Alyson Annan Edit
Wed, 2/16 8:44AM • 25:37
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, players, learning, people, player, coaching, initial response, observing, athletes, person, deal, team, biggest, response, compliment, perform, performance, ellison, react, allison
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Alyson Annan
Paul Barnett 00:00
Ellison and good morning and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Alyson Annan 00:03
Good morning, Paul.
Paul Barnett 00:05
You've got a bit of a call, but thank you for appreciating to come on anyway. No problem, no problem at all. Ellison something really easy to get us off with. Could you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today?
Alyson Annan 00:16
So I'm in the Netherlands. And this morning, I dropped my mother at the airport. So she's been over from Australia for a month. So we took her to the airport this morning and got myself tested yesterday for COVID got the test back this morning that it was negative. So that's good news. On that, yeah.
Paul Barnett 00:33
I don't know if it was good or bad that your mom left. But anyway, we agree. Thank you for a great to chat with. Allison, let me start by asking you about some of the great coaches that you've had firsthand experience with. There's Mark Lamaze, there's, of course, Ric Charlesworth. And there's Brian Glencross, there's three really big names right there. And so what I wanted to start with was asking you from this perspective, what do you think it is that great coaches do differently that sets them apart?
Alyson Annan 01:00
So I guess the first thing is, I would have a different list of great coaches. I think that there's a few coaches that I've had in the past that have definitely had a huge impact on me as a coach, the best coaches that I've ever come across Franklin cross, of course, he gave me the chance to play in the national team, he took a chance on me as a young athlete. And I think that that's something that I've taken away of giving chances to athletes that have got potential. And that's what he did at my high school coach, Nick Hill, and John Robinson, who were two coaches who taught me to be me. And I was 1213 When I first met them, and you know, they've had a major impact on me MC as a one time coach with a one tournament, who still have contact with 40 years later, for 35 years later. And John Robinson has been a second father to me since I really met him. Then I have Beth Shea and Judy Lange, who were two completely different coaches along the way, who the one for a lot of very Imphal of empathy, it taught me that coaching plays is really touching people. And Judy taught me and that was Beth and Judy taught me that it's not easy to be at the top and get to the top. So she was a really hard coach that taught me the tough side of the game, and tough side of mentally being prepared. And then coming across Ric as a national coach for a very long time. He showed me that being innovative, and not just being satisfied with how good you are today, but really wanting to be better the next day. So I'm never, I'm never satisfied. And I saw a coach who was fully committed to us as a team, but also fully committed to himself in learning and growing, which is something that I've definitely taken on as a coach and a person to keep growing and to keep learning and make mistakes, stand up, keep going as much information on myself, but also on coaching on coaching people or aspects of their sport, to always be a step ahead. [PB1] And I think that those coaches are the coaches that I would definitely have in my top 10 coaches that I've ever had. So having an each coach had something different, not one coach had the same thing, which makes it even, for me even better that I've been able to pick and choose from each coach, what makes me the coach that I am today,
Paul Barnett 03:21
not we'll get on to some of those topics in the learning, failure innovation as we go along. But I'd like to actually start by going back to your playing days, because you were the FIA H Player of the Year in 1998 and 2000. And you were the Coach of the Year in 2017 2018 and 2019. But transitioning from playing to coaching, you say you had to learn to communicate more effectively, particularly when it came to body language. Can you tell us what you learned through that process of improving and transitioning from one to the other,
Alyson Annan 03:50
that one of the biggest things is when you transition from a player to a coach, the first three, four years you're coaching as you played. So you're coaching level, you're starting at a different level to which a group might even be even with with tactical thoughts, I would be explaining something within the press in our game. And I would start at a level without even thinking the basic knowledge of what a press is and what it means and where do I have to go and what are my responsibilities? I just skipped that because I was coaching as planned to means that you're not communicating effectively[PB2] . When I moved to Holland, I was coaching as an Australian, which doesn't always work because you don't holiday have a yes, but syndrome. So everything's Yes, but we can do it this way. We can do it that way. And in Australia, it's more. Yes. Okay. Well, we'll just do it because the coach says that we should do it. So I guess you're learning along the way, the whole time, what works and what doesn't work, and there's no one real, one real answer and one real way. For me as a coach, you are the person who gets the most feedback from everyone from every angle. If you're alert and if you're aware of it, because everything you say gives you a reaction some sort of way, in body language from a player from a staff member, they'll either react physically, they'll react with their voice. So you're getting feedback every single time you're presenting something, which means that you continually grow to find out what works with who and what doesn't work. And in that way, you create your own sort of form of communication. I've read a lot of the communication books, and I've read a lot of the team building things that get done them The MBTI, color coding things.
