Evolving philosophy – towards a new understanding of coaching

1. Better
2. Best you can be
3. ’ave a go – how good can you be?

For various reasons, I have had more time on my hands (and have done far less active coaching) since the summer, which has left space for thinking about the whys and wherefores of coaching.

And I am finding that my earlier attempts at defining a personal coaching philosophy don’t really stand up to the realities of coaching in the “participation” realm.

I am fortunate to work with some talented and ambitious cricketers, for whom the “better” mantra fits very nicely.

But for the majority of the kids I see (mostly U9s and (much) younger) “performance” and “getting better” is a long way from front-of-mind.

They just want to play.

Many of them want to win, as well, but for others just finding out what they can and can’t do is an adventure in itself.

So, as a participation coach, my role has to be much more facilitative – get the game on, with appropriate, differentiated challenges to stretch the players to develop new capabilities.

Hence a new formulation for my philosophy of coaching:

’ave a go – how good can you be?