45. Dr. Alex Auerbach—AARs and Effective Reflection | Part 2 - Cutting Edge Coaching

You know, it's important, particularly in sport where we place such a huge emphasis on the next thing and hurrying up. You know, like the best metaphor I've heard is we always talk about the season being a marathon, but we sprint from game to game. It's like this after action review or post performance review is the place where we get to slow down and really reflect on what's worked well. What would we like to do differently, what did we learn, and then how can we attack that the next week? It doesn't have to be anything overly complex, laborious, drawn out, long. And I think that's one of the reasons that people tend to avoid this kind of activity is it can feel like looking in the past or deconstructing the past, but the past is a really important predictor of what's going to happen for you in the future.

Welcome to the Cutting Edge Coaching Podcast where we believe coaches are some of the most important teachers and leaders in the world and they deserve to be supported.

I'm your host Luke Gromer, and every.

Week we're bringing you conversations with coaches, experts and leaders from across sports that will help you get better at teaching and leading so that you can develop high performing teams and high character people coaches welcome Back to part two of my conversation with Dr. Alex Auerbach. Dr. Auerbach is a sports psychologist and the Director of Performance and Wellness for the Toronto Raptors. He joined the Toronto Raptors after serving as the Director of Clinical and Sports Psychology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Auerbach has worked with NCAA Division I Schools in the PAC 12, ACC, Big 12 and Conference USA. He earned his doctoral degree in Counseling Psychology with a specialization in Sport and Performance Psychology from the University of North Texas. In part two of this conversation, we talk about after action reviews or AARs and other effective reflective practices, practical ways to build your athlete's mental skills, and how to help athletes navigate anxiety. If you enjoyed the episode and want a copy of the podcast notes, just go to cuttingedgecoach.com podcast or click the link in the show details to download the notes from this episode or any episode of the podcast. Hey, and just a heads up, on February 17th at 1pm Central Standard Time, I'm hosting a Zoom with two past podcast guests, Douglam and Stu Singer. We'll be discussing how to get tactics, techniques and psychology to transfer to games. Spots are limited and the cost is $10. If you sign up and aren't satisfied with the value you received from the Zoom session, we'll refund your money no questions asked. You can click on the link in the show details to save your spot. And finally, if you're interested in learning more about what we offer coaches, just go to cuttingedgecoach.com or check out the links in the show details. Now to part two of my conversation with Dr. Auerbach. Enjoy the episode.

And we've been talking about some reflection, but I'd love if you would kind of share your thoughts around the importance of AARs or after action reviews and reflective practices, maybe first why they're so important and then to how can coaches start to use those effectively with their athletes.

Yeah, I love, love this direction, I think. So I'll back up. Right. So from sort of the elite team research space, primarily in the military, what we know is that debriefing a performance is particularly important and the impact on future performance of a debriefing on the science side varies from I think I've seen as low as 10 to 12% and as high as 22% in terms of subsequent team performance once we've integrated some more reflection. But I think more broadly for me, I think reflection is part two of three parts of learning. And so ultimately what we're trying to do is so part one is you do the thing, you have the experience, part two is you reflect on the experience and part three is you sleep so you can consolidate the experience. But this is really about part two and the idea is that, you know, it's important, particularly in sport where we place such a huge emphasis on the next thing and hurrying up. You know, like the best metaphor I've heard is it's we always talk about the season being a marathon, but we sprint from game to game. It's like this after action review or post performance review is the place where we get to slow down and really reflect on what's worked well. What would we like to do differently, what did we learn and then how can we attack that the next week? It doesn't have to be anything overly complex, laborious, drawn out, long. And I think that's one of the reasons that people tend to avoid this kind of activity is it can feel like looking in the past or deconstructing the past, but the past is a really important predictor of what's going to happen for you in the future. And the past is a really important place to pay some attention to figure out what you can learn and extract. And it doesn't mean that you need to spend three hours reviewing a one hour game, though there might be some benefit to that it does mean that spending just even 20 minutes thinking as a team or as a group about what did we think worked and starting to unpack that because now you're getting into what do we want to repeat, what didn't work. So what would we like to change or do differently in the upcoming competition? Synthesizing that into what do we learn and then again thinking about taking that forward. And that's where you turn the after action review into that more forward looking process. Right. So we've done the debrief. Now how do we take this and apply it? And I think that's a place where coaches are particularly well equipped to facilitate some of that because it can be the coach sort of leading, here's what I'm going to do in practice or here are the drills that I think we should be trying based on the feedback we just got to facilitate this moving forward. So there's some great videos and resources out there. There's a wonderful video of the Blue Angels debriefing a flight that they had and seeing how these other really elite performers very. In a very nuanced way dissect their elite performance, I think is a powerful model for starting to think about how we use some of this. But ultimately it's all about improving for the future and is, I think, a foundational piece of that.

