Review Is Continuous

Last week, I wrote about British & Irish Lions head coach Andy Farrell.

This week, I want to write about his opponent on the Lions tour, Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt (who is also Farrell’s predecessor with Ireland).

Schmidt oversaw the golden era of Irish rugby, which saw the nation win three Six Nations Championships, be ranked #1 in the world for the first time in their history, and record a victory against New Zealand for the first time in their history.

In his book, Ordinary Joe, Schmidt speaks candidly about some of the review tools he uses with his teams in an effort to gather information from the playing group.

Schmidt says, “For me, review is continuous and should start informally with self-review and peer review. We have tried different methods of collecting players’ thoughts, and one of these was called the Quickfire Continuum”.

Tool #1

Explaining how the Quickfire Continuum was used, Schmidt says:

“First, the players assessed themselves. Then they assessed the team. Next, each player was handed a new sheet with a different player’s name on it, so he could offer some feedback to that player before, finally, choosing a player that they’d like to give some feedback to and repeating the exercise.”

Schmidt says that after the reviews are complete, each players receives a bar graph of the results, which clearly indicate any inconsistencies between their own perceptions and the perceptions others had of them.

These are then used, alongside video clips, as conversation starters in an attempt to help players develop and provide more consistent value to the team.

Like any psychological or self-reflection tool, you can argue until the cows come home about the categories that are chosen, the way it is presented, or the validity of the outcomes. In my mind, the results that are produced are less important than the conversations they generate, and the consistent language they enable.

Schmidt gives an example of a player who had a large discrepancy between his own self-awareness rating, and how his teammates rated him for self-awareness. “I’m not sure we solved the dilemma, that perhaps he didn’t know himself as well as he thought,” Schmidt says, “but at least we got to start the conversation.”

Tool #2

Schmidt also details his format for post-series reviews, which he has used after major championships or tours abroad.

In this case, the review was as simple as responding to three questions:

1. In what ways do you feel you added value to the squad during the tournament?

2. What can you be working on to add further value?

3. What worked well in the environment and what do you think could be changed or added to help us to do things better?

The order of the questioning is important, and their design serves an underlying purpose.

“The questions always start with what the player has contributed. If they can first reflect on what they did well and what they added, or what more they could have added, then that hopefully becomes their default mechanism: to first look at themselves and then at what others can do to help them,” Schmidt writes, before adding perhaps the most important piece of all:

“It’s also important that information gathered can be acted on, and not just filed or forgotten.”

Cody’s Notes

• What information do you have from your players that has been filed and forgotten?

• Whichever tools you’re using: are they generating meaningful conversations about performance?

• Could your questions/prompts be designed in such a way that they become a default mechanism for thinking…from self to others?

• Are you reviewing your program continuously?