The Art of Team Coaching - How Sun Tsu would Coach Coaches

This document takes Sun Tzu's 2500 year old treatise and applies it to the management, guidance and development of sports teams. Within are guidelines to seasonal and situational strategies, broad and specific tactical actions, player and staff management, and opponent interdiction and control.

To study this material properly, first read the words of Sun Tzu's Art of War in ITALIC. To learn its particular application in team sports, read the indented commentary. Then stop and think.

As a coach, consider the two versions and contemplate how these can be utilized within your own approach to leadership. There are many hidden aspects buried within the words that are worthy of careful thought.

How do the ideas apply to your situation now? If you could have known about this in the past, what changes should you have made? What lessons can now be learned from prior mistakes in judgment? What new concepts can now be evaluated? Are there any adjustments or modifications needed to be made on your assumptions, presumptions, or truisms?

Make sure you have a pencil and notepad as you read through this book. There will be a lot of re-evaluation of bedrock doctrine and many of beliefs that might have become dogma. And this is not considering the many tactical ideas that will flash and flit across your consciousness.

This material will modify the ways you view things and force a certain amount of reconsideration of previous accepted truths. These will be your personal discoveries. The nice thing about this process is that once the material is absorbed, it will be useful throughout your entire competitive lifetime.

The book should first be studied by the Head Coach who will gather and glean what is important to him. Then it should be shared with staff. At staff meetings, the Head Coach can then know who among his people are the sharpest and most attentive to the team's success. These are the individuals who should then be given more responsibility.