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LAYNE BEACHLEY THE LONGEST WAVE
FINDING FUTURE OLYMPIANS THE HELMSMAN PROJECT: CHANGING LIVES ISSUE FIVE/MAY 2016
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FROM THE EDITOR
T
he road has been long and hard; you’ve paid your dues and survived to tell the tale. It has been said that all of the stories we read, watch or tell ourselves can be divided into just a handful of categories. Regardless of category, the one thing that they all include is a journey. Whether it is a journey of the mind or a trip down the yellow brick road, they all have a start and end, and the longer it is, the better the story. We have an inbuilt need for the variety and the sense of motion afforded by a journey. And, of course, we want to see that journey as long and meaningful. As a counterpoint to variety and motion, we have a need for security. Engagement provides this for us and becomes our anchor in a moving world. Whether we engage with a spouse, friend or coach, we need the perceived safety to counterpoint the changes we wish to experience. The bigger the change, the greater the need for security. Teams lean on their teammates during difficult times. By going through the process together, they provide security within change. At 40, I started training for my first marathon. Before then, I had trouble running a bath. The guy that trained me told me that there were three races in a marathon and the first was to the starting line. I needed to train with a long term goal and he provided the anchor for my change into a runner. We have all seen the results of impatience or over commitment. From kids to adults, and from adults to masters, our individual journeys all proceed along similar www.coachinglife.com.au
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lines. As coaches, we know this and can provide security for what may seem the most terrifying journey. Whether it is an Olympic gold medal, getting a pass on the maths test or overcoming a fear of speaking in public, there is a journey and a need for security during that journey. Sometimes that security might just be permission to succeed or an external supply of belief. Like compound interest, the longer the investment, the greater the results. Some coaching changes can be very quick but the real differences are noticed over time. Your journey continues with the stories in this edition and I hope it is a long one… Happy Coaching
COACHINGLIFE May 2016 ISSUE 5 Coaching Life is published 11 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 Assistant Editor Sarah Bailey sarah@coachinglife.com.au Advertising advertising@coachinglife.com.au Design Emma Mardaine - haven creative www.havencreative.com.au
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CONTENTS
8 COVER STORY
16
12
SPORT COACHING 8
COVER STORY: 7-time World Surfing Champion, Layne Beachley, chats with us about maintaining dominance at the top of her sport and supporting young women of the future with the Aim For The Stars Foundation. Layne Beachley AO, Surfing legend, Chair of Surfing Australia
12 A Gold-medal winning program: Australian mogul
skiing’s international success reaches new heights with long-term planning. Steve Desovich, Mogul Skiing Head Coach, OWIA
16 High Performance program management. Adam Sachs discusses his years planning for the evolution of gymnastics. Adam Sachs, National Performance Director, Gymnastics Australia
20 What are the characteristics of a highly successful
coach? UniQLD Professor Cliff Mallett shares his research into the best of the best in the sports business. Prof. Cliff Mallett, Professor of Sport Psychology and Coaching, University of Queensland/AIS
24 Discover the rugby approach to coach and athlete development pathways with two of ARU’s key program managers. Jayson Brewer/Adrian Thompson, National Development Programs, Australian Rugby Union
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27 COACHING LIFE FEATURE: We take a closer look at
our much-loved national grassroots programs: Auskick, MiniRoos, NetSetGo and more! Grassroots coaching
33 Keeping kids in sport: Paul Caslick brings us the motorsports perspective about parents, prices and preparation. Paul Caslick, Motorcyle Racing legend
34 Arguably Australia’s most respected and decorated
netball coach ever, Jill McIntosh shares her secrets of the game and international development. Jill McIntosh, Netball coaching legend
38 Did you know our future Olympians are already in the
pool? We chat to David Speechley about creating retention programs for our future stars. David Speechley, General Manager, Australian Swimming Coaches and Teachers Association
BUSINESS COACHING 42 Stand out from the crowd! Leverage your personal expertise to build your business and create long-term success. Steve Brossman, Authority Catalyst
46 Times are changing: building coaching culture into
schools for high performance. Grant O’Sullivan, Director of Growth Coaching International WA, SA, NT www.coachinglife.com.au
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46 58 50 Invest in your clients and members by creating an
engagement strategy. See how the AIM has revamped their member offering for the future. Margot Smith, General Manager Engagement and Marketing, Australian Institute of Management
54 Even bankers need help! See how Owner-Managers
evolve their banking small businesses with BOQ coaching programs. Glen Goldspink, Business Coach for Retail Capability, Bank of Queensland
70 Coaching changes lives - including the coach’s! Read
Glen’s story of how a life of destruction turned to
success by becoming a coach.
Glen Murdoch, Founder, The Life Coaching College
74 BOOK REVIEWS / ARTICLE REFERENCES 75 THE LAST WORD
Some final words of inspiration from our contributors.
LIFE COACHING 58 Changing the world, one life at a time. The Helmsman
Project’s, Dr Michael Cavanagh, talks transforming students’ lives through adventure education. Dr Michael Cavanagh, Chair of The Helmsman Project Coaching working group/Deputy Head Coaching Psychology Unit, The University of Sydney
62 Different client, different approach? Learn
how to plan coaching journeys for both short and long-term clients. Shannah Kennedy, Life Coach
