ISSUE TWELVE/JUNE 2017
$12.00 RRP (inc GST) SURVIVING THE CLASSROOM, ANGER MANAGEMENT, UNSCRAMBLING COACHING, ARE GREAT PLAYERS, GREAT COACHES?, INSTANTLY READ CLIENTS …
If Coaching is the language of change then Education provides the dictionary. Stewart Fleming
FROM THE EDITOR In the Engagement Edition of Coaching Life (May 2016), I featured an article by Grant O’Sullivan from Growth Coaching International. It outlined how coaching was being taught in high school with Year 12 students coaching Year 11 students. To me, a self-confessed coaching nerd, this was one of the most exciting articles I have ever published. It clearly showed the path that coaching is taking, giving our youth the tools that no other generation in history has had. Our kids have access to every piece of knowledge ever collected and now, with coaching, they have the tools to know what to do with it. Since that article, I have wanted to do an education edition and even though the folks at Growth Coaching were unable to submit an article, we have gathered together an amazing array of education focused articles. From tips on surviving the classroom as a teacher, to the future of coaching in artificial intelligence, this edition is educational without being institutional. While coaching in education is sprinting ahead, other areas of coaching are stuck in the past.
I love that Wayne doesn’t hold back as he examines how we train coaches in Australia and why painting by numbers is not serving todays coaches or athletes. Did you know you can now get a device that measures a clients’ focus? This puts the latest information from the world of Neurotechnology into your hands. Just remember that with great power comes great responsibility. If coaching is the language of change, then education provides the dictionary. It gives the ability to create the change that coaching facilitates. Without education, coaching is just positive thinking. Without coaching, education is just directionless knowledge. I hope you enjoy your ongoing coaching education as much as I do. Happy Coaching.
Stewart Fleming Editor
COACHINGLIFE JUNE 2017 ISSUE 12 Coaching Life is published 4 times a year and is your authoritative source for information on coaching in sport, business, life and anywhere else you find a coach. Published By Operait Pty Ltd ABN 63 189 244 221 24 Leo Lindo Drive, Shailer Park, QLD 4128 Editor Stewart Fleming editor@coachinglife.com.au Advertising advertising@coachinglife.com.au Printing Inhouse Print & Design printing@inhouseprint.com.au DISCLAIMER This publication is not medical or professional advice. It is intended only to inform and illustrate. No reader should act on the information contained in this publication without first seeking professional advice that takes into account personal circumstances. The publishers and editors give no representation and make no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the accuracy, completeness, currency or reliability of any of the materials contained and no correspondence will be entered into in relation to this publication by the publishers, editors or authors. The publishers do not endorse any person, company, organisation or techniques mentioned in this publication unless expressly stated otherwise. The publishers do not endorse any advertisements or special advertising features in this publication, nor does the publisher endorse any advertiser(s) or their products/services unless expressly stated otherwise. Articles are published in reliance upon the representation and warranties of the authors of the articles and without our knowledge of any infringement of any third parties copyright. The publishers and editors do not authorise, approve, sanction or countenance any copyright infringement. The publication is protected under the Commonwealth Copyrights Act 1968 and may not, in whole or in part, be lent, copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable format without the express written permission of the publisher. ISSN 2205-6963 Copyright Operait Pty Ltd All rights reserved.
Check out the first of a two-part article from Wayne Goldsmith, a giant in the field of coach education.
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CONTENTS
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6 SURVIVING THE CLASSROOM With stress levels on the increase within the education sector strategies are needed for coaches to be of the greatest assistance. Brandan offers three key points that will assist any educator to survive the classroom. Brendan Zischke Education Coach
21 17 FOCUS ON CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE There are benefits to be had of getting an experienced colleague to view your lesson. Every year NSW teachers need at least two lesson observations. Rather than something to be feared the focus needs to be on professional growth. Gerard Alford Director ICT
19 THE COACHING WORD 10 UNSCAMBLING THE EGG The coaching industry needs to change. With key qualities of a successful coach being commitment, dedication, vision and passion, why are these critical concepts not being taught in coaching development programs? Wayne Goldsmith Director WG Coaching
14 DEVELOPING EXTRAORDINARY WINNERS Jayson is all about the whY, he is not raising or coaching the next generation of basketball players. He is developing extraordinary winners so they can go and impact and inspire the world. Jayson Wells Head of Skill Development Larry Hughes Basketball Academy
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Our regular guest artist, Glenn Capelli, explores the coaching word of the edition, KAIZEN and shows how it can be used in coaching environments. Look out each edition for Glenn’s artistic contributions. Glenn Capelli The Celebrity Profiler
21 SOME GET IT, BUT WHO ARE THEY? Can a person’s facial features tell us how they will listen, think and act? In this article, Alan explains how reading a person’s features will enable you to deliver information in the best way for their understanding. Alan Stevens The Celebrity Profiler
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24 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COACHING
36 BEWARE NEURO BUNK
Self-Help tech is on the rise but what makes it so appealing? It’s affordable, personalised and answers your questions in microseconds. This article explores why self-help tech is in fact big business and outlines what is available on the market. Dale Beaumont Founder BRiN
Rob has been exploring the use of Neuro-technologies with in his sports coaching. His experiences are sure to help as you wade through the vast array of Neuro-Technologies available. Rob Gronbeck Founder Cairns Sports Performance Clinic
27 GREAT PLAYER, GREAT COACH?
40 COACHING IS FOR LIFE
What does it take to become a top sports coach? Do you need to have been an elite athlete to be able to perform as a top coach? Dr Rynne offers an interesting perspective showing both sides of the story. Dr Steven Rynne Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland
Coaches should first and foremost be educators. Elena shares her story and the impact her early coaches had on her successes through the lessons they taught. She is now passing these lessons on. Elena Shkrab Founder of TOP SPIN Table Tennis Centre
31 FROM TEACHER TO PROFIT CENTRE
44 WTF – WHY IS EVERYONE SO ANGRY?
Great teaching is the single most important factor for schools in improving student outcomes. Richard outlines the different levels of teacher engagement and the impact a highly engaged teacher can have and how to re-engage a teacher that needs a little nudge. Richard Maloney Director Engage & Grow
When people are in a calm, happy flow then levels of stress, anxiety, disease, mental illness and suicide will drop. So, what can we do to encourage the calm, happy state? Read on to find out. David Clark The Calmer Coach
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“We can’t change every little thing that happens to us in our life but we can change the way we experience it. That’s the potential of meditation, of Mindfulness. You don’t have to burn any incense and you certainly don’t have to sit on the floor. All you need to do is take 10 minutes a day to step back; to familiarise yourself with the present moment so that you can get to experience a greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life.” Andi Puddicombe
Considering that education is a foundation for the success of the next generation of adults it represents an enormous opportunity for coaches to help. As a coach wanting to work within the education industry there are a few key things to realise. Did you know that Principals experience symptoms of stress 1.7 times higher than the general population? According to a recent wellbeing index, Teachers are reporting the highest level of occupational stress in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States than any other industry. Students are also affected with one in four Australian students currently having a mental health condition. My experience with principals and teachers is that they are very passionate about education and care for the welfare of their staff and students. This places an enormous pressure on their mindset. So, as a coach reading this, there are three main areas which you can implement to create a significant improvement.
Principals need to learn how to “switch off.”
What is meditation/mindfulness then?
From the moment, they arrive at work to the moment they leave they are “on.” Meditation and mindfulness need to be taught.
A common demonstration you can implement is a large glass jar filled with water and a handful of clean sand. Explain that the sand represents thoughts, feelings and actions. At the beginning of the day, the crystal-clear water represents a mind that is calm and focused.
When speaking with staff, explain that meditation and mindfulness are the same thing and that a consistent daily approach is vital. First of all, meditation is simply the formal practice of mindfulness.
“But I don’t have the time to mediate or be mindful!” This is a common statement I hear when presenting to staff. As a coach, you need to be able to articulate just how easy, simple and beneficial this practice is. How it will make them feel better and save them time. A good place to begin is by outlining the benefits: • • • •
Reduces anxiety and depression Improves cognition – more efficient use of time Increases your ability to focus and Boosts your immune system
When tipped upside down or sideways the water becomes cloudy. There is NOTHING you can do to make the sand go to the bottom. The more you fight it by trying to manipulate the sand, the more the cloudy water remains. When this happens, we tend to fight more and we cannot see things and act with a clear mind. I then put the jar down. You see the sand remains, but by simply letting the mind be and returning to what we are doing in the moment with our fullest attention – the mind returns to its natural state. This then produces the benefits above: This is a skill. As a coach, this is something that all education staff need to practice daily. It is like being at the gym. Yes, it may be uncomfortable, but with each practice the exercise becomes easier and your mind will be stronger. Your ability to be mindful will increase naturally.
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Here is what I recommend you use to help people start:
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Download Headspace and complete the first 10 sessions – not only will you experience what mindfulness is you will learn further what it is
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Practice Active Listening – this means giving the person your full attention – without being on your phone, watching the TV or any other irrelevant distraction
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Remember that the goal of mindfulness is not to get rid of any particular thought or emotion – that just places more attention and resistance on them, simply let them be whilst directing your attention elsewhere. With practice this will become easier
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Start your day with a mindfulness habit – I like to have a mindful shower – listening to the sound of the water with my fullest attention Take time during your teaching day to bring about an attitude of mindfulness – you can even do this by simply observing your breath for one minute. This means that as a principal do not feel guilty for closing your door for 10 minutes! As a teacher on your lunch break find a quiet place, I often encourage teachers to put their headphones in and sunglasses whilst meditating at their desk. By teaching Principals, teachers and students about the techniques and benefits of Page 8
mindfulness they will quickly see an improvement in their ability to survive the classroom. Let’s move on to Survival Tip number 2.
