Performance coaches in esports? Show me the ROI.
What is performance coaching?
Performance coaching is a term thrown around quite a lot these days. In ancient Greece like 2000 years ago Socrates set the foundation of what modern performance coaching is.
Tim Gallwey, author of books about coaching in sport defines it as
“Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It’s helping them to learn rather than teaching them”.
So it’s like a wizard that helps players and members of the team look deep inside themselves and help them overcome any blockage that would impede their success.
A performance coach doesn’t look directly at results and judges people based on those, instead looks at how one can get better results, as we know that no matter what results you are achieving, there is always room to improve — how do you improve? That’s where performance coaching kicks in.
It therefore requires a mindset that is all about helping people’s growth, breaking down the blocks and barriers, unlock potential. It is not someone having a judgmental character: no matter how good their advice is, if someone judges you this person is probably not a performance coach. It is also not someone that will help you overcome the breakup with your significant other or the death of your red fish.
How do you know if you need a performance coach on your team?
Well I’m glad you asked because you need to measure your ROI on performance coaches.
This is how I think you should do this.
- Ensure that there is a track-record on progress, measure everything player related. A performance coach should be able to understand players in deep details. Helping sharpen their skills and identify and overcome weaknesses through guidance. Creating reports with quantified data can sound very minority report, but it is required. Track the progress, look for improvement week after week.
Kind of like on X-files at the end of each mission Dana and Mulder have to file written reports of their progress the same applies. Make sure this data is collected by the performance coach, not a third party. If the performance does not improve the performance coach isn’t doing its job right. - Measure one team’s happiness dealing with the performance coach. Performance and team spirit is very closely linked to success. If you lose all your games or if you are living in the house with someone you don’t trust things wont improve. The players within a team need to react positively to the introduction of a performance coach. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges, creating that strong bond, a unique glue that ties all the members of the team — players and their direct management. Given the fact they are probably young teenagers/ in their early 20s this is probably the hardest part, given also the differences among their backgrounds and upbringings. You could for example use the “temperature check” method at the end of the each day to deal with measuring team happiness.
- The ancient romans use to say “mens sana in corpore sano” which translates to healthy mind in healthy body. With the high chances of wrist injury, back pains, joint pains etc ensure performance coaching includes data about physical activity: minimizing pain and bad habits will do good for your team — by introducing correct sleeping, training, working and eating schedules is important. I therefore believe a performance coach should also work closely with other members of the coaching / managing team. If you hired a nutritionist or a personal trainer you want to see how your performance coach interacts with them: gathering more data and understand how to unlock the potential of its coachees shows that you’ve hired the right guy.
In summary:
- Track performance over time and see if having a performance coach makes the KPIs go up
- Measure your team’s happiness before, during and after the performance coach arrival
- Help the performance coach do well by supporting him. Help him help your team.
A good example of performance coaching that went well: TSM (Team SoloMid), one of the largest League of Legends esports organisations, did extremely well here after they hired a performance coach to focus on why they were not performing as expected. The outcome was them beating IMT (Immortals) and going to the finals, with IMT being undefeated the whole season and clearly the favorite to reach the finals.
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