66 Top tips for keeping your coaching fresh in the long haul!
Wyomie Robertson, Life Coach
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LAYNE BEACHLEY AO Surfing legend, Chair of Surfing Australia STEVE DESOVICH Mogul Skiing Head Coach, OWIA ADAM SACHS National Performance Director, Gymnastics Australia PROFESSOR CLIFF MALLETT Professor of Sport Psychology and Coaching, University of Queensland/AIS JAYSON BREWER/ADRIAN THOMPSON National Development Programs, Australian Rugby Union GRASSROOTS COACHING PAUL CASLICK Motorcyle Racing legend JILL MCINTOSH Netball coaching legend DAVID SPEECHLEY General Manager, Australian Swimming Coaches and Teachers Association
SPORTS COACHING » www.coachinglife.com.au
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THE LONGEST WAVE By Layne Beachley
THROUGHOUT MY 19-YEAR SURFING CAREER, I HAD TO FIND WAYS TO REINVENT MYSELF EVERY SINGLE YEAR TO STAY MOTIVATED. IT IS AS SIMPLE AS LOOKING FOR INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS BUT BEFORE I STARTED WINNING CONSISTENTLY, I WAS IN THE GAME OF BLAME. EVERYTHING THAT COULD POSSIBLY ENHANCE OR IMPROVE MY SITUATION WAS EXTERNALISED. IT WAS ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT FOR LOSING. THERE WAS ALWAYS AN EXCUSE OR A REASON OR A STORY AS TO WHY I WASN’T WINNING.
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n 1997, I went to a professional development course called ‘Money and You’ because I had a pretty serious block around money. I was No.2 in the world but I was still working up to 60 hours a week in 4 different jobs. So it was all a little bit challenging! I went along to this course and the one thing I recall learning after being in the room the whole first day was the importance of personal accountability and responsibility. The next morning, I went surfing very early, knowing I had to be at the class. My leg rope kept getting under my feet and I naturally went back into my old pattern of blaming the leg rope; my feet had slipped off the board so I blamed the wax, and my board
wasn’t working so I blamed the board. Then I realised I’d gone back into that externalised projection of the blame game and I had to laugh. The universe was presenting me with an opportunity to become aware, and I was still blaming everybody else and not taking responsibility. I sat up on my board for a second and thought, “I chose this board to ride this morning. I chose the wax that I put on it, and I chose how I put the leash on my ankle. So why is it everything else’s fault?”. I learnt a really valuable lesson around personal accountability and responsibility. Soon after this I met someone who presented me with the opportunity to do a rebirthing. I went along to this experience with my eyes, heart and www.coachinglife.com.au
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When I became aware of my fears, they no longer controlled my life. If you want to know what you fear, just have a look at your life, and the aspects that aren’t working. mind wide open. It made me aware of my very deep-seated fear of rejection that emanated all the way back to my birth, because I was adopted at birth. I’d never put two and two together. When I became aware of my fears, they no longer controlled my life. If you want to know what you fear, just have a look at your life, and the aspects that aren’t working. After doing that experience and becoming aware of my fears, I was able to change my behaviours and my thoughts. I won my first world title only a year later.
To maintain my position at the top of the world, I had to continue to reinvent myself and find new ways to improve. The advantage I have as an athlete is that I’m always soliciting feedback and constructive criticism. I have always surrounded myself with great coaches. I’ve worked with my surf coach, Steve Foreman, since 1994. I still work with him today because I always like to improve and fine-tune my technique. The first time I met Steve, I asked him if I could work with him, because I surf like a crab. He asked me, “What does a
“To maintain my position at the top of the world, I had to continue to reinvent myself and find new ways to improve”.
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crab surf like?”, and I said, “Why don’t I just go out and show you?”. I caught a wave and came in, and he said, “Yes, in fact you do surf like a crab. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that, yes, we’ll work together, and the bad news is everything you know you need to let it go and start again.” For me, coaching is about building and maintaining a relationship with someone that can be honest with you, give you constructive criticism, valuable feedback and share in your success and failures. The great thing about working with a team, is that they share in every aspect of your journey. Finding people who elevate you, embrace you, nurture you, support you and encourage you is incredibly important. There are many dream thieves and life vampires out there that don’t want to see you succeed. Another important coach for me was my personal trainer Rob RowlandSmith. He brought out the best in me physically, mentally and emotionally. He trained me harder than I’ve ever been trained in my life, taking me outside my comfort zone in every single training session. My fitness became so reliable that I was incredibly confident irrespective of conditions. It didn’t matter what I’d face, I knew I could deal with it. The difference between going from No.2 in the world to winning my first world title can partly be contributed to falling in love with a big wave surfer called Ken Bradshaw. He had so much belief in my ability that it was impossible to doubt myself. We removed the focus on pain and suffering, and we focused on the process. I already knew what the goal was: to win and to be the best version of myself. Ken eliminated a lot of the distractions, which allowed me to focus on my surfing. He would identify certain little things I was doing that were holding me back, such as spending too much time on my heels, for example. To eliminate that flaw in my technique, he made me walk around the house
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For me, coaching is about building and maintaining a relationship with someone that can be honest with you, give you constructive criticism, valuable feedback and share in your success and failures. on my tippy toes all the time, to get my weight off my heels. I was always focusing on doing the little things each and every day that enabled me to stay ahead of where I was yesterday, which essentially was enabling me to stay ahead of my competition. My surf coach would make me surf the most appalling conditions, because it highlights every flaw in my technique very quickly. There are short cuts to success – if you’re willing to expose yourself to them. After I won my first world title, it was a matter of wiping the slate clean and starting again. Where am I right now and where do I want to be at the end of the year? I want to be world champion. What am I doing right now that is going to enable me to get there? What other skills or improvements can I bring into my repertoire that’s going to keep me ahead of the game? What is the competition doing and ensuring that you’re doing it better than them! I remember being told by Pam Burridge, who was a former World Champion in 1990, “You only have to do enough to
win”. That didn’t sit very well with me and I have never been comfortable with that statement. As a competitor, I had the compassion of a tiger shark! I wanted to win convincingly all the time. I never allowed the history books, other people’s opinion, or other people’s beliefs or limitations to determine who I was and what I can achieve. Occasionally I did, which compromised my own values, sacrificed my happiness and sabotaged my future success.