Sleep is Essential Principals, teachers and students all need to learn effective practices which improve the quality and restorative benefits of sleep. As a coach, the first thing which I recommend is conducting a very simple sleep audit. For example, Rate your current average night’s sleep from 1-10. With a 1 being little to no sleep. With a 10 being falling asleep easily and waking up feeling refreshed. Once each person has a rating, ask “why is it a...?” How could you make it a 10?” Through experience I have found that sometimes people can come up with their own solutions. As a coach, here are two common reasons why people rate their sleep poorly.
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Rumination This is essentially a mind which is going over and over a particular problem or as simple as thinking about all the work they have to do the next day. An overactive mind makes it difficult to sleep. The good news as a coach is that it is easy to settle. Explain to the person that the mind is like a naughty puppy dog.
Without training it will race, it will cry for attention and the more you give it the more it will demand. The solution is to ignore it. Place your attention on something else. For example, the sound of your ceiling fan or your breath. Every time your mind wanders to the problem/ unsettling thoughts return it gently to the point of focus. The great thing about teaching this practice is that the more you use it at night the easier this will also become to do during the day.
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Caffeine and the education industry seem to go together. Students are also buying stimulant drinks and having the equivalent of two to three cups of coffee per day, often before their first class. This is a problem as it effects sleep. It is important to explain that caffeine has a half-life of 6 hours: 140mg’s of caffeine drunk at 10AM (represented by a medium latte) will remain in your system much longer – by the time you go to bed at 10pm you will still have 35mg’s of caffeine in your system. Encourage a gradual reduction to one small cup per day in the morning. This will improve sleep quality whilst still allowing for the enjoyment of their favourite drink. As sleep improves people will quickly see an increased ability to survive the classroom. Let’s move onto our final step.
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Break time needs to be break time!
The staffroom in my experience is usually an opportunity for people to complain about their problems, whether this is home or work related. Have you been involved in this type of conversation? I used to all the time. Having a good “whinge” and I still occasionally find myself falling into this trap. Change Conversation is the solution.
Conversation can Change Circumstances
• • • •
If a person has a legit concern, validate it by listening. Repeat what they have said so that they feel heard – do not add to the problem. If you can offer a solution to the problem, then offer it If not change the subject to something positive and let the rest of the staffroom add to this positive topic – a dominant person will tend to bring the conversation back to the negative – if this happens repeat the process – listen, repeat, offer and change.
Not everyone wants to be helped, but you can still try, maybe eventually they will listen. There may be days where avoiding the staffroom may be the best thing for you to do. That is fine. In that case, take a break from work. Do something you enjoy. Read a book or travel magazine, listen to some music, practice mindfulness, anything that is enjoyable. There you have it, three simple steps – mindfulness, sleep and respecting break times. By teaching these you will quickly be able to help educators and improve their wellbeing.
Brendan Zischke is a qualified teacher, author and speaker who has over 15 years experience in primary and high schools. He is passionate about wellbeing and teaching practical strategies that staff and students can use to create a habitual wellbeing mindset. For more information on how Brendan can assist you in wellbeing training within the education or corporate industry email brendanzischke@gmail.com
Unscrambling the Egg
Re-Thinking and Re-Shaping Coach Education and Development in Australia By Wayne Goldsmith MOREGOLD PERFORMANCE CONSULTING In the 1980s, we thought that Sony Walkman portable, personal audio cassette players were pretty cool.
We were saving and transferring data on floppy discs from one large, bulky expensive home personal computer to another bulky expensive home personal computer. We could record stuff on television, using this new thing called a VCR – a video cassette recorder and play back our favourite TV shows such as “Cheers,” “M.A.S.H,” “The Cosby Show,” “Family Ties,” “Who’s The Boss?”, “Roseanne” and “Knight Rider,” and watch them at our leisure.
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And when we got a few spare coins, we could go to a local video arcade and play Pac-Man and Space Invaders – marvelling at this incredible, new gaming technology we were lucky to have lived long enough to see.
The ’80s were a special time as well for coach education in Australia. www.coachinglife. com.au
We saw the formation and growth of the Australian Coaching Council (the A.C.C.). The A.C.C. and many of the national sporting organisations drove the development of the N.C.A.S. (the National Coaching Accreditation Scheme), and coaches all over Australia rushed to become level-1, level-2 and level-3 coaches. The difference between coach education and development in Australia (and many other places around the world) and these 1980s’ cultural icons, is that while we’ve ditched the floppy discs, the Walkman and the VCR, we’re still more or less doing the same things we were doing 30 years ago to develop coaches. And it’s time to change. Look to the past…to understand the present and forge the future. Before the 1980s, coach education and development in Australia was pretty haphazard. It was mostly informal, anecdotal and unstructured, with senior coaches passing on their “secrets” to the next generation of coaches. Rugby coaches taught rugby coaches, who taught rugby coaches, who had played rugby and had learnt coaching from their coach who learnt from his coach and so on and so on. Following a political commitment to improve Australian sport in the 1980s, the Australian Coaching Council and the Australian Sports Commission invested in the formation of the N.C.A.S. to help improve coaching standards. It was largely based on the models used in parts of Europe and Canada, and it was primarily based on sports science and periodisation and planning methodologies.
It was believed at the time that the key to coaching more effectively was to be more scientific, more structured and less anecdotal – and that by developing coach accreditation systems that were based on science...and through coaches learning the fundamentals of physiology, biomechanics, psychology, skill-acquisition and nutrition, they would become “better” coaches. As a result, for the next 30 years, national sporting organisations built overly complex systems to educate coaches about the science of sport. Systems were typified by long textheavy courses, countless powerpoint presentations and large coaching manuals containing a lot of superfluous and mostly unnecessary content. Tudor Bompa’s book on periodization became the gospel to a generation of coach educators – who like all true believers spread the “word” throughout the length and breadth of the nation. It was coaching coaches by content.
Real-Life Experience Recently I was asked to facilitate a workshop with the national coach development mangers from many of the national sporting organisations in a particular nation. I asked them to bring their entrylevel coach education resource or level-1 coaching manual to the workshop. At the commencement of the workshop, I asked them to open their coach education manuals to the first page and to put a red line through anything that could be accessed on the internet for free and immediately. Over the next 20 minutes, the national coach development managers would effectively “redline” more than 90% of the content of their manuals. “Now ask yourself. Why would I – as a coach wanting to learn about coaching and get better at coaching – pay for and attend your course when 90% of what you’re going to teach me is available free and conveniently on the net?
However, the question is: What is coaching?
WHAT IS COACHING? The working definition of coaching that I’ve used for the majority of my professional life is: Coaching is the art of inspiring change through emotional connection. It is an art form. It is the art of coaching, which – when combined with science of sport and delivered through a strong connection with the individual athlete – creates success.
Coaching is change Real-Life Story: You go to a life coach to change your life. You employ a business coach to change your business. And athletes work with a coach to change something – usually many things – about their sports preparation and performance. Coaching is change. Knowing an athlete’s VO2 max is one thing – but how that knowledge is relevant to a “soccer mum” who wants to coach the local under-9 footy team is in practical terms questionable...almost ludicrous. Yet...for more than 30 years, this “coach-development-throughscience” philosophy has dominated the Australian coach development industry. Coaching is so much more than lactates, protein bars, YerkesDodson curves and A.T.P. generation equations. We have many accredited coaches who can measure heart rate, write a program and use an iPad – but in terms of people who practice the “art” of coaching...there’s very, very few. Page 12
During another recent engagement with a national sporting organisation, I asked a group of coach developers, “What are the key qualities a successful coach must have?” A group brainstorm produced concepts such as “commitment,” “dedication,” “vision,” “passion,” “empathy,” “creativity,” “compassion,” “connection” and a long, long list of similar, values, virtues and character traits. I then asked them to open their training manuals and coachdevelopment resources, and underline anywhere in the manuals where these words – where these values – are mentioned, and where there’s a clear way to develop them in the coaches attending their training courses. My comment was, “If you guys know what coaching is all about, and you know what it takes to be a successful coach – and you’re not teaching any of these critical concepts in your coach development programs – what the hell are you actually doing?”
COACHING COACHES TO COACH THE SHIFT FROM INFORMATION DELIVERY TO CONTEXTUAL DEVELOPMENT Knowledge – by itself – is now worthless. Mobile phones, iPads and other tablets and laptops have made knowledge...worthless. Why? Because things only have value when they’re difficult to get. Today, coaches in most places in the world can access anything, anytime, anywhere and usually for free in the palm of their hands. There is no need for coaches at any age or stage of learning to attend coaching courses – except in sports where accreditation is forced and where compliance to become accredited is demanded by the national or state sporting organisation for risk management and insurance purposes. We need to look at coach development differently.
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WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO DIFFERENTLY – AND BETTER? There’s a sameness throughout the sporting world – almost a “rule book” when it comes to coach education: the four C’s: Courses (i.e., levels and licenses) Conferences Computers (i.e., online learning) Coaching coaches (i.e., mentoring) Yet, many sports are reporting that they are experiencing three distinct challenges when it comes to their coaching workforce: 1. There’s a decline in the number people enrolling in coaching courses;
2. The percentage of people who complete all their accreditation requirements is relatively low; 3. The percentage of coaches who commit to ongoing learning through reaccreditation or upgrading to the next level of accreditation is generally poor. In addition, funding agencies and sporting organisations measure the success of coach education programs on primarily quantitative measures, e.g. how many courses were conducted in the past year, how many coaches completed their accreditation this year compared to last year.
Yet, coaching is – like teaching, nursing and so many other “humanto-human” vocations – largely qualitative in nature – striving to achieve effectiveness more than efficiency. “More” coaches doesn’t mean better sport. Coaching is not a numbers game. It’s having more coaches who are better at what they do that makes the difference. The messages are clear – what we’re doing is not working.
