Plan for interactions at crucial moments

Picture these common mistakes in training – the unfinished pass where the ball goes to ground; players running into each other on the line-out call; the flailing arm as a defender misses their tackle; the shanked kick travelling out on the full.

Each is just a moment in training, but how we interact with players at those junctures is crucial to developing both them and our culture. 

It might be a positive or negative moment. Our emotion and reaction depends on our perceived understanding or expectation.

Best interaction moments

So, how do we interact with our players in those moments? Firstly, we need to consider what our learning objectives and session design are. For example:

• Are we encouraging the players to push the envelope on their skills?
• Are we instilling new content?
• Is this a series of repetitive skills we have worked on previously?
• Are we sharpening our process for a game? 

Our players’ journey is better if we:

• Know our objectives for the session
• Remind ourselves of the session design
• Interact with selective decisions

We need to be clear and exact with our details when instilling new content with our players.

Learning is a journey where mistakes can happen. Repetitive skills or moments of contention could require fault correction, either to reduce risk of harm or improve understanding.

Planning for interaction

To make the most impact, it is important that we plan for these interactions by outlining what is most important during the session or activity.

Once we have identified the purpose of our delivery, we have a decision on how we interact with these moments:

• Do we ask players for their feedback? If so, ask them ’What did you see?’, ’What do you think about that?’, ’How did that feel to you?’.
• Do we stop the whole group to feedback? ’Why do we believe these moments are happening?’, ’How can we support each other with this moment?’.
• Do we fault correct? ’I need you to do x, y, z better/differently’.
• Does the activity have immediate feedback? There is a clear endpoint to the activity which suggests success or failure and allows you to deliver feedback.
• Do we leave the players with the moment and watch for more understanding? Do you let the players reflect or let it go and move on to the next job? Go back to the challenge and explore it again.

With these decisions to make, we can control the speed, the environment and the learning for all players within our squad.