Have you considered how the questions that you ask yourself change your mood, your way of acting with your goalkeepers and the way of seeing their different actions?
To find out the power of questioning we propose you a simple task that you can perform with your goalkeepers. Think for a moment throughout your sport career as goalkeeper or goalkeeper coach where you have had a difficulty. Now, ask yourself: ¿Why had to happen to me? See your inner response, your mood when you respond it…
Now, we propose you to change the question and reformulate it in one of the following ways: Which was the proposal of this situation? What did I learn from that moment of difficulty? Would I be the same kind of coach or goalkeeper nowadays if that event wouldn’t have happened? Now, see your emotional reaction and your inner response.
We are certain that you are aware and you feel the difference. Your disposal is not the same to the different questions and neither your mood.
This bring us to the next reflection. The reality is what it is. An objective fact. But what happens is that everybody has a different reality relying on his perception. And there are as many realities as there are possible game situations…
Therefore, a very important tool as goalkeeper coaches -they can change the quality of our training- are the questions we make ourselves and how we transmit them to our goalkeepers. Depending our questions, we will find better or worse answers. As coaches, we must start with powerful questions to us, questions that can give us clarity, perspective, certainly… Questions with which we feel that we take control of the training (what we want, what we find and that encourage us to the action). Favoring, by this way, a clearer relationship -with many tools- for our goalkeepers.
The quality of your questions is proportional to the quality of your training, of your tasks! So, if you want to improve, start making yourself better questions
Typically, we think that coaches are always right. Many times, with our dialogue we do not become aware that we are generating dependency in our goalkeepers. They find continuously approval through our questions. Questions that are often responded with a judge: Right or bad.
Throughout a training, a match or a week of work, we are going to approach different game situations that are difficult to understand. The key of all of this is the debate, the discussion. It is true, that situations will jeopardize us, but is the only way of seeing the utility of the concept, of generating links without judgments and with respect. Goalkeepers coaches are, after all, knowledge transmitters that can help our goalkeepers so, why don’t disagree?
You can start with questions that challenge goalkeeper’s thought and that they bring him to the answer of his own question. We will try not giving our opinion because it is important for them. Our opinion gives them security and, unconsciously predetermine them so, unless they want our opinion, we will not give it.
Without a doubt, the best question is: For what? These two words have a huge power on them. Whether we talk about kids or high-performance football, if we look at their faces when we make them this question it will be a reflection face. And, almost always, there is a silence.
Our advice in these cases is to forget about the question: why? because it generates judgment in the person who does the question. For what? achieves better results:
“For what did you play a one versus one?”
“For what do you want to know if it was a shoot or a one vs. one?”
“For what do you think in that game situation?”
“For what do you use the comunication with the team?”
The hidden motives start to appear and, usually, surprise the goalkeeper and us, because thanks to the dialogue we are going to discover how that goalkeeper is and how he thinks.
And, of course, we urge you to try this “For what” in any situation where a goalkeeper or coach questions you or shows various emotions. It can achieve huge changes in your way of thinking.
In the end, as goalkeeper coaches we have to find continuously tiny strategies to transmit our knowledges.
