Coach Education – the tail of two futures
By: Kurt Ewald Lindley
Tags: Sports Coaching, Education, Technology, Professional Development, Learning And Development

Coach Education – the tail of two futures

Working with Sport Scotland is always a pleasure and the challenge Derek O’Riordan (and team) set myself (and Steve McQuaid/Andy Grant) always grows me (us)…. This session was no different…

In this session Sport Scotland were clear, they were looking for a level of disruption, within the context of offering their ‘Coaching Network’ the freedom to think beyond what they currently knew to be coach education… delegates were charged with this opener…

“How often do we step back and think about the role we play as a network in developing coaching practice? Imagine having the time and space to think about what coaching could be within your environment, what it could look like in the future and what your role is within that?”

42 people now sat in front of me wondering what was about to happen…. And I didn’t really tell them, other than the above quote no outcome was shared. It had been agreed that ambiguity may well be of value in this space. Having some level of ‘unknown’ we knew would make some people quite uncomfortable and this was something they were going to have to manage. Creating ‘feeling’ within your delivery can be a valuable asset. Even if it does mean you are uneasy as a learner.

“how often are the learners we work with made to feel uneasy by our delivery because we know where its going but they don’t. Its valuable that we get to feel this same level of discomfort form time to time in order for us to calibrate our future work”

Poking the bear…

In my family we have a concept known as ‘poking the bear’ – now this is when you go and disturb a situation that is happily going along without your interference – there is often no reason to ‘Poke the bear’ but for some reason we do and BANG we break things and a fall out occurs… why did we poke the bear…. we should have have left well alone.

However today was a day to ‘Poke the Bear’ so I showed people this excerpt from an article, damming coaching education, for all its good intentions, it wasn’t working when seen through the eyes of this author…. (yes I knew today I was less likely to make friends….)

“Expensive, Inflexible, Overly Technical with Little REAL Impact – HOW DARE YOU!!!!”

Just a contemplation – could this be the case for learning in other contexts, I’m talking schools, colleges, work place learning etc…

Possible Future – the people rule

Scene setting – Imagine if coaches no longer came to you for their learning needs. Consider what you provide and think are they able to get this elsewhere for less, or for free, with and from their own communities (their ‘trusted peers’).

The story – as a society we have stopped trusting institutions. To paraphrase Rachel Botsman (pictured below along with some of her key slides depicting this story) we have lost our desire to trust in ‘the establishment’. Due to things like the ‘Volkswagen Emissions Scandal’, ‘News International Phone Hacking Scandal’ and ‘Tax Evasion’ by larger companies (and some individuals) we have lost our trust in places like banks, newspapers, insurance companies, lawyers etc.

The people we were supposed to go to for safe advice or guidance or help have abused our investment in them and this is now having a wider knock on effect to other industries. As a National Governing Body of Sport or a guiding partner origination you are one of these said institutions where trust may well have begun to erode….