What is a Master Teacher?

The other day I had a brief, but insightful, exchange with Seth Greenberg. Coach Greenberg is a former NCAA coach and current ESPN analyst.

I thought his answer to my question was spot on. As a teacher myself, I think this applies to teaching ANYTHING. Being able to communicate in a way that everyone can understand and process. So how do we accomplish that? I'm certainly not a "master" and probably not qualified to answer this, but below are a few bullet points that I think help communicate with players:

• Teach in bullet points, not paragraphs. 
• This is something I stole from Kevin Eastman. Keep it short and simple. 
• Use common and consistent vocabulary.
• It's important to have key terms that you use to teach concepts. 
• Terms should always be the same for that concept. 
• For example, when talking about close outs say it the same way every time. For us, I use "sprint, drop, chop, high hands" every time I talk about closeouts. 
• Talk about what you WANT them to do, not what you don't want them to do. 
• Anyone can tell players what to not do, but that's not nearly as helpful as painting a picture of what they should do. 
• Talk about movements and how to perform those movements. 
• Use metaphors and mental imagery that helps them to visualize what you want. 

So there you go, some simple, yet effective, things that I think you can incorporate to communicate with your players. I would love to hear feedback on ways that other people communicate effectively with their players.