Coaching reflections, part two...

“Your structure allowed people time to practice and play and learn, supported by your guidance and questioning. Nice timing for your feedback loops, this gave you time to observe and process and also allowed paddlers to reflect on their performance and what to do with that knowledge. Your positioning meant you could see what was happening and keep an eye on safety too. Your observations were accurate and feedback was technically on the button, the challenges and courses were well thought out, lots of adaption required and just what they needed for their individual stages of development, nice.”

How do people in business learn? Are we instructing i.e. ‘I’m going to show you the correct way to do thing x, you watch me and repeat it in exactly the same way, because I know the correct way to do it’, or are we coaching ‘what are we trying to achieve, how could we do it, can we find different answers, let’s put some constraints in place to guide towards the solution’. Obviously, there are things we want our people to do where we’d like them just to follow an established process, rather than them making their own decision. But, even in that situation how often are we missing out on new, better solutions because we believe our established answer is the only one? How do we get the best of both worlds?

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the last year working with a small group of young paddlers at my local club, seeing them soak up every challenge I’ve set them, often asking for more, and I’m looking forward to the coming year seeing them continue to develop and enjoy their canoeing. It’s also been really interesting to see how many parallels there are between my work as a canoe slalom coach, my professional life now as a BI consultant and fractional CIO, and my other volunteering work as Chair of Governors of a local primary school.