AIM FOR THE STARS FOUNDATION When I was No.2 in the world, I was earning $8,000 a year from my sponsor at the time, Quiksilver. I was working 60 hours a week, at 4 different jobs, and travelling the pro-tour. Obviously I had very empathetic employers who continued to provide me with the opportunity to go off and tour, but it was a struggle. Then in 1995, one of my employers at the Old Manly Boat Shed gifted me a $3,000 cheque and said, “I believe in you, I see how hard you’re working, www.coachinglife.com.au
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“It only takes a really small amount of effort to create a long-lasting impact in someone’s life.” I see how much you want this, here’s your next round-the-world air ticket.” That was a catalyst moment and gave me the opportunity to continue pursuing my ambition and dream. Knowing that I had the support and belief of somebody instilled a greater sense of confidence within me and 3 years later I won my 1st world title. After winning my 6th consecutive world title I was presented with the opportunity to start the foundation. My own success, essentially, inspired me to start the Aim for the Stars Foundation. It was born through reflection – thinking back to my career, how challenging it was and how many times I wanted to quit due to financial burden and lack of support. The Foundation was created to prevent girls from having to endure that same level of financial hardship and challenge that I experienced in my career. We provide financial and moral support for young girls and women to invest in their future, and fulfil their potential across all walks of life. We’re not just about athletes, we’re about empowering, enabling and encouraging young women to dare to dream, pursue the passion and aspire to achieve. In 2015, we were really excited to help just over 20 girls, giving away $90,000 worth of grants. Through our fundraising, we’ve managed to double our available scholarships this year, helping 40 girls from 970 applicants. We give them $4,000 each and align them with a personal mentor. We bring them all to Sydney to meet the mentors, do goal-building, brand-building and values alignment workshops, and celebrate their success with a big annual fundraiser. As well as sharing some of my wisdom and knowledge, I also get to take them surfing! It only takes a really small amount of effort to create a long-lasting impact in someone’s life. www.coachinglife.com.au
The girls become alumni and a support network for each other for years to come. That network of support is incredibly important for their future success. Caroline Buchanan, who’s a 5-time World Champion BMX rider, was a recipient in the same year as Megan Rutledge, who was a motocross champion. They ended up becoming mentors for each other, because they understand each other’s world. Caroline was even reaching out to Megan during the Olympics in 2012. We’ve helped about 450 girls over the last 13 years and given away around $800,000 worth of grants. It is my intention to continue expanding. We’ve also just launched an online mentoring program called Stars2Leaders for anyone who has come through our scholarship program. Surfing Australia held a coaching forum recently, and one thing coaches don’t do enough of is share their intel. It’s a matter of getting together and sharing your knowledge, experience and wisdom to promote the whole industry. I’m seeing more surfers take on surf coaches than ever before, which is a fantastic thing as it’s such a challenging sport to master. The funny thing about surfing is how it feels can be very different to how it looks. At times it can be the polar opposite, so it’s really helpful to have a coach to keep things in perspective. I believe the greatest gift coaches can give is the sharing of knowledge, not only to their athletes but to other coaches as well. There are a lot of athletes that continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. They can’t seem to create the space or present themselves with the feedback required to change what they’re doing, and that’s where coaches come in. I believe leaders learn from other people’s mistakes, and fools love to learn from their own.
Layne Beachley AO is a surfing legend. Pro at 16, she is the only surfer to have ever won 6 consecutive World Championship titles, 7 in total in her illustrious career. She is one of four Vice Presidents of the International Surfing Association and Chairperson of Surfing Australia. Layne was inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of Fame in 2006 and became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2015 for her distinguished services to sport, the community and mentoring women. In addition to being Director of her own Foundation, Layne currently focuses her energy into igniting human potential and training others to become more focused, accountable and motivated to achieve both professional and personal aspirations. Layne filters her work through many avenues including keynotes, workshops, books, blogs, media and events.
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D L O C E IC esovich
By Steve D
D L GO
LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I STARTED SKIING AS A FAMILY ACTIVITY. I GREW UP IN THE UNITED STATES AND SPENT MUCH OF MY YOUTH UP IN THE SKI AREA OF KILLINGTON IN VERMONT, 4 HOURS NORTH OF HOME. WE SKIED AS A FAMILY LIKE MANY DO AT PERISHER OR MT BULLER TODAY, GOING UP EVERY WEEKEND. ULTIMATELY, I WAS ENROLLED IN A SCHOOL THERE, KILLINGTON MOUNTAIN SCHOOL, WHICH IS A TRAINING ACADEMY AND A HIGH SCHOOL. IN THAT PROGRAM, YOU HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF COACHES, SKIING MOGULS AND WORKING THE COMPETITION CIRCUIT. EVENTUALLY I WORKED MY WAY THROUGH TO EARN A SPOT ON THE US SKI TEAM.
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started to do a little bit of coaching over that time, which is how it evolved for me, while I skied on the US Team for my early years in the 80s. When I was competing, I thought I might want to coach at some point, and there were summer camp opportunities to coach the younger kids if you were a senior competitor, which is what I did. That was the time that mogul skiing had started to evolve to a point where coaches and staff were involved, so I became part of the first wave of this. Almost all coaches in skiing have come from competition backgrounds. In 1989 I started coaching the Canadian team after they expressed interest, which gave me a start at the elite level. I worked to help competitors transition from Olympic trials to full
medal status, and gearing teams up to take their program to the next level. We also had a senior coach, Peter Judge, who oversaw the whole program and became a big mentor of mine. He helped me through my early coaching years. While I coached the technical side, he looked after the planning and other aspects. I ended up staying there for 9 years. In 1994, one of our skiers, Jean-Luc Brassard, won a gold medal in moguls, which was a landmark event. But the ‘98 Olympics was a rather below average showing, so it was time for me to move on and seek out other opportunities. I really wanted to be involved with a program that wanted to build something special and, by coincidence, www.coachinglife.com.au
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The moguls group L-R: Jerry Grossi, Steve Desovich, Matt Graham and Brittney Cox.
