The 5 Most Important Questions Youth Directors Must Ask at Season’s End
Finally, you can exhale.
The last few months have felt like a sprint, but as the fall season ends, directors will have time to dissect and take inventory of the previous season. As leaders, we understand that this break and the truths revealed through reflection can provide a springboard for the club to continue pushing toward its potential. But what do we need to be looking at, and what questions can we ask that will provide the most clarity?
There’s no perfect inventory process, but the right questions can help provide clarity on the next steps.
Here are the 5 most important questions youth directors must ask at season’s end:
1. Within the environment, what has provided the most growth?
Within those four components of the environment, what has produced the most small wins objectively and subjectively? This is going to be very difficult to parcel out, but it starts with having metrics that gauge growth and standards. For example, a measurement of a strong culture can be seen in attendance at practice across age groups or participation at optional “Academy Nights”.
Your improvements can also be subjective and pass the “eye test”.
Not every club is going to have access to technology that can generate objective measurements, so we will have to observe growth subjectivity as well. This can obviously feed into confirmation bias, but we are operating under the premise that we are Developers anchored in humility, aiming to improve. For example, if you instituted a club wide juggling program and observed improvements technically during the match, that might be enough evidence to keep with the program next season.
Scrutinize the four components of environment creation, and identify the things that most helped the organization take the next step, and find ways to double down on those efforts.
2. What are the highest leverage things we can do to improve our environment?
What are the few improvements we can make within our environment that will have the greatest ROI?
There will be hurdles that appear and reappear during the course of a season, hindering growth. When you conduct your inventory, examine the four components of environment creation, identify the areas that could be improved, and then pinpoint 1 high-leverage action that could be implemented for each.
Whenever a plan is constructed to solve one issue, ensure there is a clear plan and implementation strategy week-to-week, as well as metrics to track efficacy over the next season.
The overambitious director will try to change a million things, but the best practice is to focus on choosing only a few smaller circles to work on from season to season. Because if you introduce too many changes to the environment, it will be difficult to discern what truly helped the environment by the time the following season ends. Your goal is to choose a few high leverage improvements, measure them, and have data points to discuss at the end of the following season.
Remember, these solutions will not create a perfect environment, so there will always be smaller circles by the time the next season comes around.
3. Who are the standout coaches, and what can we learn from them?
As a director, you need to not only recognize who is doing great work, but also learn from their artistry, so that it can be deconstructed and taught to your coaches.
Your club is only as strong as the people championing your vision, and the flag bearers of this are your coaching staff. Like our players, every coach has potential and is on a journey to continue improving their artistry. What can we learn from our staff that we can leverage to improve our coaching staff as a whole?
领英推荐
For example, the coach of your U12 “C-Team” might have the best parent culture among your groups, so what can we learn from him/her?
This can be a great way for a coaching staff to take greater equity in the vision and feel more empowered to share their artistry. Perhaps this coach from the example does a short presentation on how they communicate their Culture Vision through email and in person. From there, the director can propose a small change to the club’s communication process with parents that can be adapted across the club.
This is a great way to make coaching education a collaborative process that meets the specificity of your environment, which can help propel the whole club closer to the vision.
4. What coaches are struggling, and what’s the plan for them?
This is a vital question to ask, especially at the midpoint of a season.
As a director, you hired coaches to help your players grow, so it’s vital that there is a support system in place to help them do their best. Some coaches might be at the very beginning of their journey and will need a few more check-ins to ensure they are growing and feel supported. Your coaches coach the player, and as a director, you coach the coaches.
But remember, a director serves the Organizational Vision above all else.
The vision comes even before its people, and the director will need to always remember this if their goal is to create the best organization they possibly can. If there’s one coach who is either not in alignment or not developing in a way that’s beneficial to player development, then changes need to be made. Even if that change is letting a coach go, however experienced they may be.
You want a coaching staff that is aligned and provides great value to the players, so you must do everything to make that a possibility – even if that requires letting a coach go.
5. How can we improve the player pool?
This is always the last question.
Our soccer culture makes it the first question because it’s a way of shielding us from the previous 4. If the goal is to serve the vision and its people, you must first start with how YOU can improve the environment and then the coaching staff before ever considering improving the player pool. And of course, this question depends on the specificity of your organization.
If you direct a rec program, you may be looking to improve the player pool by simply increasing numbers, but as an academy director, your focus may be on improving the quality of the player pool.
How you do this is its own article. Recruitment, Talent ID, and scouting are not detrimental processes unless they are the primary mechanisms through which change occurs at your club. A Developer’s club has a shared lens and process for recruitment that is focused on finding prospects with specific qualities that will help adapt them to the environment and push the organization closer to its vision.
And sometimes, a player is better served moving to a new environment to continue their development, but before we get there, a director needs to focus on the first 4 questions to minimize the chances of a player falling through the cracks.
Final Words
Within our soccer culture, most directors misuse this period, which is pivotal for growth.?
If you have an Organizational Vision, then you have something to work towards. When a season ends, it’s important to double down on what’s worked well and create a new plan to convert smaller circles into next season’s small wins, but this is impossible if leadership doesn’t take the time to sift through several months' worth of data.
But keep in mind, your improvements for the next season won’t be the last improvements you make to your club and how it’s run.
Development is an infinite game that requires us to iterate week-to-week AND season-to-season, so our directors must continue to search for small wins and smaller circles—especially at the end of a season.
By the way, I have a weekly newsletter entitled “Nate Baker’s Newsletter”. Join our 1.5K+ readers for exclusive insights, strategies, and resources on development that can help transform your team, organization and people.