And I think that that's as a coach, you really have to find yourself in who you are as a person to be coaching, and not lean on all of the books and information that you can get, you can read it but the learning for me, you can read a book, but really learning it is implementing things[PB3] .
When we talk about communication, there are so many different forms of communication that you can get lost in translation, trying to do it all and lose yourself. Who am I? And how do I communicate what works best for me? And what's the reaction that I'm getting back from players and staff to be able to communicate better? And I think one of the biggest things is communication is one of the most difficult things worldwide. And we will never ever get it right. No one ever gets it. Right. So it's about getting the right most of the time. And I think that that's, as a coach, I've never really leaned on the theoretical side of things, because it's, I just want to be unique to myself. I think that that's something that if you look at communicating, one thing I would always say is be true to yourself, and don't try and be someone else and learn to communicate within the person that you are.[PB4]
Paul Barnett 06:39
Ellison. I've heard you say, on multiple occasions, you coach the person first and the player second. Why is that order important to you?
Alyson Annan 06:49
I guess, because they are people first and they play a second No, they were born a person and they became a player. And I know if I look back at my career, if I had spent more time learning about who I was, and if I knew back then what I knew today, I would have been a better player. So if I was a better person, or I knew how to communicate better back, you know, when I was playing, or I knew how to deal with certain situations, I would have been a much better player. And that's all about coaching the person. And the player has to let you coach the person. Because that's also something that a player may not want to be coached, as a person that as players. And that's the struggle that you have as a coach that some players just want to come in and be coached as a player. And I'm not that coach, I am a coach who is interested in players is interested in the development as a person, because I truly believe that if they know who they are, if they are confronted, if they are challenged, then they will always be a better player. And that's not just challenging them to do new things on the hockey field. It's challenging them to do a lot of things outside of the hockey field that will help them deal with situations on the hockey fields become more mature.[PB5]
Paul Barnett 08:05
Allison, I'd like to follow up on this idea of coaching the person first because I understand intuitive what you're saying and helping unlock the individual's abilities and be the best version of themselves through figuring out what motivates them. But there's 20 plus people on a squad that you coach and you lead. How can you do that when there are so many people in the team.
Alyson Annan 08:25
It's not a continual process, right? So it's not that you're busy with them every single day you're feeding them, you're feeding them information, as group, you're feeding information individually. I'm not the only person involved in this process. So you I have a staff, I had a very good staff who were also part of this process. We had psychologists, we had a whole group of people that were involved in this process. So it's not something that I take on myself.
