Robbie Neilson admits he’s trying to take a step back from the amount of hands on coaching he does at Hearts.
Neilson admitted that he prefers to have different voices speaking to the players as much as possible so that when it's time for him to make his point, he’ll be listened to.
And this is where assistants Gordon Forrest and Lee McCulloch are invaluable.
The duo moved to Tynecastle with Neilson after working with him at Dundee United and are heavily involved on the training pitch.
The manager still has an influence and gets involved around half of the time, but he's making a conscious effort to observe more rather than get his hands dirty too often.
He explained: “I’m on the turf quite a bit but I’m trying to take a step back. It’s one of the reasons I brought in Gordon and Lee in because sometimes I think you can be too hands on.
“If you're talking all the time, the manager just talks and talks and talks. When he comes to that key moment when you need to tell somebody something important, the players are bored of what you’re saying already.
“So I’m trying to take more of a step back but I’d say I still coach about 50 per cent of the time.”
Neilson is also taking ideas from other sports.
Hearts train in close proximity to the Scottish national rugby team at their Oriam training base, so Neilson often takes the opportunity to chat with coach Gregor Townsend.
And the now traditional touchline music during warm ups was another thing picked up from the oval ball game.
He told Open Goal : “The Scottish rugby team train beside us at Oriam so we nicked it off them!
“I speak to Gregor Townsend and his staff now and again. They’re good lads. You speak to people in football all the time and you talk about the same things; other teams ansd what they’re doing but everyone is doing the same stuff. Everyone’s done the pro licence.
“SO I speak to these boys and the guys at the cricket as well, which I quite like. I don’t know anything about the sport but I like speaking to them to get different ideas.
“Gregor’s brilliant as well with the rugby.”
