Teaching does not mean learning. Coaches need to check for understanding.

Like any job, there are skills of the trade. Too many coaches confuse knowledge with skill. Today, we want to look hard into one of the underdeveloped skills of coaching: checking for understanding.

As we all know, teaching does not mean learning. We must find ways to understand where the player is currently at so we can best push them to another level of performance.

Failing to appropriately check for the learner’s level of understanding is simply one of the worst mistakes that communicators/coaches make. And it starts with either a lack of questioning or using some variety of the two worst questions in hockey.

Let’s start by looking at a great and poor example of checking for understanding, brought to us by the Vancouver Canucks pre-season for the 2022-23 campaign:

OPTION #2

Player 1 - “Do you know what that means?”
Player 2 - “yeah”
Player 1 - “What does it mean?”
Player 2 explains correctly pic.twitter.com/NbEW68B5Z1

— Greg Revak, CFP® (@CoachRevak) October 1, 2022

Poor Question #1

“Any Questions?”

This blanket statement’s aim is to poll the room for misunderstanding or unclarity. It sometimes gains a token question of two, but really leaves a lot to be desired and rarely has its intended effect. Rather too often the room is silent because no one wants to hold up the meeting with their question.

Poor Question #2

“Does that make sense?”

To ask this, your explanation has to be truly terrible. Plus, you have to be teaching a very curious and courageous person for them to step up and ask for clarification. It’s easier to simple respond “Yes Coach” when asked if something makes sense, then to actually understand it, especially at younger levels.

The Issues

Both questions are broad and do no engage the audience to appropriately poll where the learner is at.

Better Options

I’ll leave room for you to come up with much better ways and questions. Here are some examples if you’re finding it hard to get going:

• What did you see?
• Can you explain back what I just said?
• What parts are confusing?
• What are we about to do?
• When should you do this?

Checking For Understanding

There are a million great questions that dive deeper and better engage the learner/listener. But why wait to be the teacher? Be an engaged student. Learners can do a better job of checking for understanding: “Am I understanding this correctly…(then say back what your understanding is from what the speaker/teacher just said)?”

Communication is the most important skill for any person or coach. In our endeavour to be excellent, laziness of the 2 worst questions in hockey won’t do.