Recently I have conducted a workshop, "Becoming An Effective Team Captain" for my school's athletes and I would like to share one point about effective communication to all my tennis friends.

Whether you are a tennis coach, tennis player or tennis lover, there will be a time where you need to give feedback to another person. When it comes to giving negative feedback, things can be more tricky than you think.

Say for example, if you want to tell your player to improve their tennis serve after observing that they keep double faulting in their game, how would you feedback to the player such that he/she remains motivated to train harder?

If you say, "Hey John, you serve really suck. you double faulted 10 times in the match. Go and practice your serve now!" Do you think it will help? How will the player feel?

Try the sandwich method to keep your feedback positive. That is, say something positive, followed by corrective feedback or negative information and then finish with a positive.

For example, "Hey John, I really like your power on the first serve. However I think you should add more spin to your second serve so that it is more consistent. Try to toss the ball more to your left and aim higher. I really like your serve potential"

When providing negative feedback, speak to the individual away from other teammates or coaches and try to take out the personal aspects of feedback. Rather, work to make the feedback constructive and focus on what they can do to improve that action.

I hope you can apply this to your daily life a well and not just in tennis context.

Latest update... if you visit my website today , you will notice a 1 minute introductory video on my home page. This is the first tennis video that I have created and I hope to start producing more tennis video lessons in future to help my tennis friends.

Let me know what you think of the video and give me some feedback on what kind of tennis tips you would like me to share with you.

I will look forward to your reply.

To your tennis success!

Joel

Founder,

www.improve-your-tennis.com

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