I mean, one of the biggest things as a coach is I had to learn that is to step back and observe. Sometimes we as coaches get too involved in doing everything. And I did that at the beginning of my coaching career. And over the past years, I've learned to step back and take on a more observing role. If you look at an Alex Ferguson who didn't do too much on the field, but did a lot of observing as a manager, he called himself the manager that gives you time to what we call performance behavior. And performance behavior is something that things that happen intuitively, and things that you can help within reaction. So someone might react to something intuitively, their initial response might not help their performance. So that's a part of changing and helping change that response and that it does affect it does does help you performance, but you can only do that when you're observing when you're not with the details, dealing with the details, wanting to do everything having to know everything. So the past few years I've taken a lot of steps back and started observing and when you start observing when you have a you know I had at one stage and 35 players when you're upset Serving, it's not about having long discussions with players, you see something, you can approach a play, you can have a chat with them, give them information, feed them information, or ask them how they're going, and then move away. So sometimes it's really small conversations. And sometimes it's more in depth conversations. But it's about observing what you're seeing identified together, if we see the same thing and seeing the same reaction, and then making a plan with them. And in the end, it's about what the player does with it. If the player doesn't do anything with that information, it's not my responsibility. I'm not a coach who will talk to a player make a plan and follow it up with them. They're responsible for their plan. And if that's all that they responsible for your own future, so your own career, so it's not as time consuming as it may seem. But it's definitely keeps me alert the whole time. Because I'm continually observing the athletes and also my staff. And we're in it together.[PB6]
Paul Barnett 10:56
Such a great answer. I just think observing and not yelling and screaming is a wonderful trait. I don't know whether it's Dutch or female, but it's definitely not something I've heard before. Allison, I'd like to follow up, you talk a little bit in there about watching the way people respond, I react. In fact, in many interviews I've seen with you talk about asking yourself this key question of does this response behavior stimulate performance or not, in something you challenge the athletes with? Can you tell us more about what you've learned between the link between response and behavior,
Alyson Annan 11:25
they're all in the same response and behavior is the same thing.
So I've been working with a psycho sports psychologist who works in Belgium, and he's part of the Dutch Olympic Committee. And I've been working with him now for I think four years on performance behavior. And we have, he came up with this model that you have the initial response from someone, the response that you would like, is the preferred response. And then you have a region of responses from stimuli that are just that internal. So they like going back to childhood. So they're things that we as coaches shouldn't even go to, they're responding to something that may have occurred when they were in their youth. So we send those sorts of responses to the psychologist, we don't deal with that they're not something that we're in generally not able to see that in their response. But it's more, you can sense that there's something there that's not educated to do, and you're not educated to go there as a coach. But the initial response to certain stimuli brings on certain behavior that either helps someone perform or inhibits them to perform in sport, maybe something that recognizable for everyone on PI makes a bad decision. Some people their initial response will inhibit them to perform. So it'll work, they'll get so worked up that they won't be able to perform because their minds taken to the umpire they're spending so much more time dealing with the umpire than dealing with Okay, get on with it, let's go. So that's not an initial response that we would like. So we'll talk to the player, how do you deal with that? How do we get you back on track? And is that something that you come across somewhere else in your life? When if that is, then that might be something from the past. So they'll go to the psychologist? If not, though, we'll just see what responses or behavioral responses are we really looking for, to make sure that you can continue to perform at a high level, because in every single game on players make mistakes we need to as people, so we look at those responses. And it may be that the player doesn't lose with an umpire decision, they may get frustrated and angry, but it helps their performance. So the one inhibits and the other one helps. [PB7]
So we won't talk about to the person where it helps their response helps their performance. That's fine. The two they are it helps their performance. But we'll go into discussion with the player where it does inhibit the performance. So that's on an individual basis, then you have on a team basis that the person who performs better or doesn't get affected, their performance doesn't get affected when they react to an umpire. But it does affect the rest of the team. How do you deal with that? So then you're dealing with players individually, and then the effect that has on the team, and that makes it complex, but you're starting, you always start with the individual. And this is something where you're looking at the behaviors of players. initial response, preferred response, you pretty much always talking about okay, is this how you want to react in this situation? And if the answer is no, how do you want to react? And how do we get you there? And what do you need for help?
Paul Barnett 14:30
We're talking about behavior. I've heard you talk about the Ringel men effect. Can you tell me how you use this in your coaching,
Alyson Annan 14:37
so just know that I researched
Paul Barnett 14:39
it when I saw you.
Alyson Annan 14:43
Alright, so the Ringle effect is very, it's an interesting theory. So what it says is if two people are doing tug of war together, both people with the same amount of energy and effort, the more people you get on your team, the less energy and effort you will give because you've got people and I mean, I've got Someone who's bigger and stronger than me against someone to look across the room and there's two people who are less strong, then I think he can carry the load, or she can carry the load because they're bigger and better. But in the ends, so we talked about this within our team, if everyone within our team exists the same amount of energy, and gives the same amount of effort, we will always be better than every other team, because we're aware of the rhythm and effect. So if you look at teams who lose players, someone gets sent off. Generally, the team that has less players performs in the initial phase better, because they all increase their effort level. So we had a principle in our team that you can always work hard, it doesn't matter if you're good, you've got a good day or a bad day, if all of our efforts at the maximum of what we can give that day, and we don't lean on each other, then we will always been in the opposition.
