then to analyze them and draw meaningful conclusions.

The use of the www.timetomind.global platform allowed me to do so. In consultation with the scientific direction of Time to Mind, I created a specific “coach profile” characterized by 7 key competencies: “Problem solving – Organization – Relational orientation – Conflict management – Result orientation – Decision making – Flexibility”.

Despite the fact that I had sent out invitations to participate in the evaluation right at the time of the play-offs, the final tournament of the championship, even the coaches most involved in this crucial phase quickly completed the online evaluation. This was possible thanks to the fact that the evaluations can be used with any type of device (PC, laptop, tablet and smartphone) connected to the internet, and the answers to the online questionnaires can be left and taken at any time by the evaluator without affecting the quality of the result. 

All coaches appreciated the fact that they could read the reports of their profiles immediately after completing the assessment and that they also had the opportunity to read two “Essential Guides to Skill Improvement” to further explore all the theoretical and practical aspects of soft skills that interested them most.

In conclusion, this study carried out on a significant sample of more than 60% of Italian professional coaches has made it possible to outline the ideal type of a successful potential coach and to provide a tool for basketball clubs to identify and, why not, recruit a new potential coach to be included in their technical organization chart for the following season. Starting today, aspiring basketball coaches who participate in federal courses and intend to pursue a professional career, in addition to working hard to acquire countless technical concepts and experiences, will be able to have a significant reference on the level of expression they need in certain soft skills in order to excel in their career. The great thing is that, by analogy to improving physical-sports performance, improving strategic skills in one’s profession will also be the result of conscious and consistent training in these skills. This will be easy for them to understand and will strongly motivate them to apply themselves accordingly. 

Alessandro Petronio – Physical trainer