Evaluations are one of the most powerful tools available to you as a sports administrator or leader. Knowing their actions will be measured is often encouragement enough for coaches to follow protocol or commit to certain cultural standards. It’s also a great way to positively reinforce what your coaching staff is doing right, and provide truthful and specific feedback on how they can improve.

The Coach Evaluation Questionnaires for parents and athletes, found below, serve as a companion tool to the Double-Goal Coach® Job Description. Once you’ve set behavioral expectations with the job description, and offered them training, it is important to find out how your coaches are doing from the perspective of the athletes and parents.

After you have collected and reviewed the coach evaluation forms, you will want to provide each coach with a summary of the information regarding his or her strengths and weaknesses. Providing this information to the coaches will help them to build upon their strong qualities and work to eliminate their less positive characteristics by the next season. This information can be conveyed by e-mail or by hard copy letter.

If you have a coach who receives some serious negative comments from parents and/or athletes, you should meet with that coach to discuss what needs to be done to improve the situation for next year. If you determine that the criticism from parents and/or athletes is valid and substantial, you should consider only allowing them to coach next season with a signed commitment to change. If a coach is not willing to change, he or she should not be allowed to coach in your organization in the future.

See the PDF below for more ideas on how you might present the evaluation summary to your coaches.