THE BOTTOM LINE? Australia is failing to develop sports coaches with the skills required for our current and future national sporting needs. We are still delivering coach development programs that are inappropriate for the vast majority of coaches, and we’re delivering these programs through outdated and anachronistic information delivery mechanisms. We want sport to change – we’re investing heavily in developing, modifying, piloting and marketing “new” sports, but we’re neglecting coaches...who are the driving force of effective change in every sport.
Wayne Goldsmith has been a thought leader in coach training, education and development for more than 20 years. He has written more than 500 articles and blog posts on coaching, sports science, learning, creativity and sports performance. He has worked directly with coaches in Australia in the A.F.L., Super Rugby, the Wallabies, the N.R.L, Tennis Australia, Swimming Australia, Triathlon Australia and Diving Australia and internationally with numerous respected sporting organisations including USA Swimming, the NZ Rugby Union and Sport N.Z. He has won the Eunice Gill Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Coach Education in Australia. CONTACT WAYNE AT WWW.MOREGOLD.COM.AU
Wayne works with coaches, sporting clubs, sporting organisations and national sporting bodies all over the
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE
Y JaYson, a somewhat unique spelling to a fairly common name. For years I never really put much thought into the spelling, I just hated when people spelled it wrong. After almost forty years on this earth, I finally figured out, It’s all about the “Y.” When I thanked mom for putting the “Y” in my name, she nearly cried. She had unknowingly solidified my PURPOSE.
By Jayson Wells
“Do you.” It’s a phrase commonly used in modern society. It generally means “do what you do,” or “stay in your lane.” Well, a very personal experience allowed me to take the phrase, spin it and make it my personal PURPOSE. My version of D.E.W. YOU originated from my dedication and memoire of my father, (D)onald (E)dward (W)ells. After his passing in 2003, I got bracelets made with the statement ‘D.E.W. YOU’ on them. The intent was simply to be a visual reminder of my childhood hero when I was on the basketball court, playing the game I loved. Though the D.E.W. YOU bracelets were made for personal wear, many people started showing interest. Due to the buzz, I decided to make the acronym applicable to everyone. That’s how (D)evelop (E)xtraordinary (W)inners was born. Basketball was my outlet to stay out of trouble in the inner-city streets of Cleveland, Ohio. Drugs, gangs and other negative activity surrounded me, but my love for the game and excellent family support helped me overcome the negativity. God given talent and an undeniable work ethic, landed me a full athletic scholarship to Indiana State University. After a successful collegiate career, I was again presented with an opportunity to continue playing as a professional player internationally. Thirteen seasons, twelve different countries, and five continents later, I stand confident, passionate and ready to share my experience!
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P assion U ncommon R esilience P reparation O pportunity S ervice E xperience I have coined this ‘The Jayson Wells Experience.’ During these experiences, I touch on multiple topics and define often-misused words such as success vs significance, simple vs easy and passion vs purpose. I believe by helping people break down these words, they can separate them and unleash the power of each. I want my audience to understand that I am just as inspired by having the opportunity to speak with them, as they are inspired listening to me. I engage with others by exposing vulnerabilities from my personal experiences. Rather than being referred to as a ‘Motivational Speaker’, I prefer to be recognized as ‘Experience Teller’ and an ‘Empowerment Leader’. I distinguish myself from other speakers with a simple, yet powerful formula. As an Empowerment Leader, I add value by helping individuals, teams and leaders fill the gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’. Basketball has given me the opportunity to LIVE IN Sweden, Finland, Germany, Israel, Cyprus, Korea, Holland, Italy, Ukraine, Dubai, Argentina and Australia.
I have also traveled to numerous other countries like Russia, Turkey, Croatia, Austria, France, Belgium and Switzerland. These travels have provided me a true appreciation of the world and allowed me to learn myself by learning other cultures and people. I am also in the final stages of creating a course called ‘The Academy of PURPOSE.’ The Academy will be an eight-week course, both online and live, that will focus on an acronym I created for the word P.U.R.P.O.S.E. More than tell people that they need to find their purpose, my desire is to help show people HOW to find their purpose. I refrain from using fear tactics, guilt trips and talking at my audience. Instead, I interact and dialogue with my audience and help them identify their passion and use that passion to discover purpose. Once people identify their ‘why’, value is inevitably added to their lives. The Academy of PURPOSE has been designed to serve and empower people. It reaches out and connects with those who are in search of growing and learning. www.coachinglife. com.au
I am determined to empower others by educating them on what makes them individually extraordinary. In my life, I have been blessed to see many things. In appreciation for those things, I have eliminated using the words “bad” or “good” when speaking about experience. I have learned that bad and good are just perceptions that are relative to the individual and usually based on external factors. There are no bad or good experiences, they are all just a
part of our own unique paths which will tell our own unique story. I will conclude with this. In the same conversation with my mother that I thanked her for adding the “Y” in my name, I also asked her what her life was like raising a “basketball child?” She responded, “your dad and I were never raising a basketball player, we were raising a quality person!” The roles then changed, as I was the one almost in tears. I finally had clarity on who I am as a man and my whY.
At the end of the day, I too am not raising or coaching the next generation of basketball players, I am Developing Extraordinary Winners, so they can go impact and inspire the world! So please, spell my name correctly, because it’s all about the whY. “Develop. Extraordinary. Winners.” #DEWYOU
Jayson Wells has traveled the world and inspired youth globally with his personal mission to develop extraordinary winners. Jayson officially partnered with PGC Basketball in the summer of 2016, but has been a part of the PGC family since 2013. Jayson uses his personal experience on and off the court to teach the core values of life. He attributes his positive mindset to the lessons he learned from his father who taught him work ethic, attitude and discipline. Jayson regularly gives presentations to schools, youth groups, faith based organizations and corporations teaching them how to win “Beyond The Game.” His presentations challenge listeners to determine their “purpose” and activate their legacy through “significance”.
COACHING, PLATEAUS AND THE SMALL THINGS
The role of lesson observations
By Gerard Alford Atul Gawande is a surgeon. During his first eight years he knew he was improving; he saw his complication rates steadily fall and soon he was beating the national average benchmarks. Then his complication rates steadied. He immediately felt his performance had plateaued and the statistics supported this. Is this what happens at 45 years of age? Is this a surgeon’s peak? Is there a finite limit to one’s improvement? After taking some tennis lessons and instantly improving his game, he thought – I’m quite willing to pay for tennis lessons but not for surgery! He then did something unconventional. He approached a highly respected and retired surgeon and asked him to observe a surgical procedure. The operation went smoothly. Could the observer offer any advice? The respected surgeon said he only observed the small things. After the operation, he discussed the way Dr. Gawande draped the patient, the position of his right elbow, the position of his feet, the lighting… the list went on. Page 17
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After a 20-minute discussion, Dr. Gawande had “more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.” Yes, it had felt strange and awkward having a stranger in the operation. But with an extra set of eyes and ears, and some professional advice from a respected colleague, his complication rates have since gone down. Are there parallels in teaching? Teacher Observations are in full swing across Australia with NSW mandating that every teacher must have at least two lesson observations undertaken each year.
ITC Publications Director, Gerard Alford, said teachers and school leaders required highlevel training in lesson observations to support AITSL’s national education framework being implemented in schools across the country, “but it is important to set-up the process right and to do it for the right reasons.” “Our slant on lesson observations is that they should be undertaken for one single purpose; professional growth.
Our feedback from the many workshops we have delivered throughout the country is that teachers feel more comfortable when it is implemented for this ITC Publications have completed purpose rather than for over 80 public workshops evaluation or compliant throughout Australia with over 1 purposes.” 000 school leaders attending.
There are brilliant teachers at every school so let’s provide opportunities for their colleagues to see them in action,” Alford said. However, as with Atul Gawande, he cautioned that the majority of teachers and school leaders initially felt awkward about entering their colleagues’ classrooms. He explained that for lesson observations to be successful, a clear set of mutually agreed guidelines must be observed from the outset. “From our work with schools, it’s obvious that teachers appreciate a clear set of guidelines to assist them to feel more at ease with entering classrooms,” Alford said.
“Our experience tells us that observers require training to confidently perform observations of their colleagues. For the observation process to be successful, teachers and school leaders must gain the skills to gather quantitative feedback and provide this data to the relevant teacher with the aim of improving their pedagogy.”
“We know that the research says that lesson observations is one of the most powerful influences of changing teacher practices, so its worth the time and effort to establish a good process where everyone sees it as an opportunity for professional growth and not as a threat.”
The interesting question, is whether teachers, or more specifically, teachers who feel they had ‘peaked’, feel they are actually teaching better as part of this process? We will have to wait to find the answer
Gerard is an author and the Director of ITC Publications, established in 2002. He has over 20 years’ experience as a full time Secondary School teacher in a range of Independent Schools in three Australian states and the UK. He has held a number of senior positions including Head of Faculty, Director of Studies and Dean of Staff. Gerard is the editor and co-author of the innovative teacher’s companion, which has sold over 750 000 copies in Australia and New Zealand and is in its 4th edition in the USA. He is also the co-author of the best-selling innovative students’ companion and the beginning teachers’ companion.
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itc publications Supporting teaching and learning WE OFFER
World-class print and digital resources for teachers and students. Educational workshops and consulting services for teachers – both public and private school-based workshops. We offer evidence-based instructional techniques and practices that teachers can immediately embed into their teaching repertoire. We have delivered thousands of workshops throughout Australia.
