Displacing Our Motivation with Alan Keane (Part 2)

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Hey everyone, want to let you know this is part two of my conversation with Alan Keane, Great Britain's under twenty coach and co-owner of Movement Sports. It seems as though, like to do all those three things. The individual would have to be quite self-assured, something that you already have a strength in.

And I guess my question would be, is that a big part of your role, is trying to get them self-assured and on top of the self-awareness? Because if there's levels of insecurity, I think it would be very difficult to actually give up that control, give up that power, and be a little bit more open to these type of practices that actually put the learner at the center.

Sure, sure. And I think you guys are like— so to If we make a parallel example here, I think you and Alex are doing that. You know, if you look at what you're doing with your podcast and Alex with his book, and Alex has gone away from— not to speak about Alex like he's not here, but we all know the battles that Alex has on Twitter, you know, and he's moved away from that to offering these podcast episodes, to offering his book, to offering brilliant clips on social media around CLA practices and activities.

And again, it's about just meet the person where they're at. I would never have— if any coach I work with or player, I would never have expectations for them to be a certain thing or be a certain way or be at a certain level.

I mean, because if you're measuring progress and the outcome is results-based, you're just going to end up failing repeatedly over and over. It's bonkers to hear, and I'm sure I'll get pushback on this, but it's crazy when you hear coaches saying at the pro level, goal is to win.

We're here to win. Winning is the only thing that matters. That's great. The 25 teams in that league, 24 of them are going to fail if that's the philosophy. So in terms of measuring progress, it is that— where's step 1, and now what have you arrived to 2 months from now, 3 months from now?

So a coach who has trepidation around an athlete-centered way of coaching or taking on different means, different methods, it's a gradual journey to get there. There's no— it's not a race. So again, it's— there's no pressure with this. And it goes back to— I don't know, it goes back to us asking questions more than prescribing answers, facilitating an environment where they can grow and have agency over the speed they grow at.

That's not an easy place to go, but that's our approach.

That's the reality. I mean, I have a training in psychology, so I did hours upon hours of counseling, and that's what a good therapist is. I think it's the same with a coach. It's not about providing answers or advice. It's about helping them discover the best way forward for themselves.

And that starts with meeting them where they're at, because it's actually coming to where the point they are in the path, and then allowing them to take one step forward as opposed to saying, hey, jump 20 feet forward right now. It's providing them a roadmap to success gradually.

Yeah, I think there's something around that acceptance with coaching. So if I can just pivot and go there for a little bit, which is very much related to what we're talking about, you know, we set up expectations every year. And I think expectations can be a debilitator for growth.

Success development, which is i.e. success, and I think the greatest facilitator for growth and development is acceptance. But we're not very good at acceptance, but we're great at setting expectations. And I think that's a space we should shift and change the narrative. And I understand why coaches set expectations because to have a standard and have a goal to move towards and have a line of what's acceptable, what's unacceptable.

But actually, if you just take it for what it is and say, right, I'm going to accept what's going on in front of me. And now I'm going to follow through with a plan. So for example, you take an activity and we'll take a CLA approach.

You put a constraint in an activity. Let's just say we're going to work on transition offense and you reduce the shot clock to 8-second shot clock, or you shrink the court, as Alex will call the human wall, right? Well, actually, if they're not successful in that space, what do we do?

We tell them you got to run faster. We tell them where they have to run. Or we go, actually, I'm going to accept what's going on in front of me now. There's a high level of failure rate here, like there's very little success rate here.

I'm going to increase the shot clock from 8 seconds to 14 seconds because I'm accepting that this was overly constrained and I'm going to adjust it instead of just being frustrated because they're not meeting your expectations. Well, if you get a bit philosophical about this, Adam, people generally become frustrated and upset When their expectations are not met, so effectively what they're saying is life is unfair.

This shouldn't be happening to me. So the locus of control is very external. They start pointing fingers and say, "Well, it's your fault that this is happening," and think of teammates blaming each other. Whereas, as Dan Abrams will talk about, an internal locus of control means I've got control of the situation.

I got choices and decisions I can make that help how I feel here going forward. So I'm in control, but I'm only in control if I accept the reality. And now an acceptance of reality helps you to shape a more effective and efficient plan of action going forward.

