Floorball – Celebrate with the team or with me?

If you listen to some interviews depending of the outcome you most likely will hear a difference. Many times a negative floorball result or performance is explained with external factors (referee, unlucky, away game etc), or wage internal factors, we tried, but today we did not manage to live up fully to our capability. Success on the other hand is most likely described with own successful performance and skills or a team members successful performance and is most likely quite precis. Do you recognize it?

“The linesman scored the goal. No-one knows if that shot went over the line and you must be 100% sure” /José Mourinho

Giving Feedback

Giving feedback or in explaining your floorball teams performance, the following aspects should be consired.

Cause
Internal or external factors? Internal could be your own effort and skills. External can be referee, floor, surface weather, unlucky and so on.

Stability
Stable over time or just “one timer”

Control
Control over the situation, who was in charge.

Floorball Teams/players that are explaining their failures or success with external causes, as “one timers”, that where out of control for the team/player, will most likely end up in a really bad negative trend.

On the other hand floorball teams/players explaining their success with internal cause (their own effort, skills etc.), stability over time (we/I can and will be able to do it again) and we did it because we acted according to the game plan or as we have practiced (control), will have better chances to perform well next time as well.

Youth Floorball tactics and feedback

Here you as floorball coach have an important role, because how you explain the results (cause, stability and control), will also affect the degree of how much your floorball team members will explain the results in this way, and also how they act during the game. The same principle can be applied on feedback during a floorball match.

Feedback during the floorball match

 Your feedback during a floorball match can mostly be divided in three categories,
– Positive/negative reinforcement
– Technical instructions
– General encouragement

How are you acting in your coach role during a match?

-In the half-time Mourinho told me that “I want more intensity from your side, you are not the Milito I know, you are just walking around” – After that I scored two goals. /Diego Milito

How to celebrate a floorball goal?

Floorball victory

What about the feedback between the players during a match? If you look at celebrations after a goal, how is the goal scorer acting? Running away from the team, or to the team members?  Was the goal his or the teams, how is his/her reactions, ME or WE?

Feedback to the team or individuals?

There can also be difference if you are talking about team or individuals when you are explaining or giving feedback on the performance. Will you strengthen the floorball team or individuals in the team? In floorball teams with low team spirit or in a losing team, it tends to be more individual aspect in explaining the results and in teams with good team spirit and communication within the team, the team approach is more common, for both victories as losses, we win as a team, we lose as a team.

Mistake

Finally a sentence about the most common reason for feedback from the coach or the team members, mistakes. “Everyone makes mistakes, but to get upset and also show it, makes the mistake complete” (Look, it was me who did it…)

Floorball – For me or for someone else?

Internal or external motivation? The internal motivation comes from you, you do something because you want to (and you know why) and you can see the benefits for you. External motivation comes from for example external rewards, like prices, money or other benefits. It can be hard to tell what did motivate you most, but on the long term the internal motivation is the motivation that will help you most in your performance. Other sources for motivation might be:
– Task related motivation, comes from the teams goals and purpose, common efforts towards a common goal.
– Social related motivation comes from the social intercourse with the other team members
– Internal motivation comes from individual reward, goals and performance.

What is it that motivates us with a particular task. This may be some reasons:
– Social satisfaction
– Tournament moments
– Self-control
– Lifestyle
– Physical and mental wellbeing
– Success quest
– Money – survival – Luxury
– Status
– Competition
– (Nice view), See the Waterboy example in – For me, the team or why do I do it.

floorball reward

Rewards may increase motivation?

Yes answers, most people probably without thinking. So here’s a little story:
There was a group of boys who used to play football at a farmer’s field. The farmer himself did not like it and tried repeatedly to drive away those little football players, without success.
He decided to go for a new tactic. He walked up to the boys playing football and said that everyone would get 50 cents, each time they played football at his field. Next week, he gave them one Euro each. The week after he told the boys that he had short of money so they could only get 50 cents again. The next week he said he would only be able to pay 20 cents. The young football players were really upset, “Who do you think you are? How can you believe that anyone of us would play for you, for 20 cents?” So what the boys had done with joy and for fun (internal motivation), ended up as the farmer wanted, they quit playing after the external reward was minized or removed…

When a man comes home with flowers, the question might be “Okey, what have you done now, why do you bring me flowers? Or when you receive or are offered something for free, you immediately think “What do they want me to buy from them or what kind of subscription/contract is behind the gift”?
Rewards are good and fun, but you have to have the insight that people or your players perceive it very differently. Therefore, it is good to explain and justify carefully why you give the person something. Otherwise, some people get the feeling that the other person is trying to take control of me and tie me up by giving me something.

It’s good to have money, so you can buy things that can be bought with money. It’s although a lot better to not lose the things that cannot be bought with money. (It’s better to have internal than external motivation)