Reply – long enough to be it’s own;-)

I have added this reply as it’s own post since I seem to have gotten carried away when reflecting on Dave’s comment.  Original post at … https://blogs.ubc.ca/coachmike/2017/05/08/the-problem-with-experience-when-seeking-change/

Thanks, Dave.
I need to reflect on this a bit to answer well as it is so infused into how I now do things. Or at least how I think I coach, want to coach.

I can think quickly of a few a-ha moments that come to mind although at the time I don’t know that I realized the impact they would have to ‘free’ me from the same coaching dogma that I was exposed as a developing coach. The first was when I had the fantastic fortune of meeting Dr Larry Holt as my Honours Supervisor at Dalhousie University. I recall sitting at his desk as he reviewed a draft of a research paper I was working on, basically, he was ripping it apart in a big way. I had never been a good student in high school and it left me defensive to criticism and I had some pretty big walls built up. However, on this day I left his office and realized I enjoyed the interaction. Dr Holt had managed to make me want to know what I could do better (rather than what I had done wrong) and this was a first in my academic life. From this point on I began to seek out areas of weakness and rather than consider questions I could not answer as problems I viewed them as untapped potential, and It was my job (a fun one) to seek out the answer. I think it is from this point on I started to share this view with my athletes to promote a un-tapped potential approach to gaps in performance and promote openly conversation on the seeking mindset. This, of course, is a big step in moving my coaching into a partnership where we both worked to ‘find’ solutions. This meant a lot more conversation with the paddlers. I would probe with questions until we came to those we could not answer or defend. When we found them we would say we have now found some potential yet to be utilized, “this is exciting”. So as some other coaches around me were barking out orders and commands I was starting to have discussions.

A friend of mine who coached in my area had one of his athletes make the 2000 Olympics. At that moment we joked that now he was an Olympic level coach and he had reached a new standard. We joked about it because we both understood that as much as anything else the athlete (by making the games) had been the one to make him an Olympic coach. This is still in the back of my mind after all these years and I think has promoted my evolution to my current coaching style. Coaches more often than not are chasing the athlete’s development. We develop coaching ability to meet the level of the athletes we have and when we get a good group or talent we are forced to adjust and improve to stay at their rapidly advancing level. This starts to sound now like the athlete is in a leadership role and at the very least an equal one. Again, this story seeps into my beliefs and my value of the athlete as a driving force in partnership with the coach. Where we often think the athlete asks the questions and the coach provides the answer, as partners and both leaders in the development, the coach and athletes both ask questions. Both are investigators searching for gaps (potential un-yet tapped).

Only a few years after the 2000 games I was again fortunate to have a master coach (and sports psychologist) agree to come mentor me for a week with my team. He has produced many world champions and many of these are now head coaches in many countries. I knew his record and admired his ‘educator-like’ approach. He had been an instructor at a level 3 coaching course I attended and I wanted more of what he was preaching. So he came, I watched, I was dumbfounded! After a week of him working with my paddlers and me mostly observing they had made progress that would have taken me a full season. The amazing thing about it was that I could not pinpoint a single lesson or correction he had made in that time. I had wanted so badly to jump in and tell the athlete what to fix but he did not. He seemed not even to notice the obvious problems. He simply described a drill or a sensation and asked the athlete to try it. He followed up with things like “wonderful, wonderful, yes and how did it feel…, yes very good now try this one…”. The training sessions would go by and I watched the athlete open up and become reflective; the athlete feedback was growing deeper and richer. Above all else they were smiling more and more, they loved the conversations. At first, of course, the feedback was not as deep but it came quickly. So, I was amazed. I had viewed a week of the most dramatic improvement and there seemed to be no error-detection, no corrections, no stop doing this and do that. But the results were there, and the smiles and motivation were there too.

Over the years I have spent time with my mentor when I can. I have taken my most talented athletes to experience his magic directly and the result is always the same. Big smiles and big improvements. Like Dr Holt he had found a way to make the athlete want to investigate and find gaps and connections, to enjoy the self-analysis and the search for things they can modify. You see, each time the athlete was asked “and how did it feel” they became the teacher. Now I realize the role had been flipped. The coach can not feel what the athlete can feel. We only know what we see on the surface and this is shallow at best. For the coach to learn with the athlete both must share. Sometimes with my talented athletes I listen and think to myself: I really can not follow this at all, it is outside what I know but I am excited to understand. I let them talk on describing to me how they feel and what they think about and I struggle to integrate this into my knowledge.

In my post I talk about ‘opening’ the athlete and really what I mean is taking down the walls of a fixed mindset. However, this is not only for the athlete, the coach must be open as well. The coach is a performer as much as the athlete and a fixed mindset in the coach is just as much a roadblock as it is for the athlete. From time to time I observe coaches receive feedback they do not understand and rather than identifying it as potential they shift the conversation immediately back to a command based interaction where the coach is safe behind his walls.

I constantly struggle to be the coach I want to be and to interact with my athlete to create the smiles of discovery that I witness my mentor create so easily. I now take pride in no longer having certain ‘direct command’ style instructions that once were common for me. In a previous post I mentioned, “Questions lead to confusion, Confusion leads to Discussions and Discussion leads to solutions”. I have found the smiles in this process are a measure of each small a-ha moment the athlete is experiencing. In fact only now reflecting on this do I realize this. Each smile is a small a-ha moment in the process. I have for sometimes said that Smiles are a Key Performance Indicator. With this smile=ah-ha now I can see the connection and why those smiles are so infused into the coaching interactions I strive to have each day. In fact, it works both ways; for each a-ha moment I have in the interaction I smile as well. So now the athlete and coach both with their own a-ha moments frequently occurring create a great interaction and excitement.

I will end my reply and musing here but I will continue with this in my mind and muse more. In writing this reply I have at lease one more a-ha and one more smile to put in my coaching bank.

I am not 100% sure this answers your question in the 2nd part, experience after you need it, but I think we go into each new experience unprepared, it is new after all. The best we can do is hope that the previous lesson has prepared us enough to become better after each new challenge. I am currently preparing my athletes for National Team Selections this weekend (only days away now) and as we have for some time, we are talking about the ‘struggle’. The ‘struggle is the search for a new ah-ha moment and new smile in the event. Struggling to make the event one we improve from. This struggle is hopefully what we have trained ourselves to enjoy. After the event, we will talk about the search and the struggle and look for the a-ha’s.

Cheers,
Mike