Reader,
Last week I had an enjoyable conversation with a coaching colleague around individualising player development.
Before I went to England and coached in the academy system, I am happy to admit this was not an area of strength, or really, awareness in my coaching. This period in my development helped me understand how we can redefine success for young players and it forever changed how I coached.
Too often I believe youth coaches are so team-centred when really, we need to strike a balance between developing individuals in our group and the team performing on game day.
Consistency of performance is hard to achieve, especially for young players, but what we can do in effectively individualising our approach, is ensure that every player has clear goals or work-ons each week. However, bringing this to life practically is our biggest challenge.
So how can we ensure players have individual objectives, a clear individual plan and awareness of their strengths and development areas?
Step 1: Create an individual development plan (IDP) with each player at the start of the season. This might involve a 15-20 minute discussion around what the player thinks they’re best at, and what they’d like to work on. Whether you use the four-corner model or other approaches, giving players clear targets can help. With very young players, this could be as simple as one strength/attribute, and one area to improve. It’s important the player drives this conversation, and that they own and understand the targets.
Step 2: Ensure the player is challenged regularly, both in training and in games, on these targets. Create a learning culture in your team or club. Whether it’s identifying 2-3 different players each session and observing and discussing how they went, or whether each player is tasked with ensuring they bring a focus from their IDP to the session, there are lots of ways to go about this.
Step 3: Close the loop. Ensure you make time during the season to check in with the player, reflect and review how they are going against their targets, whether they want to change them, what support they might need and provide feedback for how they can continue to improve.
One thing for you to try this week.
If you’ve not had an IDP conversation with a player, try it. Make some time to sit down with a player, ask them about their goals and find out more about them. While the end product might be a plan of sorts, the real gold in these meetings is the power of the conversation, the further connection, and often how much you can learn about the player individually in a short time.
One critical resource on the topic.
Check out this Masterclass Discussion with former Fulham FC Foundation Phase Lead and current Brighton U18 Coach, Arthur Brammer on Developing the Individual.