Geoff Lipshut, the CEO of the OWIA (Olympic Winter Institute of Australia) was active in seeking my coaching for the team. His encouragement meant I was able to come over in 1998 to the Australian mogul program and build a team. We had some existing talent, such as Maria Despas, and we made a considerable investment in Dale Begg-Smith, who became an Australian Olympic gold medallist in our program. He won the gold in 2006 at the Torino Olympics, and a silver in 2010 in Vancouver, accumulating 4 World Cup titles and World Championships medals. He’s now one of the most accomplished mogul skiers of all time, if not the most.
I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with personnel. Moguls very much relies on the skier’s individual talent as a base, much more than any other sport.
Steve Desovich with Olympic Gold and Silver Medalist Dale Begg-Smith www.coachinglife.com.au
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Celebrating Matt Graham’s first World Cup win. From L - R: Steve Desovich, Peter Hogg, Matt Graham and Jerry Grossi. mogul skier to achieve something of that nature and that stature (winning a medal at the 2001 World Championships), she breathed life into our program and helped us survive in that upper tier until Dale emerged.
I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with personnel. Moguls very much relies on the skier’s individual talent as a base, much more than any other sport. In ’94 I was fortunate enough to link up with Jean-Luc Brassard, who was just a super talent and became Olympic gold medallist in ’94, two-time World Champion in ’93 and ’97, and a threetime World Cup Champion in ’93, ‘96, ’97. Again, I was in the right place at the right time with those two guys: with Jean-Luc in that 90s era and then with Dale Begg-Smith in the 2000s. They were amongst, if not the best mogul skiers really of all time, and being involved with them gave me a lot of credibility as a coach. Those guys would probably have won gold anyway, but I happened to be in the right place at the right time with them, so I was the benefactor of their success. In mogul skiing, if there was an index of how much you are reliant on the talent on a scale of 1 to 10, mogul skiing is very highly related on the talent maybe upwards of a 9 on this scale. I was lucky enough to be there with them and to experience a lot of great achievements. I was a first-hand witness to all those achievements, so they were really substantial moments in what we were trying to achieve, from the Olympic level, which is the pinnacle and then at the World Championships. That would be the second big prize and then the World Cup each year, of course.
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I had been a little familiar with Australia from the competition circuit over the years, training here in ‘97 with the Canadian team, and my major impression was that there was an interesting program and that the Australians wanted to build something substantial. The OWIA together with Ski and Snowboard Australia placed a lot of emphasis on coaching and the importance of coaching. It’s evolved into a great system today with the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) and AOC (Australian Olympic Committee) and I’m really fortunate to be here and thankful that Geoff was instrumental in making the original offer to come to Melbourne. Winter sports are an evolving niche here – you don’t think of skiing when you think of Australia necessarily. We’re thankful for the tremendous support of Perisher Ski Area. They’ve provided our mogul program with a home-based training ground since 2002, along with a world-class mogul course, Toppa’s Dream. They’ve been instrumental in delivering our program and have helped us evolve to where we are today. Maria Despas, who won a silver medal at the 2001 World Championships, was the athlete who really bridged the gap with our program before Dale Begg-Smith came into the picture and exploded onto the scene. We had been building and struggling, seeking recognition and really fighting for the program’s survival. She had been in the program and on the circuit for a number of years. As the first Australian
Dale transitioned from Canada at that time and was training with us in 2001. As part of that process, he had to sit out 2 years of competition and would ultimately compete for Australia in 2004. In the program at the moment is Matt Graham, who is currently ranked No.2 in the world. We’re currently working with him out at the ramp now, getting his acrobatic skills polished and honed as we head toward the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. We also have Britteny Cox, who was a bronze medallist at the 2015 World Championships. We’ve invested in those that have come through the pathway since they’ve been 14 or 15, and we’ve now seen their emergence over the last 2 or 3 years. Geographically it’s a big challenge for our skiers to accumulate enough ski days to have the skills at a young age. Being based in the Southern hemisphere when a large portion of our business revolves around the northern hemisphere and its competitions is one of the major challenges in setting up our calendar. The elite level of moguls skiing, with nations like Canada, the US, Japan is extremely competitive. Physical preparation is taking more prominence and injuries do occur. It’s extremely difficult to produce results at the big events – you need a substantial amount of natural talent and skill. You can’t replace it. It’s possible to compete into your late twenties but the absolute prime years for World Cup level competition is 18-26. If you hope to have any sort of long-term success and to reach a high level, you have to be skiing from a very young age. www.coachinglife.com.au
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The coaching pathway itself has evolved a long way from when I entered the sport. Now there are local and regional coaching programs, so you’re coaching at club level, and in Australia you also have Interschool mogul competitions. This then leads ultimately to the NSW Institute of Sport program, who we partner and share the mogul program with, headed by Peter Topalovic. We work with the athletes through long-term development with the aim to achieve selection on the World Cup team. The sport has become so acrobatically inclined that we now have year-round acrobatic training on top of skiing and strength and conditioning. They have to learn on trampoline, take it to a water ramp, then through to skiing. My responsibility is the actual skiing and overall program planning but we have an Acrobatics Coach, Jerry Grossi, with whom I have worked for the last 4 years.
There are a variety of coaching certification programs that exist. I went through a formal educational process when I was in Canada. They have a Coaches Association and various sorts of credentials tickets that you accumulate. In Australia it’s done on a formal level through various institutes. The AIS, for instance, have coaching programs, and there’s all sorts of certificates and educational programs that exist. But, as important, if not more, it’s done organically in the field when we’re all on the hill together, learning from each other. In the future, I see coaching being formatted as acrobatic mogul programs combined with strong skiing skills because those skills have to be ingrained from a very young age. In terms of the coaching, it’s an ongoing process upskilling yourself, observing, watching videos for analysis. Everything is individualised for what the athletes need. This is all thanks to the AIS and AOC organisations. Their ongoing support and evolvement of the program represent the two pillars of our sport system and enable us to function competitively in a meaningful way internationally.