The beginning teachers’ companion Everything you need to know for successful and effective teaching
by Paul Herbert and Gerard Alford
ITC Thinking Skills Poster_final_28-8.pdf
Task Verb
Related Task Verbs Compose Improve Predict
Develop Invent Synthesise
Generate Modify
MAS 1:4:P:C:R Image Associated Ideas Word Association Split Y-Chart Y-Chart
ARGUE
Persuade
Debate
Defend
PCQ/PCQ Extension Judge Jury
Appreciate Debate Persuade
Conclude Decide Rank
Crictise Defend Validate
Decision-Making Matrix Elimination Draw Extent Barometer
Defend
Justify
Prove
Justification Flow Chart Judge Jury
Decide
Determine
Select
Decision-Making Matrix Extent Barometer
EVALUATE JUSTIFY RECOMMEND ANALYSE
CLASSIFY CALCULATE EXPLAIN DESCRIBE
REMEMBER
Differentiate Distinguish
.......................................................................... Identify the Task Verb ASSESSMENT TASK
1
Design
Arrange Complete
Categorise Compile Demonstrate Sort
Fishbone Diagram Flow Chart Silent Card Shuffle
Find
Prove
Solution Path
Comprehend Interpret
Translate
Metaphor Cause-Effect Map POE
List Identify Summarise (basic)
State Outline
Attribute Listing Organiser Concept Map Silent Card Shuffle Y-Chart Split Y-Chart
Define List Quote
Label Name Recite
Alpha Ladder KWHL Mnemonics and Acronyms Pairs and RAS Alert Rhymes, Music and Flash Cards Silent Card Shuffle Transfer Booklet
COMPARE
2
• The advantages and disadvantages for each medium • Level of popularity and engagement • Types of information delivered by each • Their contribution to society
Once you have located the task verb in your assessment sheet, ensure you know the exact definition so you know how to tackle your assessment. means that you look at the way two things are both similar and different.
COMPARE
Investigate
C
.......................................................................... Use an appropriate Thinking Tool
M
CM
MY
Investigate
CY
3
CMY
K
A=LxW
Apply
from the Thinking Tools column. This will assist you to organise your research and thoughts and to stay on track. Topic:
C
Radio and Television
Task:
COMPARE
Tool:
Double Bubble Map
Radio and Television
.......................................................................... Use the appropriate Language
4
Understand
Data
For the verb
COMPARE
use the following:
Sentence Starters
Connectives
• There are many ways in which...and...are similar • There are many ways in which...and...are different and these include... • A very obvious difference between...and...is... • Whilst there are a few similarities between.... and..., there are more differences.
• alike, like, just like • in contrast to • in spite of this • differs from • both • all cases • even though • whilst
Compare Radio and Television By Sam Jones
There are many ways in which radio and television are similar. Both mediums broadcast to the world at large and therefore have the potential to reach a wide audience. Both require a source of power in order for it to work and in all cases they use radiowaves to broadcast their programs. A very obvious difference between radio and television is that television presents visual images as well as sound, whilst radio does not have any pictures requiring the listener to formulate their own images.
Remember
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In this assessment task, you are to compare two mediums of communication, namely radio and television. You are required to write about your ideas in detail ensuring you discuss:
.......................................................................... Understand the Task Verb
Judge
For a full explanation of all task verbs: innovative teachers’ companion innovative students’ companion www.itcpublications.com.au
On your assessment sheet, look at the task and carefully scan for a task verb. It should be something like, 'compare', 'discuss' or 'justify'. If you are unsure what this is, check with your teacher. As an example, we will focus on the task verb
Y
Summarise (complex)
Note: Co-operative learning tools such as the Silent Card Shuffle, 1:4:P:C:R, Round Robin, Hot Potato, Jigsaw and Judge-Jury can be used in most levels.
1:47 pm
Where to start and how to succeed!
Double Bubble Map T-Chart
Investigate
Find Match Recall
28/08/2015
SWOT Analysis Icon Prompt
PCQ PCQ extension
Solve
Level
©
2569 FLORENTZOS DESIGN AUG 2015
Co-operate
Break Down Deconstruct Differentiate Contrast
DISCUSS foundation thinking skills
Thinking Tools
CREATE
COMPARE
2569 FLORENTZOS DESIGN AUG 2015
We also offer a range of teacher resources such as A1 posters, reward stickers and the ever-popular online resource, thinkdrive.
h i g h e r- o rd e r t h i n k i n g s k i l l s
Our products include the best selling innovative teachers’ companion, innovative students’ companion and the beginning teachers’ companion.
2
4 Steps to Success
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Coaching Life Advert 2017.indd 1
5/06/2017 12:21 PM
WHEN YOU SPEAK
SOME PEOPLE GET IT
OTHERS DON’T By Alan Stevens
You’ll learn far more of the human psyche by travelling the world visiting clubs, pubs, schools, businesses of all types and sizes, stock exchanges and financial institutions, community groups and prisons than you will with experimental psychology or from text books a foot thick. Carl Yung
As a coach and trainer, I learnt very early in my career that to be, and remain effective, it’s an absolute must to continue learning. Not only to enhance my skills, but to understand my clients more effectively. Long before I ever heard of Carl Yung, I was already travelling that path. Not only for the purpose of understand people’s psyches, but if I was to ever impact on their behaviour, I needed to understand how they took in and processed information and how each would most likely respond in given situations. And only then would I know the best way to teach, coach and mentor them. I first learnt that some people are visual learners, while others are auditory and others, kinaesthetic, while there are those who are combinations. Beyond that, I learnt that everyone has their own unique style and preferences for learning and that their face tells us what we wanted to know. Just as the facial expressions give away their emotions in any given moment, the facial features give away their personality traits. I hear you asking “how can facial features tell us how a person will listen, think and act?” Just the same as the muscles of the body will develop and take shape with lifting weights, so too do facial features take shape when we pull the same
expressions over and over. While the facial expressions are the visual presentation of emotions, the facial features are a history of our personalities; showing how we think and behave. And as the face can pull many different expressions, there are many different facial features representing different personality traits, and the possible combination of those traits is even larger. With each trait moderating or enhancing other traits, the possibilities are very large. Recognising how a person naturally operates is made easy when you look at the interaction of the traits associated with of the features that stand out the most. And all of us are different to each other. In the last edition, I spoke about the quantity of information a person will take in before they switch off and of the physical feature that guide us in understanding at what point that will occur. That trait was about whether the person just wants the big picture and would switch off with too much information, or whether they need to analyse a lot of information before they can make a decision.
Regardless of how much information they require, how it is delivered also has an impact. Some people need information presented in a clear and structured order. Regardless of being either big picture or analytical, each point and facts needs to be given to them in a logical order, where each item builds on the preceding item and together they create a connective flow. These Sequential thinkers consciously process new ideas and challenges through a rational, logical step by step process. A trait that very much suites gymnasts, especially with parallel bar routines. This trait is indicated in the angle of the forehead. The more vertical, the more Sequential the person’s thinking process will be.
If you give them information in disjointed blocks, they will struggle to bring it together. As stress levels go up, they need the information to come slowly and very much in the right order. They generally struggle if their trainer has the opposite trait to them and when the activities move too fast and they feel rushed. Yet, they themselves make some of the best teachers, because they deliver information in the same way they want and need to receive it, and so matching everyone like them. The opposite style of this trait, the Objective thinkers, will react quicker, pulling information together from past and present experiences. They can piece together segments quickly, reorder the information as required to get an overall understanding. They don’t need it all, for most times they can “join the dots”. You’ll recognise the Objective thinkers by the more angled back forehead. These are the warriors, fast to action.
If you have a sequential thinker and one who also has the analyst trait (see Coaching Life, March edition), they will need the information in the right order and a lot of time to analyse all of the facts as they go. If you have the opposite traits, it can test you as their coach. Don’t rush them if you want an amicable outcome. But be assured, when they get there, they have it all together and nothing will be missed. On the other hand, if they are both an objective thinker and big picture person, you will have someone who moves fast, rushing to get to the end. They feel great to work with, but you don’t know if they got it all without you needing to test them. Image 1, is more Sequential yet Big Picture. In teaching or coaching them, information needs to be structured, but don’t give too much information or they go into overload and switch off. Stay with the big picture and they, once they have the structure in their heads, will then ask any questions if they still need more information.
Image 2, is an Objective thinker but also Analytical. In her case, although she can pull concepts together fast, she still needs as much information as she can get. Being objective she will, just as likely, jump from item to item while asking questions to get more clarity. If you are a Sequential thinker, she could easily exhaust and frustrate you. You can see from this, depending on your own style and how they differ from the other person, you could get it horribly wrong and lose the client altogether. Knowing your own traits, recognising their traits and changing how you speak to match how they prefer to be spoken to, will make you a far more effective coach.
Alan Stevens is an International Profile and Communications Specialist. He is regularly featured on National TV, Radio and in the World’s Press, profiling the likes of our leading politicians, TV and sports stars as well as Britain’s Royalty.
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He is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, a Coach, Trainer and has been referred to as the leading authority on reading people, globally by the UK Guardian and as ‘the mentalist meets Dr Phil’ by the Herald. www.alanstevens.com.au
Artificial Intelligence
There are over 500 million small to medium business owners (SMBs) on the planet. Sadly, however, over 50 million businesses fail each and every year.
By Dale Beaumont How do we stop so many failing? That was the question that occupied most of my flight from London to Sydney. And with 22 hours in the air, I had a lot of time to think. Before deciding to build anything new I first decided to examine the current solutions on offer. Where they work and where they fall short. At the top of the list were ‘Business Coaches.’ Give a struggling business owner the right advice and they’ll avoid possibly unseen pitfalls. Plus, show them the right way and they’ll rise to their potential.
It’s a worthy profession and a much-needed approach. However, as great as ‘Business Coaches’ are, I couldn’t help but start to see their limitations. Slight problem for me (because I’m one of them), but I decided to push on. After all, this is an issue that demands our very best. So here was my list of the problems associated with business coaches:
1
High Cost - When it comes to business coaches you pay for what you get.
The really good ones know they’re good and they charge accordingly. Plus, when you consider the fact that half of the world’s entrepreneurs still live on less than $20 per day, they simply can’t afford the help they so desperately need.
