Can you Coach Creativity?
Everyone loves creative players. They are the ones who light up sport, provide the wow, the priceless, memorable moments. The flashes of genius that win the game. They are so important to sport, both the results and the beauty that underlies it. They are the household names. They are memorable. They are disproportionately important.
It would be logical therefore, if the development of creativity dominated the debate regarding sports coaching. In schools, clubs and National Governing Bodies. Creativity has everything: effectiveness, desirability, inspiration. But little attention.
Much coaching is aimed at the average player. Drills, practices, coaching activities and games are dominated by fixed outcomes. Everyone does the same thing most of the time. Follow the same cones, run in the same patterns, pass the ball with the same techniques. The most able are stifled; the least able frustrated. It is the opposite of challenge and experimentation, which are the things the creative player thrives on. Fixed outcome, skill obsessed learning dominates the programmes of most sports, at most age groups, in most schools. There is an industry wide reluctance to indulge the timeless, international request, "Can we have a game, sir?" Skill learning must come before the game, not as a result of it. The game is seen as an opportunity to demonstrate appropriate, previously learned skills. Not an avenue by which they might be developed.
What do creative players do? According to research from Association Football, superior players see patterns in the play they see before them. They are less fixated by the ball than lesser players, see more around them, make sense of it and imply what is probable to happen when players are positioned in that way. None of this can be learned in orderly practices without opponents. Drills lessen the demand of the game. They also lessen the capacity of players to learn open skills. Games are disorderly and have to be practised in an environment of controlled disorder in order to be effective.
Creative players do different things. That is the essence of creativity. They can't learn different things by doing the same as everyone else. At the heart of creativity is experimentation. Practice environments therefore have to offer the opportunity for such experimentation in an atmosphere tolerant of error. Error free practice is the enemy of creativity. An atmosphere in which error is always wrong will stifle creativity, and so coach attitude is paramount.
So what can the coach do to encourage experimentation? What can schools do to assure creative emphasis is part of the work of all coaches at all levels, in all sports? There are several distinct approaches.
- Set up open ended challenges where players can come up with their own solutions. Avoid "do it like this" practices
- Praise and value innovation
- Tolerate error, where this results from trying to do something different, or better.
- Create a culture that values doing things in new and different ways, and doesn't just measure player success by the capacity to conform to a pre-determined blueprint.
- Build a coaching philosophy across the school which institutionalises an approach to creativity and a tolerance of error as an essential part of the process of development
- Create periods in the practice schedule for un-criticised activity, where players are active on open ended tasks, but the coach is silent or offering only general encouragement without any instructional input. Encourage experimentation and ask players to show the group what they are trying to do. This is the environment which develops the individual tricks and unique, deft skills which are the hallmark of the best creative players.
- Learn from the approach of examination boards. This may seem unlikely. However, the concept in some exams of "positive marking" offers something from which coaching can benefit. In this approach, candidates gain marks for things that are correct, and lose nothing for errors. The result is that they are encouraged to "have a go" at all questions. Apply knowledge, and make up answers if they haven't revised that specific question. A coaching environment which allocates periods of positive coaching, where only successful attempts are acknowledged, and failures ignored, could have the same impact upon willingness to experiment with different approaches.
Many coaching programmes are not good at encouraging creativity. A short term, performance focus, driven by the importance of winning on Saturday, leads to a coach centred approach, based on, "Do it Like this". Experimentation and individual creativity is not encouraged, as the development process may entail errors that could impact on the likelihood of winning. Or, more accurately, to not losing. Creative genius enhances the chances of a team winning. But it runs the risk of failure, and the management of risk is not always on the coach's agenda. It is replaced by the elimination of risk, which leads to sterile, predictable patterns of play, from which players are wary of departing for fear of coach reaction. This issue is too important to be left to the whim of individual coaches to determine. Schools need to work out their approach to creativity, and align this with attitudes to error and their perception of the importance of winning against development.
Let South African talent researcher Professor Ross Tucker have the last word,
"South African rugby coaches the creativity out of its players. They start with a box of crayons, and finish with a blue pen".