Coaching decision making

How do you coach decision making? As a subject much debated amongst the coaching scientists, it can be hard to work out what’s best for you to coach in your sessions. Let’s help you think about how you can use small-sided games to develop these skills.

Decision making is one of the most important things you will develop in your players as a coach. However, developing players capable of making good decisions is difficult for many coaches. How players develop their ability to make decisions is hotly contested among scholars. Dipping into those debates can leave some coaches feeling overwhelmed when coming up with ways to help their players in sessions. 

One of the key features of most small-sided games is a ‘turnover’ moment when a team can lose or gain possession of the ball based on a decision. 

Let’s use a typical example. In your game, the attacking side will lose the ball if they don’t make two passes, but the defence will gain the ball if they stop the attack before two passes. This rule might seem like a great way to encourage decision making as part of a game. 

But we need to think if this rule encourages greater long-term decision-making skills in players which is applicable to the game. It helps develop skills as players are put under pressure, but less so for decision making. The likelihood is that it will not be effective as the rules of this small-sided game do not match the rules that would affect decisions in a full game. 

I’d recommend moving away from ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’ in games if you want to develop decision making.

BETTER INFORMATION EVALUATION 

One of the critical things you need to consider is how well a game allows players to evaluate the information important for decisions you are looking to develop. 

Let’s say our two-pass game is being used to make decisions about moving the ball to space in attack. The information within the game includes where attackers and defenders are, where on the field the ball is and many more. When we add extra rules, such as the need for two passes, we create more things for players to think about. 

SIMPLIFY

This extra information is going to be unimportant in making decisions in a ‘proper’ game, so it will make it more difficult for players to focus on the salient parts of the game, which will inform future decisions. 

At the same time as removing unimportant elements to allow players to concentrate on key features, we may need to simplify the information on the pitch to help players focus on this. If we are trying to influence decision making on moving the ball to space, one easy way of doing this might be reducing the number of defenders. 

Right away, we are reducing the amount of information a player needs to consider so they can focus on the decision of where and how to move the ball. 

We might also use constraints, such as only one defender being allowed within 5 metres of the touchline to create situations where a player only has to consider limited information. As players become more advanced, we will need to add more information back into games to develop players' ability to make decisions - we wouldn’t expect to see pros training the same way as under 6s! For example in our game, a player doesn’t make a pass to a player outside of them and gets touched could be a turnover.

IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK OPPORTUNITIES 

With one method of feedback removed from the game in terms of the turnover, we need to provide feedback to players on their decisions. 

One way of doing this is quick, effective questioning. We want to ask players why (or why not!) they made a decision soon after it happened. Our player simply responds that they didn’t know the player was outside of them. 

To help them make future decisions, we can offer some advice/instruction here - turn your head and look outside you. Hopefully, the next time the player gets the ball, they know that part of their decision making should be to look outside. 

Again, as players develop their decision-making skills, this direct instruction will become less useful. Still, questioning will remain a valuable tool in creating that decision making in players.

I DON’T KNOW WHY

Be aware that sometimes a player won’t know why they have decided on a specific course of action. ‘I don’t know’ is a valid answer! A lot of decision making can happen subconsciously and can be based on many past experiences both in and out of the game. 

Again, using questioning helps us understand this and have conversations that will change how our players decide things in a game.

Overall, when using small-sided games to develop decision making:

• Try to create situations that replicate the full game environment without adding extra information that distracts players.
• If players are new to the decisions we are asking them to make, simplify the environment to assist them in focusing on important information, and gradually make the environment more challenging as decision-making ability improves.
• Questioning should be one of your main forms of feedback. In new situations, players may need more instruction to appreciate information and strategies to assist in decision making.