A Practical Guide to Individual Development Plans in Sport
What is an Individual Development Plan (IDP)?
An Individual Development Plan can be known by several other titles including:
- Player Profile
- Player Development Plan
- Individual Performance Plan
- Profile Wheel
It’s a tool for managing player development and for encouraging collaboration between players & coaches:
- It's a profiling tool that gives an objective measure of a player’s position-specific abilities.
- It helps players understand their strengths & weaknesses and fosters growth through the creation of development objectives.
- It gives coaches a birds-eye view of all players' abilities across the team.
The process usually involves:
- Coach creates an IDP template for players to complete
- Player & coach both score the player’s profile
- Player & coach discuss the scores
- Player & coach collaborate on an action plan
What are the benefits of using IDPs?
1. Gets everyone on the same page
Using IDPs means there is no ambiguity, both players & coaches agree on the current level of abilities then collaborate on a plan to develop weaknesses and capitalise on strengths.
2. Identifies strengths & weaknesses across the team
By aggregating the information captured across all IDPs, coaches get a view of their team's super-powers to further exploit, as well as areas of weakness that need to be developed.
What types of skills should be included?
This can vary from profile to profile and really depends on what’s important to your team at the time.
Generally skills are grouped by development areas with the most common areas being:
Technical
The ability to consistently execute the technical skills required under pressure.
Example skills:
Tactical
Understanding of role within the team, combined with game understanding & decision-making.
Example skills:
In addition to the basics, coaches might consider the following to ensure well-rounded player development:
Physical
Conditioning the body to cope with the requirements of the sport at any level.
Example skills:
Nutrition
Disciplined approach to fuelling the body to ensure optimum performance.
Example skills:
Mental
Preparing the mind to cope with high performance both on and off the field.
Example skills:
Holistic
Achieving a life balance through recognition that good people make good athletes.
Example skills:
Performance Conversations
The most important part of the process is having regular 1-1 conversations with your players. The scoring process ensures there are some objective measures to frame the conversation, to allow coach & player to see where they are aligned and where there may be gaps in perceived abilities.
Creating an Action Plan
After discussing the player's profile and aligning on their scores the next step is to choose which areas to focus on to develop over a period of time.
It’s important to remember that this is not just about developing areas the player may be weaker in, but also further developing their ‘super strengths’ to continue building confidence.
There are manys way to approach this, but the key elements of any good objective are:
- Specific - target a specific area so everyone is clear on the goal
- Measurable - how will I know I am making progress and how will I know when the objective is achieved
- Has an end date - setting target dates helps accountability and motivation
- Outline what support might be required to achieve - the player may require additional support to achieve their objective
How often should I update an IDP?
This can vary depending on when you start the process, where you are in the season and what your goals are for the team.
A good way to think about this is to review the process at the beginning of each phase of your season, which will likely be when you shift focus on specific skills - that could mean pre-season, in-season and off-season.
Important things to consider
1. Supplement, don’t replace face to face conversations
This process is not done in isolation, the whole point is to get coaches and players talking.
"The good thing about my process is it gets you talking to the player and you get an agreement and understand what each of you require from the process."
2. The process must be player-led
The process must be driven by the individual - player-led, coach supported.
"The key lesson I think I learnt as a coach is that these are joint efforts led predominately by the player. That is when they are most effective as a coaching tool to maximise performance."
"If they are led by the coach often the individual will not see the benefit and no matter how sophisticated the wheel etc, little will in reality be achieved."
"At this point I get the player to own this and drive it himself. I tell him he reminds me about reviews and targets etc. Obviously I am in control of timings and targets too, so if he "forgets" I can keep the process moving and have that conversation about responsibility, ownership and self motivation."
3. Keep it flexible
Some players will be all-in, others will want to keep it brief.
"The key is to understand the individual and what you are trying to achieve and adapt accordingly… The key is being flexible!"
4. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time
But investing the time is critical to effective player development.
"Often coaches would agree with the value of using profiles but claim they didn't have the time, getting to know your players is actually critical as is benchmarking progress."
"It is time consuming and nobody knows better than me the time constraints of amateur and semi pro Rugby. But, if you are serious about player development, then this process in some form, must be done and kept on being done."