So that's why I'm saying let's park these expectations. Let's park them. Let's get rid of them. Let's just wipe them out and say to ourselves, right, let me accept what's going on in front of me. We're on a 5-game winning streak. We're in a 5-game losing streak.

We're not playing well. We're getting destroyed on the boards. You find whatever is working, right? This is the reality. Now what's the plan of action? In order to perform better, instead of feeling frustrated because we're not meeting expectations.

Yeah, and that's not saying don't have KPIs. Don't have—you're going to have expectations. It's just a matter of accepting the reality of what's emerging in front of you.

Yeah, well, the expectations are with the KPIs. They give you the reality. They give you the picture of what the reality is. So, you know, go back. Just want to touch off what you said a while ago. We talked about deficit detectors and us.

You know, taking the approach of expectations. And then what comes with expectations is failure at times, mistakes. I really, really love what Keith Davids— how he's reframed mistake, or how he's reframed what it is to have an error, to make an error. Side note, I had Keith Davids on Friday morning on a Zoom call with a group of coaches, just asked him to do a favor.

And I'm not putting that out there for everyone to now reach out to him and ask him for a favor because he's a very busy guy. But honestly, it was really, really fascinating. And I'll get back to my point in a minute. But the thing I took away the most out of him was he demonstrated to us— there was coaches on there from Canada, Europe, volunteer coach, full-time pro coaches, national team coaches.

But what he demonstrated to us was it gave me a feeling that we as coaches, we really don't know about the evolution of coaching, the origin, the evolution, the growth. And what he took us on was a wonderful journey of understanding how the most common way of coaching now and traditionally emerged and evolved.

And it just left me thinking, the thing we're immersed and involved in most, we know very little about its origin and we know very little about its evolution. So that's just a side note. I found it fascinating, and I got off that call thinking I got a first-class education today on the evolution of traditional coaching, which stemmed from— which got in— which is how we've been traditionally taught in the classroom and how it's very different to the ecological approach and CLA approach and why it's now evolving and changing and why it's different.

And that's gathering more momentum, which is great, but it's still a small group. But then the other thing he spoke about was reframing mistakes and errors. And I think that's an important point to mention because as coaches, we often wear deficit detectors. I think we're conditioned to identify problems and then be the problem solver for the players.

But actually, what he talked about was when you perceive an error at times, step back and ask yourself: Is this really an error? Is this really a mistake? Or is this the player adapting, trying to learn how to negotiate the environment and the problem that we set for them as coaches?

And there will be a point there. I was sitting there thinking, yes, I can really resonate with this. But I also hold the perspective there will be a line in the sand as to how much you step back for and let it go so you can see if they can self-solve, if they make the adaption.

And I think that's the right space to be in. But too often we, we knee-jerk reaction. They make a mistake, we stop them and we correct them. We don't actually give them time and space to actually self-solve or for their teammates to be interdependent with them And help them solve the problem, and I think that's a space I would really encourage coaches.

But it's a space we've been doing for a long time because of the athlete-centered way. And Mark Bennett, a wonderful guy, you probably should get the part as well. Mark took me on a wonderful journey around with athlete-centered coaching from the year 2011 to probably 2017, and it was a lot of like step back.

Let's see if they solve the problem before you jump in and solve it. So the coaching spectrum was. Where are you sitting on this line in this particular moment? From tell them what to do to ask questions and probe, to step back and just observe and observe a bit longer and then probe and then ask.

But I think it was a wonderful way to reframe that. Like, you know, as they're trying to learn to negotiate the environment or the problem we set them as coaches with the activity, you know, are we construing their error? And it could just be the individual adapting in the moment, which is what we want them to do.

We want them to be able to solve problems because come game time, we can't stop the game.

Absolutely. Well, I think when you were mentioning that, and as you were describing what Keith kind of framed around learning and what an error is, I just came back to, well, what is learning? And I guess we're often not patient enough to— we all say this, like, oh yeah, learning's messy.

At least people in this space will say Learning is messy. It's nonlinear. But are we actually allowing that to happen? Do we know enough? Do we have enough confidence in ourselves and then in the athlete solving the problem that it's going to be windy and twisty and turny?