2
Very Limited - If you are lucky enough to afford a business coach, and they just so happen to be in your area, you are doing well if you can meet with them once a month.
That means if you have an issue, between sessions, you’ll be sitting on it for some time.
3
Not Specific - When you get an advisor or coach, you’ll quickly realise they’re most likely a generalist. They know a little bit of knowledge about lots of topics but ask them ‘how do I run Facebook Ads?’ or ‘what POS system should I use?’ and 99% will have no idea.
4
Not Scalable - Say you do find a business coach within your budget and they are willing to help. You are one of the lucky ones. Sadly, there are hundreds of millions of others that are still forced to tough it out on their own. Quite simply, there aren’t enough advisors to go around. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea. Next on my ‘not-currently-workingoptions’ list was: Books, YouTube Videos, Meet-Ups and Networking Groups. All offer something a little different, but again, all have their drawbacks. So, time to look for a new solution. One that was fit for our modern world. As I leaned back in my chair, I began to realise that the only way you could provide unlimited, free, specific and scalable advice was if, it was... not human. From this brainwave, I mentally leaped over to a subject I first learn about in school, Artificial Intelligence (AI). First, it’s worth dropping any Hollywood-style notions of AI and no, we don’t need to worry about The Terminator coming to life anytime soon. Page 25
Quite simply AI is a field of computer science that is aimed at programming computers to do things that are normally done by people — in particular, things associated with people acting intelligently. As I was taught, AI is going to play an important role in the advancement of every industry. The promise is that it will reduce costs, save time and even save lives. So I began to think about how AI could help my industry and give millions of business owners their own personal business coach. The possibilities got me very excited. I decided, when I land in Sydney, I will follow this through. That plane ride was two years ago and that’s why I’m so very pleased to announce we have launched BRiN, the world’s first artificially intelligent business advisor. Now it’s possible to get unlimited 24/7 advice to grow your business. But best of all we can now provide our service at scale. That means we can now provide human-like coaching to every entrepreneur on the planet, all at the same time.
BRiN IS READY TO COACH
At this point, you may be wondering if there’s room for other players in the market and are there other niches where artificial intelligence can be applied. The answer is a resounding, yes and yes! I believe, in the future, there are going to be hundreds of AI-powered digital assistants. There will be ones for; customer service, booking flights, tax advice, medical diagnosis and more. However, closer to home, within five years many of these assistants will come in the form of coaches that can help you do just about anything. There will be digital; • • • • • • •
Career Counsellors Weight Loss Coaches Health Trainers Financial Planners Study Tutors Relationship Coaches and Industry specific business advisors
Upon hearing this, I want you to now become consciously aware of your gut reaction. Like with all forms of change, some people see the threat while others see opportunity.
If you feel threatened in some way, let me say this. Overall, this is a good thing for society. Remember, in most segments, only one to three percent of the population engage the services of a coach. With artificial intelligence at work, I suspect these numbers will remain consistent and they may even grow. Society will now be able to try coaching services for the first time, albeit through digital means. Once people get results and experience benefits, many of them will seek to upgrade to a more personal service. Now to the ones that see opportunity. As you know, there are a lot of people on the planet around eight billion or so, and the vast majority have never had the means and therefore the opportunity to seek professional assistance. However, soon the internet will be beamed to another three billion people on the planet and mobile phones will soon cost less than $10 to produce. This means a big opportunity for those that are brave enough to build new platforms and experiences.
So, how does one take the first step towards this not so distant future? Here is my five-point plan.
1
Start with YouTube - The first video you need to watch is titled ‘Humans Need Not Apply’. It’s a mini-documentary, which shows the future and explains why it’s closer than you think. Next search ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and see where it takes you.
2
Chat with Chatbots - Go to Google and type in ‘best messenger bots’ from there follow the links and start a conversation. You’ll find bots like ‘Pancho’ that bring you the weather and ‘ABC news’ which gives you the news in a conversational way. Find what you like about them and find their weaknesses. These are things you’ll need to know for the next phase.
3
Find a Big Problem - Think of the problem that you help people solve. How big is it and how many people have it? If you’re highly specialised and the total market is only in the hundreds, you might just need to stick to your knitting.
Dale Beaumont is an Award-Winning Technology Entrepreneur, International Speaker & Author of 16 BestSelling books. Dale started his first business at 19 and has been building companies ever since. One of those companies is now a multimillion dollar enterprise, which has enabled Dale to become an Investor, Philanthropist, and to step foot in 70 countries. Dale has been featured in Forbes Magazine, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Gizmodo and GQ, just to name a few. With a passion to give back, Dale’s goal is to help more than one million entrepreneurs around the world with BRiN, “The World’s First Business Advisor powered by Artificial Intelligence”.
However, if your work can help millions, you should proceed.
4
Start Mapping - Many coaches are good at what they do, but they aren’t consciously aware of how exactly they generate their results. For you to train a digital assistant, this has to change. From now on begin documenting all of your philosophies and methodologies.
5
Find Your Window - When you feel that you’ve finally codified your processes and bottled your magic, you may be ready to build. At this point seek out a mentor and pay them for a plan to follow. Note, building a digital assistant is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re ready to change the world, this may be your path. There you have it. My five steps to learn more and get started today. Thanks for reading and I wish you the best on your journey into the future of coaching. Download BRiN now. Go to http://brin.ai and follow the links to your respective App store.
GREAT PLAYER, GREAT COACH?
By Dr Steven Rynne
The widely held view is that coaches are critical components of the sporting landscape, however, what makes for a great coach remains relatively obscured and largely taken-forgranted. One such taken-for-granted (in men’s team sport especially) is the value of coaches having been a former elite athlete in the sport they now coach.
Former greats in coaching
Questions being raised
A quick look at the tennis emphasises the point – Ivan Lendl coaching Andy Murray, Michael Chang coaching Kei Nishikori, Goran Ivanisevic coaching Tomas Berdych, Carlos Moya coaching Rafael Nadal and previous coaching associations between Amélie Mauresmo and Andy Murray, Boris Becker and Novak Djokovich, Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer, Lyndsay Davenport and Maddison Keys, as well as Martina Navratilova and Agnieszka Radwanska.
It is so commonplace to have a former legend of the sport at the helm in most men’s professional competitions that elite coaching has been called the ‘exclusive preserve’ of such greats. Periodically, however, there are questions raised about the merits of ex-elite athletes moving into elite sports coaching positions. More specifically, at issue is those elite performers who move almost immediately into head coaching positions (as opposed to those who move into development roles, further education, or similar).
Even most of the talk about the prodigiously talented but generally vexing Nick Kyrgios has revolved around whether former Australian great Lleyton Hewitt will take on the challenge of coaching him. Similarly, the Australian men’s cricket team has Darren Lehmann at the helm and the recent T20 International cricket series against Sri Lanka saw three former greats, Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting and Jason Gillespie, combining powers in coaching roles. At the Tour Down Under earlier in the year, former Australian cycling greats Brad McGee, Matt White, Luke Roberts, and Brett Lancaster were in charge of teams in the UCI World Tour event. The football codes offer a similar story with the likes of Tony Popovic, John Aloisi, and Kevin Muscat in charge of A-League teams while Nathan Buckley, Chris Scott and twin brother Brad Scott have control of AFL teams. The NRL has the likes of Ricky Stuart, Des Hasler, Paul McGregor, and Trent Barrett, among other former elite players in charge of teams.
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Essentially, the question asked is does being a former elite athlete in the sport qualify you to coach? Most would offer a firm no when asked so directly. So why is the practice of players moving straight into high performance coaching positions still seen to be acceptable in some places? The common reasoning is that former elite players who are appointed to head coaching roles are able to immediately garner player ‘respect’. This view is often accompanied by a statement about “wanting someone who you know has been there and done that before”. In 2014, when speaking of the value former world greats had in their coaching arsenal, Michael Chang (current coach of Kei Nishikori) said “we’ve been there. We know what it takes, and we know from experience what has worked and what has not.” If it is the case that players want / need guidance from those who have done it before them, a relevant question is “how much experience is enough?” One game? One tournament? One season? A top 100 finish? A top 10 finish? A podium finish?
Of course, no evidence exists for the need to have performed at the highest level to be able to coach there. More specifically, there is no established threshold to be crossed by performers to be eligible for future coaching success. Evidence regarding former players moving into coaching There is, however, some evidence for coaching advantages related to being a former elite performer. Previous analysis has shown that experience in the sport you now coach has the potential to contribute coaching skills related to sport-specific knowledge such as technical and tactical aspects, as well as being ‘enculturated’ into the sport. Former elite athletes have been found to have the potential to develop skills relevant to coaching through being in senior or leadership positions. Sporting greats also tend to have enhanced opportunities to learn from coaches as athletes given their long careers. There are also a variety of more social factors at play. Of course, former elite athletes have the potential to develop high level contacts within and between sports. They are also often privileged regarding their progression through compulsory coach accreditation structures. And of major issue in this piece, they are afforded enhanced career prospects within coaching. However, the research shows that there are advantages for coaches who have NOT played at an elite level. For example, those without elite playing backgrounds are generally able to start coaching and developing their craft much earlier. In short, they tend to have more extensive and varied experiences in all aspects of coaching work and the pathways of their sport.
They have also generally had more opportunities to gain other qualifications and experiences that are valuable and relevant for coaching. For example, while the playing greats were forging their careers as athletes, others were able to gain degrees in coachingrelevant fields such as physical education, sport science, or human movement studies. Problems with direct transitions So, what’s wrong with the uncritical acceptance of elite players immediately moving into elite coaching? A major issue is that it unnecessarily narrows the potential coaching talent pool by excluding most people from even having the chance to fulfil coaching roles at the top levels of sport. Of potentially greater significance, is that for organisations looking for creativity, innovation, and a point of difference, hiring a ‘favourite son’ may serve to reinforce the status quo. Another concern is that hiring those who have just finished playing may not be fair on the incoming coach. Encouraging elite players to move immediately into roles that they are not adequately prepared for is, in some cases, the metaphorical equivalent of throwing them to the wolves.
