Coaching Young Athletes

Tips for Developing a Coaching Self-Evaluation Form

Evaluating an athlete’s performance is what we do all the time as coaches, but how often do you evaluate your own performance?

Monitoring and evaluating your own performance is crucial for ongoing improvement as a coach.

A valuable tool for achieving this is a coaching self-evaluation form that can be used following your coaching sessions.

Used regularly, this coaching self-evaluation form can:

• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses
• Highlight areas for improvement
• Track and monitor your performance
• Be a source of motivation and reward for you
• Be used as a tool to assist you in planning your coaching sessions

You can individualize your coaching self evaluation form to feature what you see as important in your own performance as a coach.

How to Create Your Own Coaching Self Evaluation Form

1. Make a list of the coaching behaviours that you believe contribute to a good coaching performance. For example, one may be “Listening to my athletes”.
2. Edit the list to include your top 10-15 behaviours.
3. Formulate this list into a series of statements to which you will be able to award yourself a number ranking according to how you assess your performance e.g. “I listened to my athletes”.
4. Assign your list a number ranking system that you feel most comfortable with e.g. 1 to 5 or 1-10.
5. If you like, at the bottom of the form, include a space for an aggregate ranking score.
6. End your evaluation form with the following two questions:

•  One thing that I did really well during this session was…
• One thing that I want to remember for next time is…

Example of a Coaching Self Evaluation Form:

Below is a list of the questions that I have used on a coaching self evaluation form.

I ranked the following characteristics from 1 to 5, where 1 = “never” and 5 = “all the time”.

1. I listened to my athletes
2. I was well-prepared for the session
3. I was positive
4. I gave effective feedback
5. I was enthusiastic
6. I kept my cool
7. Athletes were treated equally
8. Athletes had good learning experiences
9. Athletes enjoyed the session
10. Athletes were enabled to make decisions
11. Athletes were given optimum practice time
12. The session was individualized
13. I used questioning effectively
14. I used body language well 

TOTAL SCORE (Out of 70):

One thing that I did really well during this session was:

One thing that I want to remember for next time is:

 How to Use Your Coaching Evaluation Form

1. Fill in the form as soon as possible following your coaching session.
2. Re-read your self evaluation prior to planning your next session. Take particular note of those areas that you identified as requiring improvement and the “one thing” that you wanted to remember for next time. Address these items in your session plan.
3. On an ongoing basis, monitor trends and your best “Total Score”.
4. Periodically review the form, and update as required.

How do you evaluate your own coaching performance?

Can you add to the above list? Have you used a something similar before? What works for you? Let me know by leaving a reply/comment or by using the contact details below.

Recommended reading

7 Keys to Being a Great Coach – Allistair McCaw

There are links on this page from which Coaching Young Athletes can earn a small commission. This adds no cost to you but helps to keep this blog sustainable. I really appreciate if you do purchase through my links. Thanks for your support. Darren

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.