And can we sit with that for a decent amount of time to actually allow them to learn? Because that's what's occurring. They are learning. It just may not be in, I don't know, was traditionally framed as learning. I don't know.

I agree. I think, I think we probably look at learning as a destination, an outcome. And in fact, I don't think it ever ends. It's a bit like, you know, Nike used to have a great saying years ago that, you know, I used with players a lot, saying there is no finishing line.

And that's how I see learning, because, you know, you arrive to a certain stage and then you adapt and adjust again. So that journey continues. And again, like the ecological dynamics way of coaching, there is no 2 actions the same anyway. So what are you learning but to adapt and adjust?

Like, you know, what are— as sports performers, what are we teaching them? What is the core of what we're teaching them? Well, it should be teaching them learning to adapt and to problem solve because no 2 actions are the same. So how can we coach them one specific thing?

Now we have a frame around the ball goes in the basket, we play in this direction, we defend 5 players, we can double team here. We've got all these principles of playing concepts, but at the core of that, that person has to be able to adapt and adjust to what's going on in front of them.

And what's going on in front of them, unless we're fortune tellers, we don't know what's coming next. You know, I'm talking game day in particular. This is why I feel quite strong around self-regulated learning, Adam. I feel quite strong around coaching players in a way that they you know, can go through a process of metacognition, let's say, you know, first of all, understanding how they take on new things and how they can retain it and how they behave with that.

What's their motivation around it? I look towards taking them on a journey of them planning what's important for them in order to grow and get better, them monitoring that, them evaluating that, and then them adapting if necessary. And that's an interrelated process for how a player could go on a journey of becoming a better self-regulated learner.

Make a plan, monitor your plan, evaluate your plan, adapt the plan, repeat the cycle. And the thing about— sorry if I'm going on here a bit, but I feel quite passionate about the topic. You know, if someone was to ask me what's the benefit, like what would the self-regulated learner be considered as?

Well, they're proactive in their own learning. They're strategic about how they go about learning. So they're starting to understand themselves as a learner better. And they develop the one skill that every coach wishes every player had, which is persistence, resiliency. You know, dare I say that the rubbish phrase, we got to be tougher.

Well, what does that mean? It does take a lot of toughness to go on a journey of planning, monitoring, evaluating, adapting, you know, to be proactive, to be strategic, to be persistent. I mean, show me something that's more tougher than that for an athlete.

And I won't even say an athlete, a coach. A coach should go through this process. If I'm trying to be a better coach, then I need to evaluate myself. I need to plan what I need to work on. I need to monitor what I work on, evaluate it, measure it some way, adapt and adjust if necessary.

And then I've got to be proactive, strategic, and persistent in that space. So I'm not just talking about players here. It's very much applicable to coaches.

Speaking of, I have to ask you about Plan, Do, and Review. How did that start for you?

Simon spoke about it on the podcast with Alex. It's very much a reflective cycle that we've taken on that's been out there for decades. We didn't come up with that. That's a reflective cycle that's been used in many other domains. But you know what Simon will portray, what he portrayed a lot in Alex, the episode with Alex, was coaches are very much caught up in the do, do, do phase.

Like that's what coaches do. We're just doers, and what we're trying to promote is actually take a step back and go right. We can do this better if we're more intentional about the plan, and the plan involving some important segments, which I'll talk about in a second.

But then taking time to do the bit at the end, which we rarely do, which is actually the reflective part. We don't reflect enough as coaches because we spend most of our time doing. Now I've just got one of my own practice plans here from from last week, so.

I'm trying to look at. So in the review part, the first thing I had to review when I was using this side, this cycle, was my coaching. So if we just go straight to the review part, because it's the bit least done— I don't have time.

Like, this could be your own thoughts in the car on the way home, or a voice note to your assistant coaches, or your voice note to somebody that would just listen to them. Because I want to talk about effective reflective reflection in a moment.

But if you start by reviewing your own coaching— what was my preparation like? What was my energy like? What was my communication like on a scale of 1 to 5? You know, if you just took some 30 seconds to think about that, then you take the player experience.

