Archives for Coaching

Generational Differences – Not Bad, Not Good, Just Different

An important characteristic of those whom you are coaching, educating, or leading whether you are a coach, teacher, or employer are generational differences. The students who are graduating from college are now entering a workforce in which there could be four or more generations working for the same company. This is challenging and at the same time exciting. However, it is important to confront two fundamental assumptions that each generation makes about the younger generations entering a given organization. Cam Marston, in his 2007 book, Motivating the ‘What’s in it for Me’ Workforce, highlights these two assumptions. First, the senior
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Leaders Need to Know Self

In my last post, I introduced the five basic questions at the foundation for the Collaborative Coaching and Leadership Action Model. The basic premise of this model is that coaching, educating, and leading are about taking a person or group from where they are now to some place new. To accomplish this, it is important to understand ourselves. The importance of knowing self has become increasingly obvious as I have developed as coach, leader, and educator. In one of the first National Soccer Association of America courses of my soccer coaching career, Doug Williamson, who became my coaching mentor, emphasized
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Questions-Based Action Leadership

The more I practice leadership, think about leadership, read about leadership, and hear people talk about leaders they admire, the clearer it becomes. To help facilitate your ability to lead and coach, it is important for you to Know yourself; Know the learning, behavioral, and motivational styles, among others, of those you lead; Use methods that are developmentally appropriate for your students, players, and employees to facilitate and maximize learning; Employ methods to articulate where it is you want your team, class, or organization to go, and develop a plan to get there; Develop a culture that continuously assesses and
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CHANGE INVOLVES LEARNING

As a coach, educator, and/or leader, we are pursuing some kind of end that we have in our mind. We call them goals, objectives, or outcomes. In some way, shape, or form to achieve these ends –in-mind, change is involved. It is crucial to recognize that, whether you are a coach trying to help your player learn a new skill, an educator helping a student obtain new knowledge, or an employer training their employees, all of these activities involve change. Change involves learning, whether we are doing something new or trying to do something better. Recent developments in educational research
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Communication: Gender Influences

In the book, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus’, John Gray emphasized the importance of the differences in communication style and emotional needs of men and women. John Medina in “Brain Rules” indicates there are structural and biochemical differences between the brains of men and women that contribute to differences in emotional responses, communication, and the development of relationships. In addition to the natural differences, on-going research documents the influence that the environment has on men’s and women’s self-perception and perception of the other gender. Whether it is nature or nurture, and likely both, we must acknowledge there
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Communication: Nonverbal Language

There are many old sayings that come to mind when one considers nonverbal communication. These include “your actions speak louder than your words” or “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Work by researchers at the Nonverbal Group indicate that the amount of communication that is nonverbal varies between 60 and 90% on a daily basis. Regardless what the actual numbers are, nonverbal communication can provide a person with lots of information. Sometimes this nonverbal language communicates a different message than our spoken word. The way we talk, walk, sit, and stand provides lot of information that can have an
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Communication: Establish Expectations

Building on my last blog related to creating an environment for communication, it is important to establish an expectation of positive communication and interaction among members of your team – players, coaches and parents. In general, there is a tendency to see the things that went wrong rather than what went right. We definitely need to identify areas for improvement but we need to expect a culture of positive communication from those we lead so we can improve in the future. Establishing a positive communication environment is promoted through accepting the differences that people have in their behavioral and motivational
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Communication: The Foundation for Changing Mindsets

The ability to communicate is THE most important life skill that coaches, teachers, and leaders of employees need to develop. Like any other skill, it takes practice. The three most important words for the success of any leader, whether it be a soccer team, a classroom, or a business, are communication, communication, communication. The best leaders have good communication skills. The motivational speaker, Tony Robbins, emphasizes that “to effectively communicate, we must realize that we’re all different in the way we perceive the work and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” So what does it
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Leading, Educating, Coaching, Change, and Learning: They are all connected!

We often consider coaching, teaching, and leading as separate activities. At their most basic level, all three are about taking someone to a new place. When an individual takes a journey to some place new, change is involved. To change, people need to learn. Helping others learn is about helping people engage their brains in what they are doing. Therefore, using an approach that integrates the best practices for helping people learn should improve one’s ability to lead, coach, and teach (i.e., to influence their development). I refer to this as educating, coaching, and leading with the brain in mind.
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Change Your Focus

It has become increasingly clear to me that for any of us to maximize our effectiveness as a coach, leader, or educator, we need to change our mindset to focus on the needs of those we lead. As John C. Maxwell, a nationally recognized author on leadership, points out, “Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” Changing our focus away from ourselves and towards others simplifies the challenge of leadership. Drew Dudley’s 2010 TEDx Talk in Toronto highlighted the capacity that every person has to be a leader, and influence and change
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