For coaches working in the sports and physical activity space:
There has been a subtle but significant shift at Coach Camp. The prompt “What do you want to talk about at Coach Camp?” has changed to “What are you working on now?”
Some folks might find the change a little challenging. After all, it’s a question that puts the spotlight on the creator. “What are YOU working on now?”
It’s a shift from passive to active, outside to inside, from talking to action. The coach is now at the centre – Coach Centric.
What about “Affirm” and “Challenge”? Isn’t that what we do as coaches? And if so, leading with a challenge puts us out of order.
No question the order in which we do things matters. Run, walk, crawl is not the same as crawl, walk, run. To affirm is to understand, the first step in any system or relationship building, a chance to “Get to the beat.”
There is an important question that comes from systems thinking: How did we get here?
Konstantin Stanislavski, a renowned theatre practitioner famed for creating engaging characters on stage, offered these three questions to his actors:
Who am I?
What just happened?
What do I want?
My hunch is that if you ask any coach what their coaching is for, you will get a whole host of answers. Some of which have nothing to do with coaching and everything to do with community, belonging, and status. Are we even talking about coaching or some other unmet need?
Coach education is based on the assumption that people understand what a coach does. My argument is they don’t. I had no idea; I thought being an expert was the same as being a coach.
“What are you working on now” is a question for coaches, not of coaches. If the task is to build a community of creative coaches, then the skill is to build an environment in which coaches are affirmed and then challenged. For some, yes, it’s going to feel like a challenge because it’s new, but for others, it’s their time to share what they are working on now.
Coach Camp doesn’t have the answers to Coach Development but it does have some of the questions. A shift towards action and learning through assessment—is what I’m trying to do going to work?
If this reconsideration of coach education and assessment sounds cumbersome, time-consuming, and idealistic, it is. Communities of practice that support people in finding and developing meaning within their roles don’t appear overnight.
And the payoff?
Open, curious, and ready to learn.
But risky, no! Talk of compliance, safety, and safeguarding are design features of any workforce development, not inhibitors of change. The principles of service, decency, and public life are prerequisites.
We can either match the skills to a task that we are working to understand or match the skills to a role we assume we understand – the choice is ours.