There may also be a variety of issues that arise when someone transitions quickly from being in the team (i.e. playing with teammates) to being in charge of the team (i.e. being in charge of those same players).
From there it should be possible to undertake a more considered appraisal of coach backgrounds so that areas of strength may be leveraged further and perceived ‘gaps’ be addressed or worked around.
The situation arises for a number of reasons. Indeed, the allure is obvious in that the fledgling coach is offered a chance they know is rare and may not be offered again.
Moreover, the development of coaches has a social aspect that should be more strongly considered if individual and organisational outcomes are to be optimised.
For the organisation, there is the chance for multiple payoffs regarding team success and securing a popular and recognisable face for the organisation.
A point that should be emphasised is that being a former great of the sport is not a limitation in moving to high performance coaching roles. Indeed, there are many great things that can come from a career devoted to excellence in a sport. However, moving too quickly (i.e. without developing coaching skills that complement existing sportbased knowledge) may limit impact and longevity in the role.
However, just as we would never expect that just because you have been a student you can immediately teach, of that just because you have been managed that you can be a manager, we should not expect that just because you have played you can coach. Implications and ways forward The implication for those who employ and those who support high performance coaches is that a starting point should be a thorough understanding of what the work of a coach actually entails. It is poorly understood – sometimes by novice coaches themselves.
Finally, no matter who secures high performance coaching roles, the individuals and those employing them should recognise that their appointment does not signal the end of learning. High performance coaching is an unquestioningly tough job and coaches should seek out and be afforded appropriate support throughout their careers.
Dr Steven Rynne is a Senior Lecturer and Program Convenor for Sports Coaching with the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at The University of Queensland, Australia. The University of Queensland is the only Australian university to be awarded Top 5 status across the QS World University’s, Shanghai Ranking’s and CEOWORLD Magazine’s global rankings of Sport and Sport science and is considered to be in the top 2 universities in the world for sport research. Steven has worked and conducted research with a variety of peak domestic and international sporting bodies in the areas of high performance coach learning and Indigenous sport. Steven teaches undergraduate and graduate students, is a registered HPE teacher, and coaches track cyclists.
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Page 1
www.coachinglife. com.au
We are now all aware of the declining standards in student performance in Australia. It’s a very hot topic in the media’s spotlight and it’s shaping up to be a key election issue. Unless we can arrest and reverse these worrying trends, we will continue to see a decline in the quality and equity of schooling in this country. Surprisingly, numerous studies have revealed that an increase in education spending has not led to better outcomes and in fact a decline in outcomes has often occurred in parallel with increased spending.
So, if money can’t fix this critical problem, what will?
FROM TEACHER TO By Richard Maloney
PROFIT CENTRE IN 3 STEPS
There is no question that great teaching is the single most important factor for schools in improving student outcomes, which makes the fact that between one in three and one in five Australian graduates leave teaching during their first five years out of university so alarming.
In the classroom, disengaged teachers are those whose professional practice is characterised by superficial instruction. Disengaged teachers tend to stick to the same ‘tried and true' content and instruction, they disregard individuals' needs and are content with superficial learning.
The financial cost to taxpayers, of money invested in education without a long-term return, is obvious. But the cost to the education of our children, who are the future of this country, is incalculable.
Other characteristics of disengaged teachers are their emotional disconnect and disinterest in students as individuals who have their own knowledge bases and interests. They do not seek to actively improve their knowledge or education practice.
We also know that, while university applications for teacher education continue to fall, those teachers that remain in the game are often disengaged and disillusioned in their jobs. And who does that directly impact? The students of course.
Teacher disengagement severely impacts on the quality of their instruction and thereby becomes an element of disadvantage for some students.
A recent Australian study* showed that by year 9, only 55% of our students found school engaging, leading to students becoming disconnected and disengaged from their studies.
An engaged teacher on the other hand, makes an active and conscious effort to affect teaching and learning outcomes for both their students and themselves. Effective, engaged teachers have an extensive repertoire of skills and knowledge for engaging students and promoting deep learning.
In addition, effective teachers are student-oriented; they understand how students can learn and can analyse differently. They evaluate and implement new strategies to create and manage learning environments that are supportive, safe and needsoriented. And they are genuinely motivated by their students succeed. The three levels of teacher engagement are highlighted below: As a high school student, back in the late eighties and early nineties, I was surrounded by disengaged teachers who were not at all concerned by the palpable need to adapt their cookie cutter approach to learning to cater to the needs of individual students. They just didn’t connect with those of us that needed a different level of understanding. On the odd occasion when a teacher really went above and beyond however, I excelled. I think we all have a memory of a teacher who really impacted our lives and inspired us.
HIGHLY ENGAGED Teachers that do more than is expected
DISENGAGED Teachers that do just what is expected
HIGHLY DISENGAGED Teachers that do less than is expected
I’m sure that they all had one thing in common: No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. Unfortunately for me, these teachers were a rarity and for those of us unable to effectively absorb the ‘one size fits all’ approach of most teachers, it was simply tough luck. This inflexibility resulted in me being classed as a disruptive student with idle potential that simply couldn’t focus and I was ultimately asked to leave the school. Funnily enough this same school later invited me back as an engagement expert to provide leadership and mentor advice to students. The irony was not lost on anyone I can assure you! So how can we re-engage our teachers, thus engaging more students, in a fast and cost-effective way? Due in part to the dramatic end to my schooling years, followed by an equally dramatic end to my elite Australian Football League (AFL) career as a teen, I became
fascinated by the science behind human behaviour. I embarked on a journey to improve myself and to discover the key to improving the heart of every organisation, its people. I now have a global employee engagement company that’s represented in 75 countries and our programs are neurologically designed to create highly engaged employees / organisations via our Group Activation System™. When several of my coaches approached me about taking our engagement program into schools, I embraced the opportunity and we are now building our presence in the Asian and Australian education market. To create a strong culture, you must first build a united leadership group, which ideally would include all department heads or teachers (depending on the size of the faculty). Here are 3 of the 12 proven engagement activities that we implement in our engagement programs.
You can introduce these tomorrow to create a rapid and significant shift in your school, producing highly engaged, united, reenergised, innovative, empowered people.
1
LEADERSHIP ACTS
Select up to 12 of your key staff. Leaders within the school and those you consider to be emerging leaders. Ask the group this question: “What do we need to change / improve to become the best school in the state”? Once everyone has listed their answers on post it notes, write all answers down on a whiteboard and separate them in either the ‘heart’ or ‘brain’. The heart of your organisation refers to the soft stuff. Anything you can nurture or develop. Culture, leadership, communication, building relationships with staff and students etc. The brain refers to the more practical issues, such as systems, processes, procedures etc.
Once all areas for improvement are listed, ask your key leaders to select one area of improvement from the heart category as a focus for each week. From there they are all required to commit to one small, simple individual action as a group (which we call a ‘Leadership Act’ or ‘Business Success Act’) that addresses the area for improvement selected. For example, if the area for improvement listed for Week 1 was ‘teacher and administration staff relationships’, a leadership act that addresses this issue could be ‘Find out three new things about a staff member you don’t know well and share it with the group at the next weekly session.’ When it comes to finding out new things about people, it’s worth noting that people are more likely to like you if you’re like them on some level, so taking the time to unearth personal connections is both meaningful and powerful. Over a 12-week period, with 12 staff participating, that’s 144 simple leadership acts that begin to chip away at workplace failings and most
importantly, it takes the focus and pressure off the key leader to manage by themselves. The energy and unity that stems from these small acts over a short amount of time begins to create a movement and you will see a waterfall effect that impacts everyone within the school. To keep every leader accountable, we use a colour coded scoreboard that is updated at each weekly meeting. See example below:
2
SPEED RATING
Speed rating is the fastest way to build a strong leadership brand amongst many. It is a simple and powerful activity that allows each participating leader to self-assess and rates their relationships with all other employees within the school. To create a great school, we must first have a strong nucleus of united leaders and staff. As per the example below, list all school employees (up to 50) and rate your relationship from 1-10. 14 being poor, 5-7 being average and 8-10 being excellent.
Throughout the duration of the 12 weeks, each leader should aim to improve on the relationships rated poor and average. The speed rating assessment should be self assessed every fortnight and at the end of the program. The goal is to move everyone into the green! I’ve seen this activity transform leaders into key people of influence in a very short amount of time. Leadership is not a right, it’s a responsibility.
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REWARD & RECOGNITION
At every weekly meeting (weeks 2 through to 12), the leaders will individually and publicly nominate one other person from within the group as their chosen ‘leader of the week’. This nomination should go to the person that is considered to have excelled in improving the heart of the school through their actions.
The power of recognition is obvious, but it’s also important to note that the quickest way to heal any broken relationship is when one person publicly recognises and acknowledges another for a job well done.
end of the 12 weeks should be recognised and congratulated. Public recognition not only inspires the high achievers to continue achieving, it also motivates those not achieving or being recognised to act and to strive further.
After every participant has nominated their chosen leader and voiced the reasons for their selection, the leader with the most nominations each week and at the
In short, an engaged school is a thriving school and building a united team of caring leaders is the first and most influential step towards achieving this. A strong
culture is achieved when everyone is thinking the same way with a common vision. as apposed to a poor culture is when everyone has their own ideas on how things should be done around here. And lastly - no one care’s how much you know until they know how much you care!
For more information visit www.engageandgrow.com.au
Richard Maloney is quickly becoming known as the world’s no. 1 team engagement expert as he leads over 100 empoyee engagement coaches in 70+ countries. He is disrupting the education and psychology industries with his bold statement: Traditional training is dead. Richard is also the author of ‘The Minds of Winning Teams – Creating Team Success Through Engagement & Culture'.