Winter sports are an evolving niche here – you don’t think of skiing when you think of Australia necessarily. www.coachinglife.com.au
Steve Desovich has been the National Head Coach of Mogul Skiing at the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia since 1998, through 4 Winter Olympic Games. He is a former US Freestyle Team athlete with 18 World Cup podium results and 9 World Cup victories, and was former coach to the Canadian Mogul Skiing team.
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GYMNASTICS GENESIS By Adam Sachs
I WAS AN ATHLETE IN GYMNASTICS FROM 5/6 YEARS OLD AND COMPETED THROUGH MY LATE TEENS AND EARLY 20S. I HAD A BIT OF A PEEK AT BEING COMPETITIVE NATIONALLY AND TRAVELLING INTERNATIONALLY IN THE ELITE STREAM IN MY MID-TEENS, BUT UNFORTUNATELY PICKED UP A BACK INJURY THAT WAS THE START OF THE END. IT WAS AT THAT POINT THAT I REALISED I WASN’T GOING TO HIT THE TARGETS I’D SET MYSELF AS AN ATHLETE AND STARTED TO LOOK AT OTHER OPTIONS.
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Coaching is a more viable career choice now than it was when I started. There are lots of people who make good money out of coaching gymnastics, and it’s not just at the elite end.
elite environment. We had mixed results in Sydney, but probably the highlight for us was Ji Wallace’s silver medal on the trampoline. To date [2016] it remains Australia’s only Olympic gymnastics medal to-date.
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really started coaching after finishing school and starting university. At first it was a good way of generating some income, and was certainly more attractive than going to work at McDonalds. I was very fortunate to start in a small club called Henley and Grange Youth Club, with an older chap called Ken Webb who had been running it for years. He really wanted a younger person with a fresh vision and new energy to come in and take over, to be his successor. I probably knew more technically than he did, but he knew more about coaching, and certainly a lot more about program management than I did, so it was a good fit. He was a fantastic mentor, not just in the coaching space, but in terms of learning to manage a program and the people within it. That was my first taste of putting the key pieces of the daily training environment together for athletes who weren’t particularly high level, but who achieved success at their competition level. He took the big bold step of paying me - I was the only paid www.coachinglife.com.au
coach in the program which was pretty progressive for him and the sport at that time. Once I finished university, I picked up a job as the State Coaching and Development Director for Gymnastics South Australia. The 4 years there gave me an opportunity to stay connected, move into different areas and understand a little bit more about the higher level mechanics that go on behind finding and developing coaches. Following that, I was briefly the General Manager of the State Netball Centre in South Australia before an opportunity came up to go to Melbourne to work with Gymnastics Australia as their High Performance Manager leading into the Sydney Olympics. I jumped at that and moved to Melbourne with my wife. It was a reasonably senior management position, particularly for someone of my age and stage of career and represented a massively steep learning curve. It was my first experience with high performance management and the performance direction of athletes, coaches, service providers, in a truly
Post-Olympics, I spent 8 years as the Performance Director at Volleyball Australia, working with both indoor and beach volleyball through two Olympic Games. But after a change of management at Gymnastics Australia in 2011, an opportunity opened up to return as their Performance Director, and I’ve been here ever since. The men’s, women’s and rhythmic programs were already well established, but a key part of that role was setting up the Olympic athlete program for trampoline. Trampoline had just been admitted at the last minute to the program for the Sydney Olympics, not as a test event but as a full blown medal event. Trampoline was a separate federation at the time, so as I came on board, Gymnastics Australia and the Australian Trampoline Association were just completing the merger. Trampoline as a sport was about as unsophisticated as you could imagine an Olympic sport might be - kids and adults still training on trampolines in their backyards! COACHINGLIFE
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opportunity to coach and earn some money. Some of them stick around and pursue that as a career path. We now have a lot of paid professional coaches in our sport, and many of them are quite young, which is fantastic. The other entry point, certainly when I was involved, was parents of kids in programs. Back at Henley and Grange Youth Club, a lot of the other coaches were parents of kids in the club who stepped up to the plate and helped with coaching kids. This allowed us to manage coach to athlete ratios so that the kids were actually getting something out of it.