Did they have fun? Were they making decisions? Was there good communication? Scale of 1 to 5. And now you're into the phases of what was I grateful for? I was grateful tonight that the injured player on the sideline was very, very encouraging and was very supportive of their teammates in action.

That's what I was grateful for. And share that gratitude, like take a picture and share it with the group. Then you're on to forward thinking about the next session based on what the team learned or where we move on to the next practice.

But the review part, which is reflection, it's good to do it even if it's just with yourself. It's better than not doing it. It's a bit like shooting. Shooting in isolation is better than not shooting, but there's a better way to do it, right?

We can agree that I'm on the right podcast for that topic, I think. So there's a better way to be reflective and review your practices and your games. And that is very, very simply share them with somebody else. Because the moment you do that, you widen your perspective on your reflections.

So I share mine with Simon all the time and our other assistant coach. And on the national team, we'll share with those 4 coaches our review of the practice and the games. And then they'll come back with their opinions and thoughts, which could challenge my reflections or add to them.

Now I've got more data to think about my reflections, which could lead me to have better thoughts and better ideas. But the Plan-Do-Review, you know, it's just we wanted to support coaches to be more intentional around planning, reviewing, because everybody's doing, let's say, but being intentional.

So the plan, just real quick, Adam, sorry to hang on to this too long. The plan is more about planning the activities or the purpose or the objectives of the session. Our plan, we've got 3 spaces for connections. Who are the three players that you're going to connect with this evening, today or tomorrow?

And what is the message you're going to connect on? So, for example, Adam, maybe I've noticed you in practice last night or yesterday. You looked very tired and fatigued, and your energy was different. Well, when I plan tomorrow's practice, I'm going to write down Adam.

What am I going to connect with him on? I'm going to connect with him. I'm going to check in just to see is everything okay. Based on what I noticed and observed yesterday. It might be Alex. I'm going to connect in and check in on how his exams— he had an exam yesterday.

I'm going to connect and check in how that was. It could be Liam. I'm going to check in with Liam on his understanding of our principles of play because he's in catch-up mode because he's coming back from injury. So planning for those connections is actually just as important for us.

We're portraying that as planning the targets of the session. What are you introducing? What are you developing? What are you performing? Because everyone plans those. Most people plan those. Everybody plans the do, do, do. But we've— we know there's a lot out there because of time and other factors that don't do the review and don't plan those connections.

I'm glad you went into depth on the reflection piece because that always hits me because I'll be honest, I don't do that enough. I really don't. And the 2 sections that stood out the most, and I'm curious as to what led to those being put in there, were the gratitude section and the development section.

Yeah, well, the gratitude— I mean, it's again, it's about pumping the brakes sometimes as coaches and just, you know, get off the merry-go-round and just remember why you're doing this. So if you look at the, the movement model, there's 4 blocks and then there's 3 circles.

Well, the top 2 blocks are the who and the why. The bottom 2 blocks is the what and the how. So coaching methodologies, the what we could say is traditional tech tactical The top 2, the who and the why, is the players. Who are they?

Who are you as a coach? Then you're— I'm going to focus in on the why, the why block. When you express gratitude, you step back and you pump the brakes. And because sometimes it's difficult to come out— I fill out this every single practice.

I have a folder, 2 or 3 folders of this season already. They're all in there. And it can be difficult sometimes to sit on the train on the way home and go, actually, what am I grateful— what did I enjoy and appreciate about tonight's session?

And I have to reach sometimes. I really have to reach. And there's 3, there's 3 lines to fill out, 3 different ones. I sometimes struggle to write in a 3rd, but those 2 might be enough for me to just stay connected to my why, why I'm coaching this group this year this way.

So the gratitude thing for us became critically important for coaches to get off the merry-go-round of just do, do, do and remember why you're doing this. What are your values? Like, an interesting question for coaches, Adam, is can you— number one, what are your values and beliefs as a coach when you're coaching?

But if we want to go deeper, how do you demonstrate your values and your beliefs? Different question. And I guess when you start completing the gratitude segment of the review week upon week, you start to move closer to being able to articulate how you demonstrate your values and beliefs.

