Floorball – Feedback to all players, from striker to waterboy

Social loafing

In order to avoid social loafing (social loafing = I’m not important, nobody will recognize if I don’t do my best), it’s important that you give feedback to all of your players, so they know you see them, and they feel they are unique, important and meaningful for the team’s success. This is especially important for the players with less “glamorous” roles, left or right defensemen (compared to a striker), hardworking defensive players or the substitutes (Waterboy).

See each individual performance

So you need to ensure you see each and every individual performance, and are able to give feedback, so the players can’t fall in to the trap of social loafing, they feel that you see them all the time and therefore the value of their performance will increase, you are showing them every player is important for the teams success. Like the small thing in the corner, when you played defense, so the opponents where not able to get in the front of the goal…

Floorball the thing in the corner

Floorball matches and practices

This is of course applicable for both floorball games and practices. Look at José Mourinho during the games, he is taking notes and writing in his small notebook through the whole game. It’s impossible to remember everything from the floorball game or practice… Your notes will help you when you want to give correct feedback after a floorball game or practice to each player, and the message will be stronger if you can refer to the the game situations correctly. Individual meetings with each floorball player will be a helpful method to avoid social loafing.

Feedback Guidelines

– Do it directly if it’s possible
– Be precise (use examples from the game and practice)
– React on one action or behavior (not person)
– Use I messaging, I feel… I can see…
– Keep it short
– Use silence (silence makes the player(s) reflect and think)
– Open up for a solution, (how do you feel? How could you do this differently?)
– Ending, (OK, like you said… …could that be the way you try to do it the next time?)

“Give feedback to your best players, otherwise they won’t be best in the long run, but give feedback also to the low performing players, so they know, that you know…” /Swedish hockey coach

“Guys you need to take more shots, they have also a bad goalie!” /Swedish hockey coach

After each game, Mourinho congratulates all his players on the pitch and bench, starting with his captain. And he does so by hugging them and/or touching their heads, not many managers has this kind of close rapport with their players.

Floorball – Conflict handling – Relationship vs Performance / results

It’s easy to sacrifice relationships, when you are only hunting for results, the same goes for conflict handling.

Conflict handling, Avoid, Bulldozer, Concensus, Compromize, Sacrifice

On the Y-scale you have relationship and on the X-scale the performance. Depending on the size of the conflict or if you value relationship or performance higher there are some different ways to solve a conflict.

Avoidance – If there is a minor conflict, your players will forget it soon and it will not affect the performance nor the relationship.

Adjust/accept – You value the relationship higher than the performance and accept to adjust and give the other part right.

Compromise – Lose – Lose situation, none of the parts in the conflict will get their wanted solution and need to give up something. Example. A wants A as a solution B wants D as a solution, but you end up with C…

Bulldozer – You value the performance/results higher and are ready to sacrifice the relationship, you decide!

Consensus – Win-Win discussion, was it a misunderstanding from the beginning? Find a way to a win-win situation through guiding the dialogue.

Floorball – Food is fuel

In order to incorporate these healthy snacks in to your floorball team, it’s a good idea to send home a flyer to the floorball parents outlining what is, and what is not acceptable as a floorball team snack. Make sure that everyone is signed up to bring a snack on floorball games and sometimes as well on floorball practices.

Floorball youth practices and drills

Food is fuel, and just like a high performance vehicle will sputter and die if you don’t have fuel, so will your floorball team and star players stumble and lose steam at a critical moment in the game, if you don’t have eaten correctly before the floorball game. Make sure your floorball players know about this and eat healthy and you’ll see a big difference in their performance in the floorball rink.

Each floorball game is a practice game, until you earn your living on it

Stress affects floorball performance

Performance connected stress arousal

The figure above is showing the performance of two equal floorball players (capacity, when they are at their best), the difference is on their stress levels. A players optimal performance might be in the beginning, middle or at the end.

The first line/player will perform well or at his/her best with lower demands and stress level, while player two needs and can play at his/her best with high demands and expectations.
Do you know these curves for your players? Who will perform well in critical situations and who will be at their best with low expectations? These curves are just two examples, you would probably have as many different lines as you have players.

Floorball practices, games and drills

Each floorball game is a practice game, until you earn your living on playing floorball. That’s a quite good attitude to have, to keep the right perspective on things and situations, to try to keep the stress level on an acceptable level.

Floorball – Wanted position

I will talk about two ways of setting goals, or how to look at the goal setting process. The first one is about looking back on your performance and setting the goal little bit higher than the history shows.

If you are thinking about goal for the league position, you might look at your previous seasons 10 pos. 8 pos. 9 pos. and therefore you think a realistic goal should be 6 or 7 position, but you might to choose to raise it a little bit to position 5.

The second way to set goals is to take a step into the future and to think where you would want to be in the future or were you must be in order to achieve something. Let’s say your floorball team is in the next highest division. Maybe you have described in your vision that you want to be in the premier league (highest division), therefore you automatically must be top 2 or 3 in your division in order to be able to take the next step. This could create a conflict, if you have team members that are “stuck” in the history, they won’t think this is a realistic goal, and it might not be, it’s your wanted position in order to take the next step.

Floorball thanks for the game

If you are setting goals by taking a step into the future and pointing out a wanted position, you will create an information gap that needs to be explained for your floorball players. So the discussion should rather be about, if they want to be there, than if it’s realistic. After you have cleared out that, you can start to take small steps back from the future, if we want to be here, top 2 and advance a division. What changes do we need to do in order to achieve that? You need to slice the big block to small steps (We need to increase the amount of practices. We need to think about what and how we eat. We need to improve our defense.) When you have this discussion about many small improvements with your floorball players, you get a buy in on the goal and suddenly it starts to be realistic at least in every ones heads.

You can think about José Mourinhos challenge when setting a goal, that was to win the Champions League, when Inter had won it, last time in 1965, maybe it was more realistic if you look at other aspects than the historical performance, like the team members and Mourinho himself.

In short term goal setting you can use the same methodology, in order to support your long term goal and vision.

Floorball practice shooting drill

The last level defining a focus area will support you in achieving your short term goal (and long term goal and vision). What do we need to focus on as the first steps on our way towards our wanted position? This should of course be transferred to concrete actions and an action plan.

As a summary you can say that you can work with setting the direction on different levels, Vision – Long term goals – Short term goals – Focused areas – Actions/Action plan.