Coach Developer Profile

Lawrie Woodman

Lawrie has been at the forefront of coach development in Australia. He played a major role in the roll out of the internationally recognised National Coaching Accreditation Scheme (NCAS).

As director of the Australian Coaching Council, Lawrie saw the implementation of major programs to assist NSOs in their development. These included: coaching athletes with a disability, the national officiating program, a coach scholarship program for emerging performance coaches, and elite coach conferences.

In 1994, Lawrie drove a year of coach recognition and celebration with the Year of the Coach initiative.

A hallmark of Lawrie’s directorship was the provision of a high level of support to NSOs in all facets of the design and delivery of courses.

CURRENT ROLE

Freelance coach developer mentoring some individual community coaches. Chair of the Australian Coaching Council.

Experience relevant to coach development

50 years as a teacher, coach and coach educator, including 35 years developing and delivering national level coaching development programs. Formal positions included Director of the Australian Coaching Council, Performance Coordinator at the AIS, High Performance Manager at Athletics Australia and Coaching Manager at the Australian Football League.

Awarded an OAM in 2021 for services to sport coaching and development.

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

I am a physical educator by profession and an experienced teacher. My philosophy can be summed up as working to inspire lifelong enjoyment of sport and physical activity. Coaches, and the way they deliver sport experiences, are the main influencers of that outcome.

Developing and delivering appropriate coach education and development is therefore crucial.

BELIEFS ABOUT COACHING

Coaching is a combination of connected endeavours, including:

  • Preparing athletes/participants for competition. Helping people get better. Creating a learning environment to assist people to improve and master the skills and tactics of their sport.
  • The quality of the participants’ experiences is directly dependent on the quality of coaching.
  • The coach is the shop front of a sport. Providing a positive experience is critical so participants will come back – next practice session, next week, next season.
  • Coaches are very influential in the quality of the club environment, determining whether it is a welcoming, enjoyable, learning environment – “A place where people want to be.”

“The coach is the shop front of a sport.

THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL COACHING
  • Forming relationships and teaching.
  • Understanding motivations:
  • Your own motivation – why are you coaching?
  • Knowing your athletes’ motivations for participating – why are they here?”. Then meeting their motivations (and your own). This will include fun and enjoyment, mastery of skills, social – being with others and a feeling of belonging, competition, and success.
  • Teaching – utilising a structured coaching process to deliver your craft – planning, goal setting, implementation, observation, analysis, feedback, and review.
  • Patience and resilience.
  • Curiosity – being a long-term active learner, evidence seeker, and getting better.
  • Values and beliefs – standing for something
TAKING COACH DEVELOPMENT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

The underlying theme is assisting people to become better coaches – ensuring they have up-to-date coaching skills.

There is a wide “matrix” of learning and development opportunities available at all levels today. Coach development can be much more individualised. Attending courses, either face to face or on-line, provided by sporting organisations and other educational agencies, and gaining formal qualifications will remain a major element. Seeking out on-going development opportunities is crucial to continued improvement.

The starting point for a coach development program is the coach knowing where they want to get to as a coach and understanding their starting point – “Where are you now?” What do they believe they need to bridge the gap? What is their next step? This where coach developers can play a crucial role in helping the coach with these questions and facilitating an environment which assists them along the way.

Continuous reflection on their coaching activities and progress with a view to ongoing improvement is a key to progress. Like athletic performance, this will not be a linear experience.

Ongoing coach support at club or association level will be a critical factor of future effectiveness. This can be delivered in different ways – mentors, coach developers, club development programs with components that include the coaches. Clubs may rely on their coaches to deliver expected major outcomes of these programs to their athletes.

TOP TIPS FOR COACH DEVELOPERS
  1. Coach Development has a lot in common with coaching – “coaching the coaches”. Many of methods and skills used by coach developers will be the same as those used in effective coaching.
  2. It starts with the qualities of being persistently curious and an active learner. The first step is to get involved – gaining experience; practicing coach development.
  3. Seek out formal and informal opportunities to deliver coach development activities, including presenting at courses within sporting organisations, clubs and leagues.
  4. Start building relationship with coaches you are working with and determine what they are expecting from the relationship. Initially offer what the coach is seeking and then broaden their mindset to explore other elements.
  5. Facilitate the implementation of a community of practice with other coach developers to share ideas, provide motivation and offer support. Do something similar with the coaches you are developing.