Paul Barnett 15:53
I love it. It's such a simple, powerful analogy. Ellison your thoughts on pressure are also very interesting. I heard you talk about when you say that when you create your own pressure, you will perform better than when pressure is put on you from outside. That, of course, for many of us, it's the pressure from outside that causes sleepless nights, restless mornings, and so on. What advice do you have for people and learning to shift the focus from outside to inside generated pressure,
Alyson Annan 16:21
that's one of the most difficult things to create your own pressure. Because the biggest area of comfort zone is within yourself, your comfort zone is letting you know what you don't live in.
There are a lot of athletes who don't want to feel the pressure from within. So they won't go to the boundaries, they won't try. And I'm here and this is good enough. And this this work. So that's enough, it's when other people start expecting things from you that players become nervous. So I really have a theory of if you expect more from yourself, then it doesn't matter what other people will expect from you. Because you're dealing with what your own expectations. And when you're working within a team. And if you're talking are my expectations realistic, and how do I get there and you've got a plan. And that's a well thought out plan, then it doesn't matter what other people think.[PB8]
And it doesn't matter. I mean, we spent the last five years been the number one in the world, and everyone just expecting us to win. But that was impressive. For us, the biggest pressure for us was being the best that we could be every single day.
And if you, as a coach also expect that from the players to be the best they can be every single time they're on the pitch, then it doesn't matter what the outside world does, because the inside pressures so big, you've got your own individual pressure within your own team to do that. [PB9] So it's in the end, letting your team mate down, or letting yourself down is so much harder than letting someone down that you don't know. And so it's all about expectations, dealing with that, talking about that within each other. But really, as an athlete, and I know you know, I had a phase where I thought this is enough, as good as I can be. But as an athlete, you never as good as you can be. There's always better. Just like a coach, there's always better. I mean, what you know, Tom Brady's now, what is he 45, and he's still getting better. So I've never coached you, except that God is good enough.
Paul Barnett 18:24
I'd like to pick up on this idea of good not being good enough and learning and developing. And I have a quote from you. And you say, if I don't see someone failing, I don't see someone learning. So what I'd like to ask you is can you share a failure that you've had as a leader, and what you've learned from it? Ah, there's so many reasons. One,
Alyson Annan 18:44
Good Reason one, look, I think one of the biggest things as a coach is you communication fails. I've had unexpected discussions with players that the timing wasn't right for me wasn't right for them. And because you're in that moment, you just have that conversation, that's a fail. But if you don't have that moment, you don't learn and know that that's probably not the right moment to be having this discussion, that certain things that players always ask coaches also, what can I do the national team, if I say to a play, I will do B and they do a and b, they think that they're there. But whilst they're doing a and b, they're not failing.
So how do they train because when you learn something new, you will fail, you won't be good at it, because your focus will be on something else other than what you're already good at. And that's something that we as coaches and athletes have to understand that whilst you're learning I mean, it's like if you're learning to ride a bike, you'll fall off the bike, you won't get it right the first time. So you can get on the bike and fall off and say it doesn't work for me. Or you can get getting on the bike falling off and in the end, ride the bike really well. And I just really believe that failing is a part of learning and if I don't see someone get on the bike, I don't know if they're trying because I don't see them falling off from problem with this theory, I think is that if the coach only sees the failures, they'll judge players on their failures. And I don't do that I don't judge them on their failures. And I just I really believe that in particularly in our sport, there's been athletes and players that have not been selected because they've failed trying. And those are the players that you want in your team players that are willing to try and fail, instead of players that aren't willing to try and are willing to fail.[PB10]
Paul Barnett 20:28
Allison, I have another great quote from you. I'd like to read it before I ask you the question, you say, my job is to compliment them when they are getting the best for themselves. And remind them when they aren't. They have created their own culture within the team that that keeps them hungry. We have built an environment where they are self critical of themselves. It was the last part of this quote that caught my eye. And I wanted to ask you, what advice do you have for other leaders on finding that balance between complementing and being critical?