BEWARE NEURO BUNK
By Rob Gronbeck A growing interest in the role of brain function in peak performance is reaching critical mass. In late 2016, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) hosted The Performing Brain seminar. Head of Performance Psychology Kirsten Peterson said, “The brain maybe the next frontier… in what we understand… where sport is going to be heading and what we can do to maximise performance…” and concluded with, “I hope we’re all on the same page in wanting to learn more about that.” Recently released, Pulitzer Prize nominated and best-selling book Stealing Fire reports how Navy SEALS, Google and Silicon Valley are combining neuropsychology, psychology and technology in pursuit of flow and group flow to accelerate learning and performance. Two series of Todd Sampson’s Redesign My Brain have beautifully illustrated practical applications of ‘brain function training’ to Page 36
accomplish seemingly impossible tasks for an untrained person. Why should coaches get on the ‘brain train’ and which track lead to which destination? Do you need a PhD in Neuroscience, a Masters in Sport Psychology or electrical bioengineering to navigate this brave new world? In our rush to gain an edge over our competition, do we simply trust crowd funded neuro-tech start-ups who promise to deliver us enhanced performance through brain stimulation, neurofeedback or some other method? Or should we wait until academics have mounds of gold-standard peer-reviewed evidence to ensure we are making critical evidence based decisions? It’s a delicious, tantalising and exciting dilemma which, as a practicing performance psychology coach, I have wrestled with these past three years.
This article reflects on that journey and the key criteria I used to decide what is relevant and what is probably “neuro-bunk.” Despite the consciousness raising efforts of academics, authors and documentary maker’s, certain challenges in psychology remain. Quantifying effectiveness, avoiding psychology stigma associated with Freud, talking therapy, electric shock treatment and only being considering when something is going wrong! Struggling with those factors in my own practice, I decided to be the first in Australia to invest in Neurotracker, a 3D multiple object tracking program, which was about as far from the image of traditional psychology as could be. It was performance driven, used 3D and 80-inch projection screens, integrating physical activities with the psychological. Since February 2014, Neurotracker has not failed to elicit a “WOW, www.coachinglife. com.au
that’s cool!” response from coaches and athletes. Try getting that with traditional sport psychology! However, I had to be true to my scientist-practitioner roots in psychology and serve my clients from an evidence base. Thus, I was encouraged when Visual Tracking Speed (VTS) showed a credible research base at University of Montreal and it appear not just lights and whistles like many online training ‘brain training’ programs. VTS had been shown to differ according to performance ability, fitness, age, mTBI and ADHD. It was also featured in peerreviewed Nature and the Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology. Further, changes in frontal and visual brain regions indicative of heightened focus and concentration were found after 1 hour of Neurotracker training… and a very far transfer study found improved passing accuracy in soccer from 1 ¾ hours of training (Romeas & Faubert, 2016). With the research checklist satisfied, I went ALL IN.
From a professional coach perspective, I turned to Matt Elliott, Director of Strong Minds Australia and former NRL head coach, who also presented at the AIS Performing Brain seminar. His sage advice to practitioners of brain training in the high performing space is, “No matter what… programs must be (1) engaging, (2) effective and (3) efficient.” With Neurotracker, I could gain and maintain a client’s attention, make a noticeable difference to their VTS and brain function, and with 3 – 4 training sessions taking only 18 – 24 minutes per week, it took very little time from “core sporting” tasks. While Neurotracker ticked all those boxes, the core aspects of performance psychology are cognitive and affective.
As a cognitive-perceptual task, Neurotracker did not and could not claim to impact emotions, although often an athlete’s propensity for frustration, fixed mindset or negative self-talk emerges which a performance coach then can get to work exploring. Also, while the program suited dynamic action and team based sports, it didn’t appear to be effective for static sports such as golf, baseball pitching or cricket. Thus, began my next search to fill that void in my practice. As Kotler and Wheal describe in Stealing Fire and Flow: Rise of Superman, altered states of flow are explained by ‘transient hypofrontality’ with a reduction in activity of the left-frontal lobes. Neurofeedback measures that brain wave activity, however medical grade devices price from $3,000 – $10,000.
Having already gone ‘all in’ with the Neurotracker (roughly $10K), I struggled.
Todd Sampson showed the world how emotional intelligence training with Sue Langley and biofeedback with AIS Senior Recovery Physiologist, Shona Halson, allowed him to perform death defying stunts.
I wanted something portable, needed it under $1,000, with no ongoing subscriptions and which provided a valid measurement. Further, they guide clients to enter mushin by applying awareness of breath, body sensations and practicing acceptance, which are all pillars of a best-practice mindfulness approach.
Hooked up to multiple sensors and using focusing and breathing techniques, Todd gradually increased his emotional coherence, a measure of heart rate variability (HRV) which indicates cardiovascular resilience.
A bonus of this technology is like Neurotracker’s VTS measure, mushin scores vary due to changes in an athlete’s sleep, nutrition, workload, fatigue and social stressors.
After researching the VERSUS, Emotiv EEG and Muse headsets (both quality equipment), I decided Focusband best met my criteria, although it’s developers used the term ‘mushin’ or “mind of no mind” instead of flow. Athletes learn in real-time when they are getting into/out of flow and getting out of their own way during a golf swing, conversion kick or tennis serve via visual, auditory and tactile feedback. Essentially, Focusband founders Graham and Henry Boulton are measuring a person’s ability to perform mindfully.
This aligns with brain-based models of workload management, yet unlike morning wellness surveys, these measures are almost unfudgeable. So, I’ve now got two performance psychology training technologies which measure and train different regions of the brain according to the different sporting demands and are sensitive to fatigue, mood, stress and workload. Due to their novelty, they are naturally engaging, effectively elicit changes in the brain and subsequently performance and take less than half an hour to apply. However, performance required more than just our brain and that why we introduced to the final piece of technology.
Wheal and Kotler also reported how HRV profiles of US submariners and Fortune 500 candidates were measured and accurately predicted who would gel with the team and who would zone out… and it was trainable! I realised I was doing my client’s a disservice not providing them a valid HRV training option. Thankfully, Thought Technology, a leader in the biofeedback and neurofeedback field for decades, had just launched their eVu-TPS (triple processing sensor) in late 2016.
It was portable, connected via Bluetooth, required no added subscriptions, was under $1,000 and measured two other stress indicators: skin conductance and skin temperature.
device for regular monitoring of a person’s ability to switch off intentionally would be a useful metric. Recently HRV biofeedback has shown promise in recovering from concussions. This will remain a valid tool for the coach, athlete and practitioner to keep abreast of further research. More neuro-technologies are emerging in this growing marketplace and if I had unlimited funds, I’d probably purchase and try them all out.
Like the Neurotracker and Focusband, eVu-TPS scores vary depending on variations in wellness. Generally though, TPS scores have an upward trend as, like Todd did, athletes and coaches learn to enter their rest and digest, contentment, clarity and acceptance states of mind-body more rapidly and remain there longer. A limitation of the device is that it must be stationary, so it is ideally suited for sports where breaks in play occur, although using the
However, like Dr Mike Martin, Head of Performance Psychology at NSWIS, said of his purchase of Neurotracker and VERSUS EEG, “Looking back I’d probably get one piece of tech and master that…. Otherwise it gets overwhelming. Each tech goes deep.”
Neuro-technologies are now capable of measuring and training cognitive and affective drivers of peak performance and provides a range of decision making criteria to use when sifting through all the “neuro-bunk” out there. The more coaches using, benefiting from and buying into the use of this performance psychology technology, the better our coaches will perform and the more our athletes, clients and fellow coaches will be likely to follow our lead. After all, we are coaches and therefore are really in the leadership game, aren’t we?
I have successfully combined all three technologies to simultaneously train visual attention while maintaining a flow brain state and a coherent HRV. I believe this represents the ultimate state for athletes and coaches to practice getting into: switched on, mindful and resilient.
Rob Gronbeck works with high performing, ambitious, and goal-oriented athletes at the intersection of coaching, neuroscience and technology to improve sports performance. Rob was the first trainer in Australia to adopt Neurotracker, a 3D brain changing performance technology and after facilitating 5282 sessions for clients such as Basketball Australia, Australian Kendo, Northern Pride, FNQ Heat, Cairns Hockey, Cairns Volleyball, and multiple individual athletes, is one of the leaders in perceptual-cognitive training in the world. Basing his work on measurable brain-based metrics, Rob assesses, enhances, and monitors his athlete’s brain function to provide an area of greatest competitive advantage… the human brain. He has presented his research at national and state psychology conferences, received an academic medal from James Cook University, and writes a newspaper column ‘The Mental Edge.’ Rob is dedicated to accelerating the development of driven and committed athletes by tailoring his potent mix of brain training technologies to their individual sport’s demands.
COACHING IS FOR LIFE There is no more noble a pursuit than influencing young people for the better – and for life.
by Elena Shkrab and Paul Farkas
The English language is a thief. It is notorious for “stealing” or “borrowing” words from other languages – upwards of 80% of English comes from elsewhere. “Algebra” derives from Arabic; “ketchup”: Chinese and on and on. There is only one word in English that derives from Hungarian. In the 15th century, the Hungarian village of Kocs (pronounced coach) was known for developing large horsedrawn carriages used to transport society’s upper classes. A wagon from Kocs, would move the elite I have been a pro table tennis from one location to another, player and coach for over 25 years. quickly and in comfort. I am also an educator, an engineer and an entrepreneur. But, in my view, I am first and foremost a coach. Why? Because I was forever influenced by my parents as well as two coaches who changed my life. The word “coach” entered English as a metaphor derived from the field of education - not athletics. In 18th century England, students of the upper classes used tutors to prepare for their exams. The slang reference for a tutor became a “coach” - because they would carry a student from a position of less knowledge to more knowledge, just as a “Kocs” would move them from point A to B. The term came to include any activity aimed at achieving learning and growth in another person, based on a genuine desire to see that person develop. Page 41
I was first introduced to the world of athletics as a young girl in my hometown of Odessa, Ukraine. I was eight years old when a table tennis coach named Leonid Greenshteine came to my school. His mission was to introduce the game of table tennis to the youth within our city. As an eight-year old watching the other kids play, I wanted more than anything to participate but he told me I wasn’t ready. He gave me my first assignment. “Bounce the ball off your racket twenty times in a row and then you can join in”.
