This post from icoachcricket appeared on Twitter earlier this week.
icoachcricket is the Twitter presence of the ECB Coaches Association, the registration body for cricket coaches accredited through the ECB Coach Development pathway. The twitter account has more than 2,700 followers.
A few likes and retweets. But not one of the followers has responded.
Yet, this seems to be an important topic for coaches. Understanding the people they are coaching with.
So why the tumbleweed?
Are there no coaches on Twitter?
The a/c has 2,700+ followers. Some defunct no doubt, or abandoned. But most, presumably, belong to coaches and coaching organisations who should have an interest in learning and talking about coaching.
But posts from this account rarely get more interaction than this one.
No, coaches are out there on social media, although they don’t say much about the craft of coaching, the “how” of coaching.
Sometimes they post videos of how they coach — often MeMe posts — look at Me. Me!
Coaching queries, posted as “News” items to the icoachcricket web site, get next to no replies, either, unless a couple of us connive to start a “conversation”…which peters out when we run out of things to say, when no-one else joins in.
Why the silence, then?
Do they not know the answer? Not want to share their knowledge and experience? Expect to be told the answers by a “higher power”?
The original post on Twitter does indeed provide an extensive, bullet-point answer to its own question…perhaps not the best example of the use of questioning in coaching?
Is it in the training cricket coaches receive?
Coaches are being taught that their role is to deliver solutions, to run perfect drills, to be right.
Too often, it seems, coaches are encouraged to believe that they know all the answers, when they too often don’t even know how to ask the right questions, of the players they work with or of themselves.
Answers on a postcard…
It’s not in the coaching culture to admit to doubt. I’m right, do it this way,
Is this good coaching?
The Teesra 