The landscape for coaches has changed significantly, with a much stronger focus on professional education accreditation, maintenance of safety standards and duty of care. It was massively steep learning curve for the trampoline athletes to come into a high performance environment and be training twice a day, six days a week. They had to learn to engage with sports science and sports medicine, and their professional, full-time coach. But in the end we qualified both a male and a female. The male, Ji Wallace, had a really shocking year for the 12 months between qualification and the Olympic Games. I remember him getting through his full difficulty routine for the first time ever in the Olympic final. Then the last athlete to compete, who was the current World Champion, won the gold medal, but it was Ji for the silver. It was an amazing experience. Everything I had learnt as an athlete and through the early parts of my coaching and program management
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roles, taught me about the key building blocks to high performance. A high performance program obviously needs: • Quality athletes with clear plans for achieving targets • Quality coaches to guide/push them • Quality daily training environments (facilities and equipment) • Sports science medicine • Access to competition • Good performance management There’s probably two entry points for coaches coming through from the grassroots level. There’s the kids who do gymnastics themselves, whether they’re in the high performance stream or not. Many come through the “level” stream, which is sort of the national club type level of gymnastics, and get to a point where, like me, there’s an
There is training available for these kids and even for parents who want to step up as coaches. Both at national and state level, our success and our sustainability long-term has been a real feature with participation numbers continuing to grow by more than 5% a year. Our technical memberships – coaches and judges – are continuing to grow strongly from one year to the next, and we’ve still got over 500 clubs in the country. Interestingly, the club numbers have actually dropped over time, so we’ve now got fewer but bigger, more professional clubs. That’s created additional opportunity for people to connect with the coaching pathway and stay involved for longer. Coaching is a more viable career choice now than it was when I started. There are lots of people who make good money out of coaching gymnastics, and it’s not just at the elite end. The fact that our Industry Training and Accreditation Group (ITAG) has been really diligent about preparing and maintaining coach education courses that start with basic orientation to coaching courses, and progress through what used to be Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, is a critical factor to our coach development success. We’ve had a pretty significant overhaul of that coaching education structure in the last 3-5 years, so these levels have new names, but they have been updated to www.coachinglife.com.au
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of individual planning for athletes. Traditionally, coaches work with groups of athletes. They have an idea in their mind what athlete A needs relative to athlete B, but fundamentally the program they set is for the whole group, and then modified on the ground. We need to understand our athletes much more intimately individually and be able to reflect that understanding in terms of where they’re at now, where they might be in 12 months or 4 years, through their own personalised individual performance plan. reflect the evolution in the sport from where it was at late 90s/early 2000s to where it’s at now and where it’s going. The coaches in our high performance system have made an excellent contribution, understanding that they’re an aging cohort who won’t be around forever. We need to move quickly and develop the Australian coaches who are in our system, but also find a way of identifying and developing new coaches who may not yet be in our system, but who could eventually become the technical high performance leaders in the future. Outside of the foreign technical experts that we’ve invested heavily in, the future of coaching is going to have to come from within Australia. It’s going to be young people with an interest in the sport and coaching professionally, with the ability to grasp technical information but who also have a strong focus on the soft skills – people, communication and interrelationship skills. We have very young athletes who are involved for many years before they do anything significant in terms of making benchmark events and performing successfully. The key to maintaining an effective working relationship is the ability to understand one another and communicate effectively, so that whether things are going well or not, it can be shared and responded to www.coachinglife.com.au
appropriately. I’ve seen athletes drop out of sport because their relationships with their coaches just deteriorate to the point where they can’t salvage it for themselves. By definition high performance is all about managing burnout. Sometimes you can manage it, sometimes you can’t, when an athlete reaches their limit of development. A key focus of the work that we’re doing between our coaching and our performance support staff at the moment is managing the incidence of injury and its impact on our athletes’ ability to train and compete. At a basic coaching level, we focus on coaches leading strong physical preparation of our athletes. Coaches tend to get excited about technical skill development, and that’s understandable, that’s where the magic happens: building skills, putting it together in combinations, constructing routines, and then putting them out on the competition board. But none of that can happen effectively or in a sustained way without good physical preparation. They need to be as committed to physical preparation as they are to technical skill development and preparation of athletes for competition. Those three things in my mind are at the very least equally important.
The landscape for coaches has changed significantly, with a much stronger focus on professional education accreditation, maintenance of safety standards and duty of care. Gymnastics has been very proactive for a very long time ensuring coach professional development, but I’m not sure that we’ve been as innovative as we could have been as a sport. We’re now moving strongly into bedding down the framework for high performance coach development, populated with really sophisticated current or next generation opportunities that we’re developing in conjunction with UQ, the AIS and Melbourne Business School. So there’s a bit of a genesis happening at the moment, specifically in the coaching area.
Adam Sachs is the National Performance Director for Gymnastics Australia. He has previously been the High Performance Manager for both Gymnastics Australia (1999-2000) and Volleyball Australia (2003-2011). He was an elite gymnastics competitor prior to injury.
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KNOWING THE PERSON BEHIND THE SUCCESSFUL COACH By Professor Cliff Mallett
THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR COACHING EXCELLENCE (ICCE) RECENTLY CONDUCTED A LANDMARK STUDY EXAMINING 14 OF THE WORLD’S BEST COACHES FROM 11 COUNTRIES (10 SPORTS, INCLUDING 5 TEAM SPORTS AND 1 COMBAT SPORT).
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he coaches represented the best of the best and were only included if they had achieved sustained success (winning gold medals and championships) across contexts (different countries, leagues, men and women) in the international arena in Olympic or professional sports. Combined, these coaches had won more than 128 gold medals and league titles! The origins of the project are linked to the ongoing agenda of professionalisation in sports coaching and the associated need for a significant empirical base for guiding policy and practice to advance coach education and development. Consequently, John Bales (President ICCE) initiated this study and invited Professor Cliff Mallett (University of Queensland) to lead the project. Cliff and Research Associate Sergio Lara-
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Bercial (Leeds Beckett University and ICCE) conducted the study to profile these highly successful coaches (referred to as serial winning coaches; or SWC). This project was endorsed and funded by national coach developers from 12 countries (including Australia, UK, Germany, France). Specifically, the primary aim of the study was to learn deeply about who these coaches are as people so that we might understand why they have been able to achieve such greatness. When we say we know someone, what do we really know? Typically, we rely on identifying some broad and consistent behaviours (traits). However, this reliance on some broad personality traits is limited in really knowing the person. Therefore, the design of this study embraced a comprehensive and unique profiling of these SWC that captured data from three layers