I like the questions that you mentioned in there. Right. And really simple questions too. I think that's one of the things that maybe again, tying back to what we talked about with subtle small changes. It's actually maybe less complicated than coaches think. It's just starting to be able to slow down, create a little space to do it. Hey, pause. Let's talk about what's going well here. What do we need to. What do we need to keep doing? You know, what do we need to stop doing? Asking some of those questions that just get them to think and hopefully discuss. Yeah, I think it's really, really powerful and important. And I think the thing that I would add to that is it's really important to try to make it a routine some somehow that you always do it at these points or.

Yeah, so.

So it's not totally random so that it becomes a habit for your team or your players. Like we are going to reflect. We're going to ask these two or three simple questions at the end of every practice or at halftime of each game. I think that that, that can be a really powerful tool.

To.

Yeah, like you said, I mean that that's just a key piece of learning. After we do it like we need to reflect, we need to actually evaluate how it's going. Any other thoughts on that that you would share?

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned a couple of things that I think are wonderful. So you talked about making it a routine and I think what you could even do is make it a routine at an individual and a group level. So you know, at an individual level, after practice you can ask your athletes to write down in a journal, whether it's on their phone or pen and paper journal that they keep in their locker, their bag, whatever. The same questions, right? What did I do well or what worked? What would I like to do differently? What did I learn and what do I want to focus on tomorrow? And that's really kind of the foundation of some self regulated learning and helping players and athletes figure out a little bit what their own process is like to improve. And then you're right. I think there are these natural sort of touch points for making it more routine. So it's like the day after every game, instead of jumping right into films, review last night's game, spend 15 or 20 minutes just going around the room talking about it, getting a player's perspective, exchanging ideas between coaches and players about what did I see? What did you see? What would we like to continue? I think is important. And then the last piece I'll touch on is, um, you know, you mentioned that it's, you know, it can be simple and I think a lot of high performance is simple but not easy. Um, you know there, there are so many sort of places where we hear about like hacks or tricks and shortcuts to get to get to be excellent. And that's nice to try as opposed. But I don't know that there's going to be many places where you're going to find a shortcut if you want to truly be great at what you do. You know, it does take work and effort and deliberate practice and all things that have been, I guess more popularized from psychology right around high performance. But I think what you've touched on is that it can be simple to do and it's about sort of falling in love a bit with the mundane and continuing to do that after every game. Even if it's like, I can't believe we have to do this again, like see if you can extract the value from that, you know, because there is something to learn there. And I think, you know, we talked about culture in the beginning, so I'll just tie this back briefly is, you know, the questions. I would encourage coaches to find questions that resonate for them. But I would also encourage coaches to find language that's nonjudgmental and a bit more sort of balanced in the way that we look at things. Right. So it's easy if we've lost to dive into everything that went wrong. And I understand that tendency for sure. And as a person who is self critical, like, I get it, but I think oftentimes when we lose, there have been things that worked, there have been sort of places of success. And so by emphasizing both what worked and what didn't work, you're doing two things. One, you're sort of breaking it down a bit and removing the outcome. Right. You're talking about what worked or didn't work in the context of the game. And so it's not about, you know, did we succeed, where did we succeed and where did we fail? You know, that's kind of that judgmental language that brings with it some extra baggage. You know, what worked or didn't work or what helped or didn't help is a bit more neutral. And then I think turning the corner and shifting to, okay, like what did we learn and how we can apply it. Now you're sort of getting that consolidation and action step in this sort of, I think, kind of culture enhancing framework. Right. And so again, I encourage coaches to find their own language for what that is and do it in a way that resonates for you and your team and is about your values. And I think this is a great place to infuse some values. You know, so what values did we really show in our last game and what did we, you know, find that we were successful in that with? I think that's a place you can use similar, that sort of winning language. If you want to talk about how we lived our values, I think that's great. But really finding a way to sort of remove the emotional valence of the outcome. Right. And just sort of nonjudgmentally evaluate that is going to help you get more of that mastery oriented climate in the future.

Yeah.

