{"id":76374,"date":"2021-10-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/?p=76374"},"modified":"2021-10-13T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T13:00:00","slug":"dealing-with-a-negative-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/13\/dealing-with-a-negative-head-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with a negative head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Advice Needed: the head coach is super negative, loudly shames players during a game, makes players cry, and doesn\u2019t give much positive feedback if any. As the assistant coach what can I do? I don\u2019t want to over step but his behavior is bringing down the team and preventing the players from performing to their best or getting in a positive headspace.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I came across this in a volleyball coaching group. It&#8217;s a definite challenge being in that situation. The responses from the group fell into three main categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Confront the head coach<\/li><li>Talk to their boss\/HR<\/li><li>Quit<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve written before about the assistant coach relationship with the head coach. The <a href=\"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/assistant-coach-tip-influencing-the-head-coach\/\">Influencing the head coach<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/assistant-coach-tip-managing-the-head-coach\/\">Managing the head coach<\/a> posts both speak to this topic. If you&#8217;ve read those you&#8217;ll probably anticipate that my suggested first step is to have a 1-on-1 with the head coach. I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s an easy conversation to have. But part of your role as an assistant is to help the head coach be their best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s important to keep in mind there could be any number of reasons why the coach is acting they way they are. They might not realize the effect it&#8217;s having. They could be going through some personal stuff that&#8217;s playing out in their behavior. Perhaps they just don&#8217;t understand there&#8217;s potentially a better way to go because that&#8217;s how they themselves were coached. You won&#8217;t know until you talk to them. Doing so just might change things for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What about the reporting up the chain and\/or to HR option? Certainly, if you judge the coach to be abusive you are obligated to report that. If that&#8217;s not the case, though, going over someone head is rarely a good idea &#8211; especially if they don&#8217;t know it&#8217;s going to happen. That&#8217;s a good way to make things worse instead of better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don&#8217;t think you can help make the situation better &#8211; either via conversation or by doing things which offset the negativity without crossing loyalty lines &#8211; then leaving is the probably the way you need to go. Being in that environment is likely a source of unhealthy stress, and you don&#8217;t want to have your reputation stained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What can an assistant coach do when the head coach&#8217;s negativity is having a detrimental influence on individual and team performance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[44,47,381],"class_list":["post-76374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-volleyball-coaching","tag-assistant-coach","tag-assistant-volleyball-coach","tag-volleyball-coaching-career"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}