DO YOU CORRECT THE PERSON OR THE BODY PART?

Former Canadian football league all-pro Angus Reid spoke to the ELITE COACHES' MASTERMIND LAST NIGHT.

HE CRUSHED IT!

Angus spoke of his former BC Lion offensive line coach, Dan Dorazio's tactics to develop relationships with his players at length during our interview.

"Coach Dan was a rock for his players. He was consistent, took the bullet for us when things went bad and found a way to make it personal for each of us in the room. He even gave each of us a hand-written note weekly the night before a game. I still have all 212 notes he wrote me."

"He praised like crazy when he got the chance but criticized softly."

Angus pulled back the curtain for us last night on how an elite coach gets PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS to lay in traffic for him. Pro football is a transactional business. Each player is their own corporation, so to speak, so any coach who gets his players to play harder and as a team is an extraordinary relationship builder.

I took a ton of notes, but my #1 'ah ha' moment from Angus was when he described how 'Coach Dan' made corrections during film study.

"Coach Dan would ATTACK THE PROBLEM, NOT THE PERSON."

"John, you were way too flat here on your angle back to the '3' technique." When a coach says it this way he is attacking John, the person, and not the technique. John will probably get defensive, and instead of having a mindset of improvement, he is focused on defending his honor.

Coach Dan would say it this way, "Angus, I love the effort here, but I don't like the left foot. The left foot is too flat on the angle back to the '3' technique."What is the big deal?Coach Dan is correcting the left foot and not the human.

This is a BIG DEAL.

I absolutely love this tactic. When we correct players, we should remember to fix the body part and not the player.

Coach Dan does not criticize generally when he is coaching the details, we shouldn't either.

Use your players' name when praising but correct the body part.

Brilliant.