And to tie back into something we were talking about earlier, I think it's critical that as coaches we do this on our own performance too, that are that we're asking our athletes to do it on their performance, but we do it on our performance and then we share with them what we're learning, where we're trying to grow. Hey, I realized that my feedback was awful in that game. It was all over the place. It was confusing. Here's what I'm going to do next game to make sure that my feedback is more clear for you guys. You just like small things like that. And again to tie it back into the culture, like that's, that's living out our values, that's modeling the mastery climate that we want. And now all of a sudden our athletes are like, oh, wow, like you really care too. And then for hopefully then for them to see us do it, like, oh, coach, your feedback was better today. Like we weren't confused as much. You know, I think that that can be just really, really powerful.

I want to add one more thing in there before we jump ahead if I can, because I think what you're, what you're touching on is like supremely powerful around psychological safety. And so I think it's normal to be afraid of failure and the failure and mistakes are where, like that's what we want to uncover to get better. Right? It's like we want to uncover the limitations or places we don't feel as strong. And so if you as a coach are modeling that for your players, you're giving them permission to tell you, like, coach, I'm really struggling with this skill or this idea that you are asking me to do. I don't think I can deliver it. And then you could talk about it, and then once you could talk about it, you can really get some of that growth and improvement that you're looking for instead of having the players sort of hide out and hope that they don't get found out, which is what happens a lot in sport. And so I think, yeah, I just want to double down on what you're sharing because you're talking about a really tangible practice coaches can implement to build their self awareness and create culture all at once.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a, that's a great example there. Two more questions and then just a couple rapid fire questions before we get you out of here.

Here's my first question.

You know, for a coach that doesn't have access to a sports psychologist, maybe they're at the youth level, the high school level, maybe they're even at the college level and they just don't, they don't have access to someone like you, someone with these skills that you talked about. What are some practical ways, maybe other than some of the things we've talked about, where they can begin to help their athletes build mental skills and, and mental performance.

Yeah, great question. You know, so there are a couple wonderful books that have written. There's one called Sports Psychology for Coaches that's, that's a bit kind of like A textbook, but it's pretty practical and kind of walks coaches through some basic skills training you can do with your athletes, which I think is excellent. I'm trying to think. I think the other things to think about would be things like goal setting, for example, I think is a really pragmatic and applicable skill in sport and outside of sport, where most teachers, for example, and classrooms aren't really going to set academic goals with their youth athletes. And so if you as the coach can teach a player how to set a goal, monitor progress, develop in that way, I think can be really powerful in several domains of this athlete's life. You can. One place that you can really help is by monitoring your own language. And the reason I say that is we come to internalize a lot of the relationships that we have. And I know for myself, I can distinctly remember some of my youth coaches, some of whom I loved and can still hear in my ear during really rewarding times, and some who I struggled with and can also hear when things don't feel so great. And so I think there's a tendency to sort of, especially as an adult working with kids, you know, sort of like feel like it's all going to be fine because they're going to have 70 or 80 or 90 more years of life and they probably won't remember you. But the reality is, like people remember a lot more of what you say and how you make them feel than sometimes we give credit for. And so I think a place where you can really help an athlete self talk actually is by using good language that they can then adopt and internalize for themselves and start to hear their own inner coach essentially as your voice that's facilitating their growth and development. I think there are great videos out there and tactics you can use around breathing and centering that I think are really accessible for children of all ages. And really, I think the biggest thing is framing all of these skills as part of helping them master themselves and master their own development, I think is powerful so that they figure out I can translate this, say, centering skill from this performance to this test, right, where they still have these other competing demands a little different than my space where we just play games, we don't have players in school necessarily, or managing some of those other kind of performance elements. And so those would be a few places that I think would start. There's some wonderful resources out there. Again, sports psychology for coaches, the association for Applied Sports Psychology has some good resources for youth coaches. There's been some great work done by some practitioners in my space, sort of illuminating how coaches can apply what we do. And then of course, you know, if, if you can scrape up a little budget from parents, even just to have someone come give a presentation or introduce something else to the athletes, I think that's a great way to do it too.

Yeah, those are some good things in there. I would love just to hear a little bit about your thoughts on helping athletes navigate anxiety. You know, I don't think it's a secret that anxiety's on the rise and that, that our athletes and young people and, and I'm assuming that you're professional athletes as well, just experience a lot of anxiety. And sport is just a place that it can be really amplified because you're on display maybe for the whole world if you're a professional, or what feels like the whole world if you're a high schooler in front of all your friends or a college athlete, you know. And so I'd love to just hear your thoughts on how coaches can better help and support athletes navigate just that inevitable anxiety that they'll feel around performance often.

