The 2-Min Parent Meeting Activity That Prevents Co

0:00Hey, Coach, I ever feel like your team has the talent, but they have a hard time bouncing back from mistakes, they get in their own heads, and you're constantly riding the, which team is gonna show up tonight, roller coaster? I've been here, and here's the thing, this is not a physical training problem. It's a mental game problem, and you can train it without overhauling your entire schedule. In fact, I'm breaking all of this down, exactly how you can do it at our free training for coaches. It's called, quickly level up your team's mental game to create a winning edge this season. Inside it, you're going to learn how to help your players bounce back from mistakes so they can play free, how to get them to perform when it matters most, how to ditch the team drama, that's holding them back, and finally build the consistency you've been chasing. Physical training won't fix what's really costing you games. You're also gonna learn my mental training system that I use as a mental performance coach, and also as a head coach to my four time state champ, volleyball team, I'm laying it all out and how we do it in as little as 30 minutes a week or less. So go ahead and go to coachfreetraining.com to grab your spot at the training.

1:01That's coachfreetraining.com. I'll see you there. I have my pre-season parent meeting coming up, and it reminded me of an activity that I do at these meetings to help establish a better relationship with the parents of my athletes, and also avoid the drama that happens in the season, because I used to, when I was first coaching, kind of think parents should stay away. My job was to coach, and their job is to support no questions asked, and surprise, surprise, that added a lot more drama to my team and to the season. So I've shifted my approach over the years I've been coaching for 14 years, and now I do a couple of things differently, especially in the pre-season parent meeting, because that establishes the tone for your season, it invites parents, or gives them reason to not trust you. So one thing that I do is this little note card activity. I started changing how I ran these parent meetings, I started sharing a little bit more of my story. Yeah, it's great, you won four state championships, you played volleyball in college, all of that,

2:01but they wanna know, how are you gonna help my daughter? Do you care about her more than just what she can do on a volleyball court? They wanna connect with you as a person, and hear a little bit of your story, that's how they establish trust with you. So I started adding in a little bit more of that, that requiring me to be a little bit more vulnerable about why a coach, and again, it sounds just about the accolades, and all the things you've accomplished as a coach, because yeah, those are cool, but more like, what led you here? You know, you're gonna be spending more time with these parents' kids than they are during the season, so they wanna know and can they trust you. So I started sharing a little bit more of my story, why a coach in the mission and the vision of the program early, and what we value, a lot of that being the mental side of the game, and the emotional side of the game, and how I am passionate about athletes' mental health, and how we actually carve time out of practice to do that on a weekly basis. If you wanna learn about that specifically, because if you're like, I'm passionate about that too, then, but how do you do it? Then go to our free training. I cover all of it at coachretraining.com, really easy way to get started with how you can actually train them up to the end of the game, and makes a big difference when I share this with parents. They're like, yes, finally,

3:02somebody who is going to be talking about this, so besides me, you know, because they're there trying to help you out. They're like, you know, be more confident, like bounce back faster, but that car ride home is probably like making things worse for her, and making things worse for you to try and like coach through that situation. So go to coachretraining.com, I'll break it all down for you, but this other activity I started doing is I give all of the parents a note card, my parent meeting, and I ask them a couple of questions, and I'll tell you the questions, and that's how you like, why this actually helps. So the questions I kind of rotate through are, what do you hope for your daughter this season that has nothing to do with the stats in the playing time? Okay, so basically, what do you hope she takes from this season? Okay, so that's one question. Two is, what do I need to know as a coach about your daughter that it might not know? All right, so this just invites parents to share like anything going on, like is there just any other thing that I need to know about your daughter that will help me more effectively coach them? Okay, a third that I rotate through is is there a value at home that you are trying to communicate that I can reinforce here?

4:04Again, communicating that like we care about more than just the physical game, we care about your athlete as a person, and we want to reinforce values as well that you are, you know, that you're trying to establish at home. And so this did a lot actually because what it is communicating with your parents is that you're in a partnership with them that you care about their input. And of course, to your parenting, you're going to be talking about how your, you know, your expectations are on communication and boundaries are on communication. So all of that, but basically the signals to parents that like you care about their input, you are on a team with parents for the benefit of their athlete and you want to know, you want to know what's going on so that you can most effectively coach them. And I would have parents like, I would get so much insight from these cards, but also parents talk to me like after the meeting or on days later, they're like, I really appreciate you like asking those questions because, you know, you know, I need a coach to know this about my daughter and you know, it just opens up more lines of communication as well in a really healthy way.

5:05So you can steal that, you can do this little note card activity with your parents at your next parent meeting. It makes a big difference, but obviously make sure that you're also talking about things at your parent meeting like your mission, your values, how you actually enforce those values. So again, for us, we talk a lot about the mental side of the game and how important it is that athletes are confident and have skills to come back from mistakes, have skills to navigate pressure, expectations, comparison. Athletes aren't typically taught these skills and they're not born with them. And so we talk about how we do plug and play a lead mental game for teams. That's our mental training program. Again, if you want to learn more, go to coachfreetraining.com, I lay it all out. And then do things like this to show your parents that like you're on the same team and you are together for the benefit of the athlete. All right, hopefully this was helpful to you. Go to coachfreetraining if you want to learn more about mental training and head to the next video. And I'll see you there. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Coaches, remember to check out our free training to show you exactly how to level up your team's mental game in 30 minutes or less a week. No extra pep talks or fluff or another team bonding thing.

6:08You're gonna learn how to build mental toughness on your team so they can bounce back faster, cut the drama and get your team to perform when it matters most. So you can grab your spot at coachfreetraining.com. When you do and you show up live, I'm also giving you my mind care weekly check in. This is a really simple tool that I use every week to stay on top of my athletes, mental health and mindset without it being awkward or time consuming. So head to coachfreetraining.com to register for the training and grab that mind care weekly check in for free.