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"Coaching Positive" for Team Success

Tony DiCicco is the most successful coach in women's soccer history — winning more games than any other coach in the world. In July 1999, he led the U.S. women's soccer team to a glorious, hard-fought victory over the superb Chinese team to win the 1999 Women's World Cup — the greatest achievement possible in worldwide soccer. How did he do it? What winning techniques did he use to coach his team to greatness? His answer is what he calls "coaching positive" — a method that all supervisors and team leaders can use to help improve the performance of their teams.

• Challenging Rather than Chastising.
• Catching Them Being Good.
• Building Team Unity.
• Bringing it Together.
• Note to Federal Managers, Supervisors, and Team Leaders.

Challenging Rather than Chastising.   When DiCicco took over as coach of the U.S. women's team in 1994, he found that the team responded exceptionally to challenges, but terribly to chastisement. Team members actually played worse if he focused on their faults and criticized their game. But when he set goals for them— challenging them to continuously improve—the team outperformed every time. As a result, where most teams review videotapes of their games to pick out errors, his team reviews game tapes to see what they were doing right. If poor performance becomes an issue with an individual team member, he handles it in a constructive manner in private. He has found that team members will most frequently rise to a coach's challenges and respond poorly or inconsistently to scolding.

Catching Them Being Good.  Building team players' self esteem is another aspect of "coaching positive." DiCicco highlights only the players' best moves and winning decisions—a method he calls "catching them being good." He bolsters individual confidence at every opportunity. In preparation for World Cup competition, DiCicco had a videotape created for each player that showcased her outstanding skills choreographed to the music of her choice. These tapes were called "imaging" tapes and helped each team member view herself as a world-class, winning athlete. At first, team members only viewed their own tape, but to recognize everyone's talents, DiCicco eventually showed the tapes to the whole team. By watching each imaging tape as a group, team members were being recognized by the group for their skills. It also promoted confidence in each other. Coaches who privately and publicly recognize their team members as valuable assets to the team help people feel good about themselves and help improve performance.

Building Team Unity.   Along with challenging team members and building their self esteem, coaching positively includes building team unity. Team unity occurs when team members trust and respect each other, when they have common goals, and when they have confidence in themselves as individuals and as a team. One way DiCicco helps to create team unity is by running the team through mental exercises. For example, he assigned the team certain tasks that could only be completed if the whole team worked together. These tasks became team-building exercises and taught the team the value of working together to achieve a goal. In addition, DiCicco emphasized team unity by requiring that roommates be switched at every stop while traveling to prevent cliques from forming.

Bringing it Together.   By "coaching positive," DiCicco was able to develop a confident, winning team that demonstrates an intense level of unity. Even the big-name performers of the team recognize the value of good teamwork. Mia Hamm, the top goal scorer in the world, told Newsweek magazine that "People don't want to hear that I'm no better than my teammates. They want me to say, 'I'm this or I'm that,' but I'm not. Everything I am I owe to this team."

Note to Federal Managers, Supervisors, and Team Leaders. "Coaching positive" does not mean managers, supervisors, and team leaders should ignore inadequate performance. A Federal supervisor should always address poor performance when it surfaces. But one way to improve the performance of all team members is to challenge them, recognize them for what they do right, and build unity within the work group or team.

Originally published August 1999.