Assessment FAQs – Part 2

IS RELIABILITY THE SAME AS VALIDITY?

Assessment involves trade-offs no matter how you cut the cake. More reliability and less validity. More validity and less reliability.

ASSESSMENT: The big RELIABILITY – VALIDITY trade-off

It’s common to hear definitions of reliability and validity (see graphic above) when discussing assessment. Most times they leave me thinking, Well, so what! What are the implications of this?

Not familiar with the terms? Have a look at this.

So, let’s dig a little deeper. What does it mean for the coach developer and how we go about assessment?

All assessment involves trade-offs (1,2). Too much time on summative assessments (3) robs the coach of practice time. If we assess one area of a course, we forgo the opportunity to assess another area in more depth. Aim for a more rigorous assessment and there is a danger of making it all too complicated and time consuming and costly.

The nature of assessment forces the coach developer to accept a trade-off of some kind. No matter what assessment path they take. There are no solutions, only trade-offs. (1).

MENTAL MODELS TO THE RESCUE

Given this dilemma (only trade-offs available), it’s important that we revisit our mental models (MM) that underpin coach learning. These models are based on the observations, beliefs, and values we have about the kind of learning experiences and outcomes for our coaches.

For example, our mental models might be underpinned by:

  • A desire for simplicity
  • An understanding of how volunteers would like to receive their training and their attitude towards being assessed.
  • A consideration of whether summative assessments add value for particular groups of coaches.
  • The time available and the suitability of the CD workforce.
  • The opportunity cost of one method over another. Where do we focus to get the biggest bang for the buck?
  • Beliefs about the importance of coaches learning in a practical context with an emphasis on ‘whole coaching’.

A theme running through these points is summed up by the saying: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Be open to balancing competing forces regarding the choice of assessment.
The mental models you choose might be underpinned by different assumptions, beliefs, and values to those in the example above. Particularly as you take your context into consideration.

What would you include in your list of MM attributes?

THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIABILITY & VALIDITY

The graphic below draws together some of the ideas outlined above.

Multiple combinations of reliability and validity are possible. In the graphic all four arrows are within striking distance of the bull’s eye. That is, relatively high validity. But notice the spread is broad, leading to relatively low reliability.

“The key thing in assessment is being clear about why you are assessing, what conclusions you want to draw and how well the evidence supports the conclusions.”   Dylan Wiliam

TAKE OUTS
  • Reliability is a pre-requisite of validity.
  • There is always a tension between reliability and validity.
  • Trade-offs between the two are commonplace.
  • More reliability is not necessarily better!
  • There is no such thing as a valid assessment task. Validity is a property of inferences based on the assessment outcomes, just as a picture cannot tell the whole story of an event. (2)
  • A lot of what we do in coach development involves outcomes that are not specific, measurable, or easily observable.
  • Coaching is a people business, and this calls for CDs and coaches to exercise their professional judgement. This often means making judgements by stepping back to look at the big picture – as ‘fuzzy’ as it may be.
  • The context and prior achievements of the coaches will determine the type of assessment adopted.
  • In some instances (e.g., volunteers, advanced coaches), the assessment might be embedded (3) into the learning with no formal summative assessments.
References
  1. Christodoulou, Daisy. (2024) Designing the Perfect Assessment System, Part 3, The are no solutions, only trade-offs. The expression was originally used by the writer and critic Thomas Sowell. Daisy’s article is available here.
  2. Wiliam, Dylan. (2020) How to Think About Assessment, in Donarski, Sarah, and Bennett, Tom, Assessment: An Evidence-Informed Guide for Teachers, John Catt.
  3. Northern Illinois University, Formative and Summative Assessment. Available here.
  4. Bjerede, Marie (2015). Embedded Formative Assessment: Tests without Stress. Available here.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to reviewers Lawrie Woodman, Andrea Woodburn, Melanie Schembri Waite, and Dawn Ho.

Plain Speaking: Coaching in an Evolving Sports Landscape

“It’s about communication and relationships. Understanding how a coach’s ideas, through their words, turns into an athlete’s movements.” 