It literally made me pause my tracks when I came across that, when I was looking through the plan, do, and review sections, because like you said, I think it immediately got me back to my why and just stepped away from just all the, all the stuff we view as quote unquote coaching, all the technical stuff, all the tactical stuff.

And it really, I think it's very important to connect with that daily because we get so lost in the sauce of all that do, do, do. And to really do that, it took a load off me and I'm like, oh, I started doing this for a reason and I'm disconnected from that reason.

far too often. And if I can maintain that connection with that reason, I'll have more energy, I'll be more interested in my profession in itself, and therefore I'll be the best coach I can be.

I'm going to draw another parallel here because I'm mindful of Transforming Being and its philosophies and beliefs. Like, if you talk about, you know, skill acquisition, which is, you know, the traditional term, and, you know, I know Alex and Keith in particular are eager to reframe that to skill adaptation.

So, you know, what you're talking about there is coaching adaptation. Am I continuing to adapt how I coach based on the perception of the environment I'm in? So, for example, we draw a line here to gratitude. What's my perception of what I experienced tonight, today, or yesterday in practice?

So feelings, thoughts, feelings, behaviors— is there adaptations taking place because of the continued experiences I'm having? It's a very blurred line at the moment. I'm joining here, but I can't help but think there is an aspect of when you plan for what's your focus as a coach, when you review your coaching in terms of different aspects— preparation, energy, communication— when you review gratitude, we're adapting to how to what we've experienced.

We're starting to capture. And gather the perception we had in those moments during the practice. So I think there is something, and I'm reading Rob Graysbrook at the moment around the constraints for coaches, coaching constraints, constraining the coach more than the players. I just keep getting pulled towards this term adaptation, coaches adapting to what's going on in front of them, because the opposite to that is to stay rooted to the plan or the do part of that plan.

And I'm just like in a space where I'm not considering how I adapted or how I perceived certain things. I'm just rooted to these drills, activities to meet an outcome that I have decided upon. I don't know if I've explained it well there, but you can see that I'm caught in a gray area of coaches around adaptation and not just players adapting their skill.

Based on the perception of the information in front of them.

Well, yeah, it's no different. It's just what we've— I mean, you've hit on multiple times throughout here. It applies to coaches as much as it applies to the players. And what we do after the activity starts is just as important as the intentions and the planning we put into the activity itself.

For we have to accept what's emerging and then adapt it to fit the initial intentions of it. And that's where the real art of coaching is, being able to recognize that and then adapt on the fly.

Yeah, I think, you know, just again, going back to the plan, the game is no different. So, you know, we have a game card, a game version of the Plan-Do-Review in a game format out there as well. And the first thing you fill out on that— so if we break it down into 3 sections: pregame, in-game, postgame.

Postgame is your evaluation, your reflections, your review. Pregame is your plan. In-game is your do. But if you look at the pregame segment of that, The first thing you have to fill out is about your coaching. Who do I need to be today in order for them to perform at their best?

That's effectively what it is. So how do I need to act and think in this game? Because it varies game to game. So previous game you played, when you played this team previously, you won by 50. Players are going to feel different about an opposition coming in who you lost by 50.

So me as a coach, I've got a plan how I'm going to coach today To meet their needs. Needs being self-efficacy is low because we lost by 50 to this team last month, overconfident because we beat this team by 50 last month. So I need to adjust how I'm going to approach that game in order to meet their needs.

So the first thing you do in the game one is you plan how you're going to coach, then you plan the keys to the game and what's important around performance. So again, it's just shaping some intentionality in that space. Adam? Or practice coaching and game coaching.

All right, Alan, well, I won't keep you any longer. I'm super grateful for having you on and having this conversation. Where can people reach out to you and connect and learn more about what you're doing with movement and everything else going on with you?

Yeah, I appreciate that. MVMT Sports is the, is the website, just mvmtsports.com. Everything's on there about from why we do what we do to what we do. If anybody wants to reach out personally, my email is alan alan@movementsports.com. That's alan@movementsports.com. And I'm active, semi-active on X, so it's @coachkeane14.

I probably steal a lot more than I post on there, that's for sure. But there are 3 ways that coaches can reach out.

Awesome. Thanks again, Alan.

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