of personality that enabled a deeper portrait of these SWC to emerge. These three hierarchical layers considered:
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What type of person are they? (e.g. what is their behavioural signature) What do they want? (e.g. what are they striving to achieve or avoid)
How do they see themselves? (e.g. how they made sense of their life experiences)
COACH AS PERFORMER Positioning coaches as performers in their own right is an increasingly adopted position. However, the contribution of coaches to athlete performance is complex and likely impossible to empirically examine with any degree of certainty. Nevertheless, the athletes of SWC underscored the importance of these coaches to their performance at major international events. Moreover, athletes viewed the www.coachinglife.com.au
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SWC, compared to other coaches, as special in several ways: compassion, open-mindedness, work ethic, selfawareness and persuasiveness. Before going into further detail, it is important to note that not all SWC were the same – there were outliers amongst this group of outliers. With this in mind, it is possible to consider some of the common aspects related to this exceptional group. The overall profile of these coaches showed that they were clear optimists and directed individuals, who showed initiative and independence. They were characterised as well-balanced people who took life in their stride and were focused on the future. Furthermore, they had a clear vision and passion to achieve those prospective objectives. These SWC had visions that were years into the future – what will it take to win in 4-8 years’ time? The athletes of these coaches highlighted the ability of SWC to effectively communicate their vision to them. The ability to reduce the complexity in how they interacted with the athletes and other personnel was also a key quality of the SWC. In pursuing this vision, the SWC were driven by personal development and growth related to themselves, their athletes, and other support personnel – in short, they were highly motivated for success. This drive for growth stimulated a strong sense of self-belief for the coach, athletes and support personnel. This commitment to learning and development was very strong as they enjoyed the challenges of the work in achieving their objectives. Overall, the data showed that they were socially competent, which provided the foundation for adaptive working relationships. That is not to say that they did not experience challenges. However, they were cognisant of the need to get along to get ahead. In difficult times, SWC demonstrated their effective self-regulatory skills. They were reported as possessing a high degree of self-awareness and emotional regulation. The data from www.coachinglife.com.au
both SWC and their athletes supported the view that these SWC were strong on emotional intelligence (EI). This EI provided a foundation for effective twoway communication and demonstrating resilience and a sense of work-life balance. They also reported generally good physical, mental, and emotional well-being. In ‘performing’ their work, the data clearly shows that critical life events shaped the person behind the coach in this unique group of SWC. Parental influences (values; importance of learning); the desire and high selfbelief to coach and influence others; the need to prove themselves (but to whom?); and calculated ‘risk taking’ were all key factors in becoming a SWC. This significant drive for success (need to prove competence; maybe a desire to be a hero) was fuelled by the subconscious pursuit of atonement – unfinished business or some form of redemption for personal perceptions of previous failures (often as an athlete but not in all cases). When these SWC were successful, they continued to pursue further success. Success
seemed to be a double-edge sword – there was some temporary relief in redeeming some ‘wrongs’ of the past but it was also a reminder of these perceived personal failings. The need to prove their competence was for both self and others – I want to be great not just last year but this year as well.
COACH AS LEADER A strong quality of these SWC was the ability to influence others. Both the SWC and their athletes reported this positive influence on others – followship. In describing these SWC as leaders, we consider some of the main findings. Most SWC were characterised as benevolent dictators. They were ruthless, decisive, highly determined, but they unequivocally showed that they cared for their athletes as well as the support personnel. Despite keeping their eyes on the big prize, they were sensitive to the emotional needs of others they cared about. As previously stated, these SWC were deliberate and considered in their coaching performance, but they also took calculated risks (e.g. unexpected COACHINGLIFE
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SPORT and unpractised shifts in team tactics in medal winning matches) to increase chances of success. Several SWC were characterised by the notion of higher-purpose altruism. These SWC were driven by a higher purpose – pride of a nation; a sense of duty to the athletes and their families. These SWC understood the emotional impact of their decision-making (e.g. selection) but were focused on the instrumental outcomes associated with elite sport. The SWC reported that over the course of their coaching career there was a shift to a more transformational approach to leadership. Specifically, the SWC embraced a collaborative approach with athletes in developing the vision and the strategies to achieve the desired performance goals. The ability of these SWC to shift towards a collaborative approach to leadership is understandable because emotional intelligence has been linked to both autonomy-supportive and transformational leadership. The use of athlete voice fosters athletes’ internal motivation and a stronger sense of identity. As a result, the athletes saw their SWC as being inspirational.
as more important in the early stages of their coaching career. A key finding was that the SWC possessed an unquenchable thirst for learning and were avid readers. They were highly driven to know more so that they could sustain their success over time. This pursuit of knowledge was driven by their quest to be the best coach and a point of difference for their athletes’ success – not only to get ahead but to stay ahead of others in the highly contested nature of elite sport. What drove this pursuit was to leave no stone unturned in assisting their athletes to become the best they could. It is worth noting that while SWC accessed a variety of sources for learning, they retained responsibility for decision-making. So while others may have influenced their learning, in the end, what they did with that was firmly under their control.
CONCLUSIONS
13 of the 14 SWC were universityeducated with at least one degree. These SWC highly valued their university education in providing them with foundational cognitive skills to analyse and problem-solve, as well as to provide them some relevant content knowledge (sport science, psychology). The development of skills related to thinking at a higher level was considered an advantage and necessary to be successful as a high performance coach.
The regular sacking of high performance coaches (approx. 25% within the Australian context) impacts player and team development, organisational growth and the financial viability of sporting clubs and teams. This issue of employment volatility is a major issue for the professionalisation of sports coaching. It is argued that a more rigorous and systematic approach to the identification, recruitment and development of high performance coaches is necessary.
This formal learning was complemented by informal (e.g. self-learning; learning from athletes and other coaches) and non-formal learning (e.g. conferences) opportunities. Collectively, these varied learning opportunities differentially contributed to their development. Whilst playing the sport they now coach was considered useful, it was reported
Some findings from this research that might be generative in guiding policy and practice include:
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• passion for learning • visionary • emotional intelligence/self-regulation skills More importantly, a few considerations of the process are strongly encouraged. First, the need for a more rigorous approach to decision-making is needed. Second, an athlete voice about the impact of coaches on their development seems warranted. Third, the use of interview questions that seek to understand what drives coaches and how they make sense of their life events enables a deeper understanding of people. Finally, understanding the person behind the coach is only one part of the personorganisation fit.