Sure. So I think there are a few approaches you can take. And first, I would start with a really probably oversimplified way of thinking about anxiety, but just bear with me for a minute. Right. So anxiety has been. Has gotten a lot of attention recently. I think the pandemic has exacerbated a lot of those concerns. But essentially anxiety boils down to repeatedly asking yourself what if questions or responding and evaluating your kind of internal sensations in a bit more of a judgmental, fearful way. So, like, oh, what does this mean? That my heart rate is speeding up? What does it mean? That getting warm or sweaty, and I think you're starting to look to the future a bit and kind of, to use a really basic sort of way of thinking of it, like, get ahead of yourself. Right. And so I think if you think of anxiety in that way, then there are a few things you can do as a coach. Right. So one would be practice with athletes before the performance, getting into the present moment. Right. So whether that's mindfulness, some sort of centering imagery, you know, there are a lot of ways you can sort of bring attention to the here and now, but you want to kind of detach from that future oriented thinking and concern and really just focus on what you can control, which is this moment. And so that leads to the second place where coaches can be helpful. And this is a common coaching saying that I think is wonderful, which is sort of focus on the controllables but stay dialed into the parts of the performance that are under you and your teammates control. Right? You can't control what the other team is doing when they show up. You can't control who's on the other team. You can't control what tactics they use. You can't control who's going to show watch the game. And so, you know, the more you can stay focused on and dialed into what you need to focus on, I think the better off we can be. And then there are some, you know, I think the last sort of element of managing this to the extent possible with coaches is putting some perspective around any particular performance. Right. And so again, that's not to minimize the importance of any particular event, but it is to be realistic about what does this event actually mean. Right. And so the best example I can give is from my work with college students is like you spend a lot of time with college students who are really worried about a particular test and that's great because it means that you care. Right? And so I don't want to take away the fact that you care about this performance, but what I do want to do is put that test performance into a larger context, which is to say that like literally nobody will ever ask you what you got on this test ever in your professional life. Right? And so it's not that it doesn't important, but it's not important. It's that I would encourage you to tap into the piece of this experience that's about you caring, right. And really embrace that and be present with that and be grateful for having something that you feel this passionately about. Like that's a wonderful thing. It makes life really rich and exciting. Right. If we didn't care about anything, like you wouldn't be motivated to go to practice. Life would be sort of dull. Like I don't want you to lose that, but it is to sort of not let that tip over into, you know, oh my gosh, this care must mean everything about me. It must mean everything about my world, my future. You know, I think managing that a bit can be helpful.

Absolutely. That's, that's really good. Some good stuff in there for coaches, a few rapid fire questions for you and then we'll let you share with the listeners where they can connect with you and get you out of here. And I'll let you decide. You can answer these questions reflecting on your coaching experience, coaching football or from your, you know, your sports psychology. What I mean, I still consider what you're doing coaching now, like it's Just on that. On that mental side, more so. So here's the first one. The most fun part of coaching is.

I know it's supposed to be rapid fire, but yeah, I think, gosh, the best part of coaching for me is when you see what you have worked on come to life during a game.

That's good. Yeah, absolutely. Here's the next one. I wish I would have known blank before I started coaching.

I think I wish I would have known how much of coaching really isn't about the game.

Yes. Yeah. That's so good. So good. So, so many other pieces to it. Here's the last one. I know I'm successful as a coach when.

That's a tough one. Yeah, gosh. I think I know I'm successful when I see other people achieve what they've set out to achieve.

That's really good. Yeah, I love that. That's special. Well, Dr. Auerbach, this has been awesome. Really valuable for coaches. Before we hop off, just share with them where they can connect with you.

Yeah. So you can find me on Twitter alexauerbackphd and then happy to connect on LinkedIn too. I think I'm pretty easy to find there. I don't do other social media, so those would be the two places.

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for the time. I really enjoyed it and I think coaches will too.

Yeah, the pleasure is mine. Thanks so much for having me.

Coaches, thanks for listening to this episode and thanks again to Dr. Auerbach for joining me. As always. If you enjoyed the episode and want a copy of the podcast notes, go to cuttingedgecoach.com podcast My Key Takeaway from this episode is the importance of establishing reflection habits. It's critical that we put in place some simple reflective practices, or AARs, to gain clarity around our team's performance and our own coaching performance. It has to become a habit. To build the habit, we need to start small, make it simple, and make it really easy. I love the three questions Dr. Auerbach shared. What worked, what didn't work, and what do we need to change going forward? If we want to grow and improve, we have to be reflecting. Hey, don't forget about the upcoming coaching zoom session with Douglamov and Stu Singer. You can click the link in the show details to learn more or sign up. And like I mentioned in the intro, if you want to learn more about how we serve coaches, go to cuttingedgecoach.com thanks for listening to the podcast.