Your Players Won’t Tell You This, But They Need You Right Now

Read on my website / Read time: 4 minutes

There is no way to completely understand the depths of what someone is going through.

We only truly understand our own experience, but that’s even up for debate. We have emotional scripts running that we may not even fully understand or are aware of. The point is that we all have insecurities, fears, and perceived shortcomings that drive our personal experiences during the different walks of our life.

The same is true of your players.

Humility and empathy are the two most important characteristics of any Developer. They need humility to continuously serve the vision, the team, and its players and help navigate them closer to their potential. But you also need to be empathetic–the ability to feel and care for others despite the fact you can never truly understand the totality of their experience.

You may not know their experience, but they are most certainly having one. And they need your help.

Here are 5 ways any Developer can exercise empathy within their environments and help their players continue to iterate towards their potential:

1. Follow Your Intuitions to Find the Culture Rep

Follow your gut instincts–your intuition is trying to tell you something.

Maybe it’s their personality at training, or maybe their performance drops considerably. Take them aside during a natural break, and ask how they’re doing. Let them open the door and express what they want to express.

If they show vulnerability, meet it with a culture rep, but if they don’t, remind them you are here to help.

2. Humanize Yourself Through Story

Be vulnerable yourself.

Tell a story of your playing career that tries to meet where your players are now. Telling a story allows them to see you in a different light, which can open up the space for them to hear you on a different level. They’ll understand implicitly that you are sharing wisdom for their own good.

When you lead with vulnerability, it shows you care.

3. Ask Questions That Have Nothing to Do With the Game

Go out of your way to implicitly remind them they are more than just a soccer player.

Ask about family, school, or anything else that shifts their identity from player to person. Follow up on small details later on from previous stories. Show through conversation you care.

If your players know you care, they are that much more likely to tell you if something is wrong in their lives.

4. Give the Team Talk You Would Have Liked to Receive

Empower your players.

Sometimes the vulnerability never shows itself. That doesn’t need to stop us from giving a talk that can lift them up anyways. Development is in the iterations, so if a player feels empowered and motivated, they are much more willing to stay the course.

Even when something is bothering them beneath the surface.

5. Celebrate Them (You Might Be the Only One)

Some of your players have never had someone tell them: “I’m proud of you.”

You can fill that void. When someone does something well or accomplishes an incredible small win, you might be the only one who sees it (player included). Our players need us to celebrate them as they reach new levels in their development.

Otherwise, their willingness to continue iterating will lose to a deep-seated insecurity that was never addressed until too late.

Final Words

I gave a team talk a few weeks back, and a player of mine messaged me to say thank you.

He went on to describe the mental turmoil he had experienced the last several weeks, and how the team talk I gave impacted him on a deep level. There was a lot of gratitude and thanks shared, but that’s not the point. The point is that there was no way to know the extent of what he was going through until he told me after the fact.

I can't recall the exact words I used that night, but I aimed to deliver an empowering team talk that would have resonated with me if I were in their shoes.

As coaches, we must lead with empathy because everyone is going through something.

And they’ll need your help whether they verbalize it or not.

===

Want more? Then let’s get you signed up for my free weekly newsletter! Join our 1.6K+ readers for exclusive insights, strategies, and resources on development that can unlock the better coach within you.