Nick Winkelman, in The Language of Coaching.

Last year, to keep current in advances in coaching, I invested some time into exploring recent research into coaching, skill acquisition and coach development – podcasts, research papers, articles, books and social media leads.

Recent podcasts featuring Stuart Armstrong, Chris Cushion, Dan Abrahams, Vern Gambetta, Cody Royle, Stuart McMillan and Rob Gray got me thinking more deeply about my own paths in coaching and coach education and some of the factors I believe are important for effectiveness.

Some of the major changes in recent years have been in the language of coaching. As well as novel approaches, these changes include some re-labelling, presenting older concepts in new light, and a change in focus from coach “education” to coach “development”. In any case, plain language use has taken a hit.

In 2025, I am (half) expecting to see a headline or advertisement, which reads something like this.

“Improve your coaching in 2025 through increased affordances, in an ecological dynamics framework, using non-linear pedagogy and game sense activities, incorporating a constraints-led approach and differential learning, ensuring perception-action coupling, with some inbuilt random perturbations, in an athlete-centred environment”...

While these phrases and concepts are well covered and the value of each approach or element is explained in the literature and in podcasts, I wonder how it all resonates with community coaches? They might recognise the phrases “coaching”, “game sense activities” and “athlete-centred”. After that, who knows?

As a long-time physical educator, coach and coach educator, I have learnt much along the way and been influenced by many innovative pioneers in these fields. I have had the privilege of learning directly from many early innovators in teaching and coaching in Australia, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, including:

Bert Willee (University of Melbourne) – group and activity organisation and management, and the use of direct instruction, including command style

Brian Nettleton (University of Melbourne) and Eric Worthington (Australian Soccer Federation) – learning outcomes, principles of play, small-sided games, conditioned games, “freeze-replay”, challenging players to find solutions.

David Parkin, Brian Douge & David Wheadon, (VFL/AFL), Rick Charlesworth (Hockey Australia), Patrick Hunt (AIS Basketball), – wholistic approach to coaching, relationship building, setting and demanding standards and expectations, a strong coaching philosophy.

Frank Pyke (University of WA) and Dick Telford (AIS) – practical application of science to coaching

Rod Thorpe – Game-sense approach

Damian Farrow (AIS/Victoria University) – constraints-led approach, perception-action coupling.

They, and many others, influenced my approach to the art and science, or craft, of coaching in various ways.

Over time, compounding of education courses, learning from others, trial and error and a lot of practical coaching has led me to absorb some critical principles for coaching effectiveness. I have taken a team sport, invasion games perspective in outlining these principles.

PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS

There is no one way to coach which guarantees success. Regardless of the terminology you use, whatever underlying theory, philosophy, system, or coaching style, there are some key considerations underpinning effectiveness.

Basic requirements – you must have:

• Knowledge of the sport and movement
• Understanding of motivations – knowing your players, yourself and your WHY? Clarifying what is important to you (your values) helps you frame your coaching philosophy which guides your decision making
• Capacity to establish and nurture relationships
• An environment (organisation and set up) that drives learning and skill acquisition
• A coaching process
• A coaching style

ALL COACHING ENVIRONMENTS ARE DIFFERENT

Apart from the individual characteristics you, as a coach, bring to the task, the first principle is that all coaching environments are different – unique teams, specific environments, individual differences in players and staff. Every practice activity will therefore be different, each challenge presented to players will differ, every decision is unique, and every skill repetition will vary, at least slightly, and may deliberately be vastly different.

USE A CLEAR COACHING PROCESS

The key to success, whatever coaching style you use, is to have a clear coaching process.

The coaching process is used to create an environment where players learn to play to the game plan and eventually to be able to perform it at a consistently high level. The coach, with input from the players, determines what is required of the players to execute the game plan successfully. Understanding this and the current ability of each player allows the coach to plan practice activities to develop the players’ abilities to deliver individually, as specific groups, and as a total team.

So as a coach, what do you do?

Firstly, plan your practices. Plan them according to your game plan and long term strategy, the time of the season and the next game or competition. Include each practice activity, its purpose and specific learning outcomes.

Organise the activity with appropriate rules and conditions (constraints), so players (and staff) can perform the required actions or achieve specific outcomes, and the coaches can easily observe what is occurring.

