As a coach, you are called upon to make decisions over and over. As a club coach your attention is required everywhere, from team party to hotel arrangements.
Here is where the idea of policies comes into play.
A policy is a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent, and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies can assist in both subjective and objective decision making.
"Will your policy make coaching more enjoyable for you and the team more enjoyable for the players? If the answer is no, stop right there."
During my time as an elected Councillor in Welland and Niagara, I learned that policies relieve staff of having to make ad-hoc decisions over and over, with the possibility of being inconsistent.
In most club team situations, policies come from the National/Provincial level, District, Club and team.
Should you have some policies in place when you coach? Are they helpful? Well, let's suppose you are a technical director at a medium size clubs, roughly 15 travel teams. How difficult is it for the club to be accountable for 15 coaches who all run their teams differently?
For you as a coach, I am not talking about a 400 page manual to distribute to parents. I am talking about guidelines that help settle situations/questions before they become issues. The players do not need to know about all of your policies regarding team operation.
"Having things in place through team and club policies and addressing topics at your parent meeting makes life a lot easier down the road."If you are part of a club's governance, how easy is it for your club staff if they have answers for members regarding issues like payment plans for registration, refunds, etc.
But let's think of this as coaches. What are the questions you keep dealing with over and over?
- Can we buy this?
- How do we pay for tournaments?
- How long are tryouts?
- How do you handle releases?
- What is the minimum number of tryouts a player has before judgement?
- How do we pick jersey numbers?
- Who starts?
- How do you handle playing time?
- My child is going to be late again.
- Can you stay late until I pick up my child?
- Can he wear his favourite green shorts to game?
- We don't go to away games.
- When can I talk to you about my child, in private?
- Can I set up a fundraiser for the team?
- Why are we staying at that hotel? Who picks the hotel?
- How are team parties handled?
- etc etc etc
- The team money is held in a double-signature bank account, by 2 parents who are not married to each other or one of the coaches, at a bank not used by one of the co-signers. I do this for accountability. Cash is not accountable or traceable. The choice is bank is to avoid the team account being raided in the event one of the signers has overdraft issues with their accounts.
- No cash. Everything is done by cheque.
- Grey t-shirt at training.
- Player selections are done via posted list on Internet.
- Two parents in charge of setting up bench area for games.
- No fundraisers without the coaches' direct involvement.
- Coach expenses covered and not covered. Mostly not covered :)
- Absolutely no social media postings about the team, good or bad.
- No positional requests or conversations about tactics.
- We publicly go by the name of the sponsor that was registering via club procedures, not a private donor.
- Coach does not drive players to tournaments (we have enough to do once there).
- Coach does not handle club administration issues for parents.
- Coach is off limits 15 before and 5 minutes after training.
Before you go crazy making a book of policies and procedures, you need to ask questions:
- Will your policy make coaching more enjoyable for you and the team more enjoyable for the players? If the answer is no, stop right there.
- Is there a persistent and repeating issue that leaves you in a position for making quick decisions?
- Who is being directly and indirectly effected by the issue?
- What have been the fairest results of the decisions you made in the past?
- Who is available to review any rough drafts of policies or rules you are considering?
- When do you want the policy to take effect?
- Is your new policy in contravention of any club bylaw?
- When are you going to review the policy and make adjustments if necessary?
- Is the policy necessary?
- Are you willing to drop your policy at a later date if you see it's not necessary?
- Is your potential policy consistent with your philosophy? If you are not comfortable with what you are proposing, don't do it. Nobody can fake it for very long. My experiences are most coaches make rules about attendance, punctuality and playing time that they don't really believe in.
You also want to prevent the possiblilty of being seen as bending to everybody's request and making one-off decisions over and over.
Before addressing this topic, ensure that you check all of your club policies first. You don't want to reinvent or contradict any of the work already done by the club.
If you have policies that work, share them with other coaches or your club. If you see other coaches' and clubs' policies that you like, retool them for your own use and share.
Please keep this one thought in mind; if you do establish any ground rules for the operation of a team, ensure every idea is geared towards providing a better program for the players. If the sole purpose is to establish your authority, your enjoyment and time with that team will be short lived.
Now that you're finished thinking like a politician, go coach!
