What type of coach are you?

As mentioned in an earlier posting, picking your coaching style is very important to determining your team's identity. How you interact with them

The Motivator - The motivator is the team's biggest cheer leader. He/she is the positive, upbeat, "glass is always half full" type of personality. They are able to get the most out of their teams by making them believe they can accomplish "anything". Be careful not to

The Delegator - The delegator does just that, delegate. He/she relies on their assistant coaches to carry out the plan that they have come up with. One of the traps of this type of coaching style is to delegate too much and end up being a figurehead. The players won't respond to you if your other coaches are doing everything and they never hear from you except for breaking practice or game time. Be sure that even though you delegate, you are still an active participant with your team.

The Dictator - These coaches are usually control freaks and want to do everything themselves. There are obviously pros and cons to using this approach. Some of the pros are having total control over day to day operations (some people prefer this), the chain of command is clear (you are the end all, be all), and you get to take a ll the credit for wins and can blame no one for the losses ( you prefer it that way as well). The cons are possibly alienating your coaching staff and parents, not having support when you need it, and being overwhelmed because you are trying to do the job of many by yourself.

The Yeller - These coaches think that yelling at the players will get their point across. Depending on the age of your team, this technique could be useful, but only in spurts. A younger team won't understand because they are just out there to have fun and learn so you could run into issues with parents. I personally do not like this aproach. I feel like younger kids will try their hardest to do what you expect of them. Sometimes your expectations and their abilities don't match but they are not intentionally trying to aggrevate you. Older players may need more motivation but as long as you develop them more than yell, you will be on the right path.

Any of these approaches, could potentially work. Just make sure your style and your personality match. Being genuine is the key.