Alyson Annan 20:56
I think by also learning process, I don't think there is alone, I think that you can be critical, and you can be complimentary. But in the end, particularly with women, they'll only hear the critical criticism, men, they will only hear the compliments men will tell you how good they are. And women, you have to tell them how good they are. And it's a really difficult line between criticism and compliment, because it's Who's it from? When do they say it? What context? Did they say it's about how you're feeling on that day? Are you having a good day or in a bad day are you open to hear it, you're not open to hear it. So there's so many different elements of receiving and giving criticism and compliments, that makes it a really complex thing. In the end, it has to be an environment where you can do it, and you can accept it. And if it's not the right time, that the player that's given the criticism or compliment gives that person, time and space to hear it, to put it somewhere where they can deal with it. But it's about timing, the younger players will probably accept it less. And the older players will accept it more. It's all about experience. So it's again, it's a very complex thing, complements and criticism. No, I thought that our team was very good at that.[PB11]
Paul Barnett 22:11
Back at the start, Ellison you said that, if you were younger, back before, if you'd learned to understand yourself more, you would have been a better player. What do you think, stops people from understanding themselves enough to realize their potential?
Alyson Annan 22:26
I think that nowadays, there's a lot of different things that stand in the way of really knowing who you are and what you want. And if you look at Instagram, and all the social media things nowadays, there's more people telling you on your side, right Facebook page, or Instagram or tick tock or whatever it is, that are saying, or complimenting you then criticizing you. And I've seen it at home, you've got two daughters, and I've got some to walk around the room tick tock the whole day. And I don't understand it. But it's there because people make them feel good until someone doesn't. And then they will start in their world falls apart. And I just think that we have to deal with scratches, so many different things nowadays that inhibit us to inhibit the players to find out who they really are. Parents. I mean, nowadays, parents are more protective than ever back in when I was growing up. He used to go outside. And you know, my parents didn't know where I was. And if I didn't do my homework, then I'd get punished by the teacher at school. Nowadays, if they don't do their homework, parents ring up and say it's too much homework. Just think there's things happening nowadays that stop and inhibit players from learning, learning, just learning, learning who they are learning what's to come learning to deal with situations that are not a concern of mine, particularly in sport, that there's going to be an environment in the future that doesn't allow for failure, or doesn't prepare players and people for failure. And failure is not a good thing. It's not fun.
Paul Barnett 24:09
You've been very generous with your time. And obviously, you've got a cough and everything but so I'll just ask one final question if I can. And I'm going to phrase it with a quote, because you've said, I try and learn every day. And of course, you've backed that up with so many of your wonderful answers today. But you also say my motivation is to help the players become better players, but also better people. And so I wanted to finish by asking you in the distant distant future when you hang up the whistle, and you're no longer a great coach. Well, you'll still be a great coach, but you will no longer be coaching. What is it that you hope is the legacy that you've left?
Alyson Annan 24:42
Well the question look in the end, I hope that one day in the near distant future that I won't be every player but I you know, a handful of players or will thank me for what I've the opportunities that I've given them and that I've helped them in just some small way too. become a better person in the end winning and losing tournament. That's not what it's really about. That's just really one small part of what we do as coaches. And when a player says thanks me for being their coach or helping them with something, and you can share that with each other. I think that's one of the most amazing things that you can do as a coach, I[PB12]
Paul Barnett 25:19
think that's a great place to end. Allison, thank you so much for your time today, I can see that you're struggling a little bit with a cough and flu. appreciate you spending a little bit of time to talk about hockey with us and I look forward to sharing this conversation with a bigger audience around the world.
Alyson Annan 25:34
All right, thank you. Thanks a lot.