Archives for Teaching

Leaders Need to Know Self

October 26, 2016 | No Comments

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

October 11, 2016 | No Comments

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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Communication: Establish Expectations

February 29, 2016 | No Comments

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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Leading, Educating, Coaching, Change, and Learning: They are all connected!

November 8, 2015 | No Comments

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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My Journey – Lessons Learned

September 3, 2015 | No Comments

Looking back over the last 30 years, I have been on an incredible learning journey, as a leader, coach, and educator. I have done some things well, and some things that I definitely would have done differently if given the chance. For me, I have difficulty distinguishing the difference between coaching, leading, and teaching, as they all have the common theme that they are about influencing others at a variety of levels—to help a person or a group get from where they are now to someplace new. I will often use the word “leader” interchangeably for the other words. Over
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