Initiate the activity, then observe and coach.

Observation – is the key coaching skill in the process. It allows the coach to see, analyse and evaluate the players’ performances in the practice. This where the real teaching element of coaching begins. A common call is to “coach what is front of you”. You have to see something to coach to do this effectively. It depends on the quality of your observation and analysis – what are you seeing? Does it require change or some other intervention? If yes, what do you do – stop the activity or keep it going, change the activity in some way, provide individual or group feedback, pull one or more players out for specific individual attention? It depends on what you see and what you can do about it. And, if something is not working as planned or achieving its purpose, change it.

Coaches should also assist players to become good observers looking to see critical features and cues of movement or game play evolving in front of them. Developing these attentional skills will also assist players to be better at driving their own learning.

All these steps must be in place – knowledge of the game and (your) game plan, the level of your players, planning of practice, organisation of the activities, observation and analysis of performance – for effective teaching and learning to occur. Every element of the process is underpinned by effective communication.

FITTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Following is an example for team invasion games of how it can all fit together.
Game-based activities have always been central to my approach to coaching, initially learnt from my PE courses and observing soccer coaching practices and applying it to Australian Football – for example Pyke & Woodman – The Grid System for Skill Practice Australian Football. I believe players come to practice “to play the game”, so activities should be as related and representative as possible. I have continually looked for opportunities to incorporate games into all elements of practice sessions – warm ups, skill (technical activities), style of play, tactics, conditioning activities-

USING GAMES IN PRACTICE

If you have a good understanding of your sport and the level of your players, there are potentially hundreds of game-related activities, variations and progressions available to you – limited only by your imagination.

What is a game?

The basic elements of a game are:

1. A target or goal of some kind; and essential rules (may be only two or three) to define how it is, or can be played by an individual
2. Add an opponent – can be played by two or more
3. Add a team mate (to one or both sides) – can be played by three or more

Each step increases the “representativeness” of the game to the sport

Starting with a ball, a target, an opponent and a team mate, you open the possibility of dozens of activities which allow the practice of all the elements of a sport and its principles of play.

Overlay this with conditions, or “constraints”, and you multiply the number of available activities for your sessions.

A game-based practice session might include some or all of:

1. Pre-session technique practices
2. Warm-up game
3. Shooting game
4. Skill games
5. Style of play games: Focusing on attack, defence or transition – coaching both sides of the ball.
6. conditioning circuit
7. Skill game under fatigue
8. Post session reflection on the overall session and each activity – What worked well? What did you have to change? What would you do differently when using the same activity next time?

In coaching games, you can use multiple teaching styles or approaches – command, direct instruction, demonstrate and practice, peer feedback, guided discovery – the whole Mosston Spectrum if you want to. All styles have their uses and benefits, and effective coaches use a range of them over the duration of a session, practice block or season. With experience, coaches can choose what is most appropriate for a particular activity at that time.

Current research shows there is a lot developing around skill acquisition, coaching styles and methods, and coach development. A new language, perhaps jargon, is growing around it, at the expense of plain language. These developments have important implications for coaching, including coach education and development. Getting people started is one thing, helping them to a high level of competence in their specific coaching role is another.

 
SUGGESTED READING

Gilbert, W., (2017) Coaching Better Every Season, Human Kinetics

Gould, D. & C. Mallett (Eds), Sport Coaches’ Handbook, Human Kinetics

Gray, R., (2021) How We Learn to Move, Independent

Launder, A., (2001) Play Practice, Human Kinetics

Lemov, D., (2020) The Coach’s Guide to Teaching, John Catt Educational

Musston, M. & S. Ashworth, (1990) The Spectrum of Teaching Styles: From Command to Discovery, Longman

Royle, C., (2021) The Tough Stuff, Independent

Winkelman, N., (2021) The Language of Coaching, Human Kinetics

Worthington, E., (1974) Teaching Soccer Skill, Lepus Books

Lawrie Woodman

Lawrie Woodman has a broad background in coaching development and high performance sport management. He was the inaugural director of the Australian Coaching Council, then joined the Australian Institute of Sport high performance team. Lawrie has also worked for the Australian Football League and Athletics Australia. He is currently an independent coach developer consultant.