This was a challenge – and I have never shied away from challenges. I went home, practiced, came back the next day, showed off my new skill and started to play. And play and play and play. Under his tutelage, I began to thrive and not just in table tennis. As well as the skills of playing the game, he also taught the discipline, determination and toughness necessary to succeed in both table tennis and life. And I developed to where I became one of only eight children selected in my city to train at an elite level. At this point I was introduced to my second coach. Felix Osetinsky was a genius and legend who developed some of the greatest players of my era. On our first meeting with our group of eight, he told us: “I will develop your forehand and your backhand, but more importantly I will develop you – both physically and mentally”. www.coachinglife. com.au
We worked hard – practicing each day, three hours per day during the school year and nine hours a day in the summers, for ten years. We ran, jumped and built our speed, endurance and overall fitness. We developed our games and our mental toughness. What did mental toughness involve? It was the desire to win, not just in competition with others, but within ourselves. Yes, we had to be better than the next player, but we also had to be better than ourselves - every day compared to the day before - in everything we did. A new personal best each day was my goal.
Coach Osetinsky taught us that winning in games started with winning in practice. You didn’t develop the attitude to win in the Championships themselves; that was too late. Muhammad Ali once said: “If you can do it, it’s not bragging”. I remember the sign over the door to the room that separated the competition tables (accessible only to the best of the best) from the practice tables available to everyone else: “How do you prove yourself? Results.”. I had set myself two goals by the time I was 16: 1) become a member of the Ukrainian National
Junior team and win at that level and 2) become a Master of Sport in the USSR – a designation awarded for life to those who have met the requirements at official competitions. I succeeded in both. The goal setting, hard work, mental toughness and focus on results taught to me by my parents and coaches served me not just in table tennis. I completed two degrees - in Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic National University and Patent law in Odessa, began work as a professional engineer and subsequently moved with my husband to Israel.
While there, I resumed my table tennis career as both a pro player and a coach and earned my third degree as a Physical Education teacher. I also founded eight table tennis clubs throughout my adopted city. While I was happy, life in Israel was not easy. When our daughter was a teenager, a bomb rocked through Israel. We decided to leave for Canada.
manager helping other immigrants to adapt to Canadian life, I opened my own Table Tennis club which is still my current focus. I continue to coach kids hoping to impact them the same way that I was in influenced in my youth. I believe that I would not have achieved my successes in life without the lessons instilled in me many years earlier by my coaches.
Life as an immigrant in a new country is not always easy. I have done it twice. And I have never given up my dream of bringing table tennis to the young.
Unfortunately, coaching is often associated with the world of team sports. In that world, the coach is responsible to select a roster, develop and communicate a game strategy, bark orders at the players and argue with officials.
Even before I found my first full time job in Canada, first as a teacher and later as a program
Elena Shkrab
The genuine desire to see others develop is not the primary focus associated with athletic team coaches; their focus is winning. Development of others is secondary. The original meaning of “coach” derives from the world of education. My life was forever influenced by my parents and two coaches who had a genuine desire to see me develop. Whatever the endeavor – be it table tennis, other sports, music, art, or any activity – in my view, coaches who work in the area should be first and foremost educators.
Founder of TOP SPIN Table Tennis Centre of Toronto, pro table tennis player and coach with over 25 years of international coaching experience. National Champion and Team player in both Ukraine and Israel, and finalist of European Championships. Elena was a coach of the Israeli National League Team and several champions as well as the Ontario Provincial Champion in Canada. Awarded Master of Sport title of former USSR.
Australia is angry because it's Government lacks a clear message and plan to deal with issues at home and abroad.
WTF!
By David Clark
LIFE IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT IT SEEMS It's time for coaches globally to step up and perform. So why is everyone angry? Anger is an emotion which is could be argued emerges from violation of values within the gut brain. We have three brains – one in our heard, one in our heart and one in our gut, more later in this article. Ultimately, everyone is designed to live calm, happy lives. That's how we are designed and that's how we need and want to live our lives. We are all the same and we are all different. We all have a purpose, a vision of our world, a mission to deliver and values to differentiate right from wrong. We are angry because our values are being violated, we sense politicians are neither listening to us nor acting on our behalf. So what?
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Education is key right now. Education across all generations, all nationalities, all sectors of the globe. The world is changing faster due to the advancements in science and the increasing prevalent of artificial intelligence or AI which could potentially see many jobs changed in nature or ultimately automated. Social media has changed the way younger generations think, feel and behave. They are way more intuitive and their gut instinct is stronger than older generations; those who have experienced the buffets of war. This leads to a degree of procrastination and uncertainty. The gut brain or gut instinct focuses on survival rather than on delivering a legacy worthwhile.
So, what's this got to do with coaching and life coaching? If you are across the latest in neuroscience, you'll be familiar with mBIT (multiple brain integration techniques). After a career working at an audit office for two decades, I decided to embark on a calmer, happier life here in Melbourne, Australia only to be diagnosed less than five years later with bipolar disorder. Through education, I have concluded that the global mental health system is dysfunctional. Education and coaching of self and others offers the greatest potential to get the globe back on track to where it needs to be – in calm, happy flow.
www.coachinglife. com.au
When people are in calm, happy flow, then levels of stress, anxiety, disease, mental illness and suicide will drop and levels of productivity, peace and progress in dealing with global issues – whatever they may be – will improve through the emergence of a more resonant approach to calm, happy flow whereby a more balanced approach to living through head (creativity), heart (compassion), gut (courage) will emerge naturally. Spiral dynamics summarises the historical path of the world through time. As we move upwards, we become happier. As we move downwards, we become depressed. Such states could be compared to levels of economic growth and prosperity. As spiral dynamics explains, we are either focusing on the immediate, legacy or somewhere in between. In neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), the terms are, in time (immediate) and through time (legacy). Those of us who are focused on our legacy are through time, and are planners and organised. Those of us who are focus on immediate issues are in time, and are reactors; constantly stressed. Stress in mild doses is helpful and results from our internal nervous system doing what it is designed to do. High doses of stress result in disease and illness, with the body signally something needs our attention. In mBIT, high levels of stress and misalignment can be detected almost instantaneously by observing an individual's physiology, body language, eye movement, skin colour, speech patterns and content.
Over-emphasis on head-brain language such as ‘think’, whilst very rarely using terms such as ‘feel’, indicates someone who is deeply misaligned and stressed. Throw in the occasional reference of gutful or gut instinct and they could be heading towards some form of nervous breakdown if action is not taken. I was a very head-brained individual. I enjoyed a career, working in the UK National Audit Office, travelling across the world to places including Denmark, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Hungary, Russia and finally Australia. In some ways, I have my brain to thank for an amazing career and subsequent lifestyle. However, I also found, in 2011, that I have a complex brain that needs some attention. I began what I thought was my dream role, working as a program manager. Several months later, at the age of 44, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I entered the field of life coaching by accident though this accident has saved my life. I have tenaciously explored this world to the point of engaging, enlightening and empowering myself to a calm, happy flow in my daily life. It has taken me six years of tenacious resilience to achieve balance.
During this time, I wrote my memoir, “WTF! Life is not always what it seems”, in which I share my experiences growing up through to my diagnosis and beyond. I write about the brain, how it works and how this understanding helped me understand myself and calm my brain, allowing it time to heal. I also found in writing this book, that we can rewire our DNA. Coaching can empower clients to become ever more resilient when faced with somewhat overwhelming circumstances. In his book THE GENIUS IN ALL OF US, David Shenk concludes by saying…
“No one is born with a predetermined amount of intelligence. Intelligence can be improved; few adults come close to their true intellectual potential. Like intelligence, talents are not innate gifts, but the result of a slow, invisible accretion of skills developed from the moment of conception. Everyone is born with differences, and some with unique advantages for certain tasks. But no one is genetically designed for greatness and few are biologically restricted from attaining it. The old nature/ nurture paradigm suggests that control over our lives is divided between genes (nature) and our own decision (nurture). In fact, we have more control over our genes and far less control over our environment than we think. It must not be left to our genes and parents to foster greatness, spurring individual achievement is also the duty of society. Genes do not dictate what we are to become, but instead are actors in a dynamic process. Genetic expression is modulated by outside forces. “Inheritance” comes in many forms: we inherit stable genes, but also alterable epigenetics; we inherit languages, ideas, attitudes, but can also change them. We inherit ecosystem, but can also change it. Everything shapes us and everything can be shaped by us. The genius in all of us is our built-in ability to improve ourselves and our world.” So, what's your vision for the world in 2017 and beyond? What values will guide you forward as you continue upwards through your own personal spiral? What mission are you on to transform the lives of those you meet, those you connect with and those you serve through your coaching business?
David Clark has gone from the heights of success to the depths of depression, insanity and back into depression. During his career, he has worked in social research, evaluation, training, project management, change management and capability development. More recently, he has embarked on a personal voyage of discovery and is now coaching others, drawing on the skills, knowledge and experience he has gathered over the past 25 years. www.calmercoaching.com
NEXT EDITION
DESTINATION? Grand Final or Thriving Business? Whatever the destination, our clients need us to help them get there. Learn from the winning Coaches in the DESTINATION EDITION. OUT SEPTEMBER 2017
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