Finally, a finding that has rarely been reported in other studies related to the significant contribution of athletes to the learning of the SWC. Athletes provided the stimuli for SWC coach growth and development in responding to the athletes’ needs.
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• collaborative approach to leading and managing others
• knowing why coaches have an insatiable drive for success (e.g. atonement; legacy)
Cliff Mallett is Professor of Sport Psychology and Coaching at the University of Queensland. He is a leading international scholar in high performance coaching and consults to many national and international sporting organisations as well as to professional sporting teams. Cliff was a medal-winning Australian Olympic, World Championship, and Commonwealth Games coach in track and field.
• balance between personal drive (agency) and altruism (care for and service to others) www.coachinglife.com.au
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Sports Community’s vision is to help build stronger communities by assisting ‘grass roots’ sports clubs to succeed through the empowerment of club volunteers. We believe healthy local sports clubs play a vital role within the community so we passionately endeavor to empower volunteers, around Australia, through the provision of information and training to help them achieve their objectives. At Sports Community we offer support in all areas of grassroots sports including to, club volunteers, association volunteers, council and government staff and peak body staff.
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PLAYER & COACH PATHWAYS
By Adrian Thompson and Jayson Brewer
PLAYER PATHWAYS by Adrian Thompson
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started playing rugby at 13 through school ended up playing club rugby at GPS “Jeeps” in Brisbane, but retired due to injury at age 20. I was greatly influenced by our coach, Chris Carberry, an ex-Wallaby who was ahead of his time for those days in terms of modern conditioning and pre-session planning. My coaching career started with some lower grade work with the Jeeps in 1988, as well as at Easts. In 1997 I started working full-time at Australian Rugby Union (ARU) in Development and was at Easts as first grade coach from 1999 for 2 years. From 2001-2002, I went to the Queensland Academy of Sport – a Joint program with QRU as their first rugby coach. I also coached in Japan for 6 seasons from 2005 to 2011. The rugby culture did change while I
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was there and again since. While still uniquely Japanese, it is becoming more modernised in the training set up, if not selections and administration. After Japan, I went to Brothers for a season in 2011, before starting with the ARU again the week after the Grand Final. As the current National Performance Programs Manager, I currently coach the Australian U20s and work closely with each of the 5 super franchises academy and U20s programs. We also look at the Junior Gold Cup coaching staff for the U15s and U20s. From this we try to identify and ensure that coaches from this system have a pathway to progress. For example, Cameron Blade and Shane Arnold progressed through this system to become the Waratah’s forwards coach and Brisbane NRC coach respectively. The ARU are now delivering several new programs nationally including the Viva 7s and Game On. Game On is targeted at schools, and Viva 7s is a version of
touch football for all ages to get the broader community involved. This year we’re using Jason Gilmore from Queensland and Tim Rapp from the Waratahs with the hope that this will be a development opportunity for them to move into coaching in their respective Super programs. On top of that, we have the Junior Gold Cup (as mentioned) and school’s rugby to find the next level of coaches. We have also invited a number of school-boy coaches for observation and skills based sessions to link into the U20s. The hardest thing in Australia is providing opportunities for coaches as there are currently not a lot of opportunities to work full-time here. We are aiming to change that with the National Rugby Championship (NRC), creating an opportunity for both coaches and players. Once they get to the professional level, there is a risk of losing them to Rugby League but we have created a player pathway to keep www.coachinglife.com.au
SPORT players in the sport and in Australia, developing a clear pathway to Super Rugby, Sevens and Wallabies Level for these athletes. Jayson Brewer is our National Coach Development Manager who identifies and runs our National Performance Coach program (Level 3). I work with him in identifying coaches and provide support and resources for coaches in the system. He is working on a number of levels of professional development for coach development. Over to you, Jayson.
COACH PATHWAYS By Jayson Brewer As part of my role I am responsible for leading and delivering strategic initiatives to support, educate and identify rugby coaches from grassroots to elite levels in Australia. I work closely with key stakeholders including Super Rugby Clubs and State Unions with an emphasis on communication, consultation and collaboration. From an early age my passion for coaching and working with athletes was strong. Having been a Director of Sport and Physical Education, I am well aware of the challenges that face learning and development across a variety of levels. I spent several seasons coaching with South Sydney Rugby League and really enjoyed the experience. At the time, I was at the crossroads, deciding my own coaching pathway. I am really keen to keep developing others but do also love the feeling of a team environment. Having played for Randwick Rugby, NSW Waratahs Academy and South Sydney while growing up, I have seen the game change across both codes. Players are bigger, faster, and even the learning methods have evolved ‘for good or bad’ over a number of years. Good quality coaches though will always have the athlete at the centre of all programs, from relationship development to communication and wellbeing. Our role as coaches is very simple – some coaches just get it, while others need further support and development. This is why we continue to develop and refine our www.coachinglife.com.au
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coaching strategy. In 2016, our theme is ‘Transforming Coach Development’ which is built on existing research and insights across all levels of coaching and player development. In conjunction with our member Unions, we have developed a new Coaching Framework which was launched in 2015. Our national curriculum continues to develop alongside this framework, as well as coaching process behaviours, self-reflection tools and player welfare, which are at the heart of all our offerings. The Coach Development model includes the 6 entry points that exist across the coach development education pathway. The Key features in the creation of this model is the development of coach education that is player-centred, provides diverse learning experiences, and embraces informal learning concepts when embedded in formal learning contexts. The ARU continues to acknowledge that coaches learn in varying contexts. Therefore, the Coach Development Model aims to provide this and emphasises the importance of expanding supportive environments in coaching courses to better facilitate and develop coaching knowledge and practice. Most NSOs in Australia are working with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in developing their framework and we are fortunate enough to be part of a pilot review in 2016. We have great mentors such as Alan Gaffney, Ben Whitaker and Adrian Thompson who have helped shape the way we develop, align and continue to challenge our philosophy for national integration. Of course, Michael Cheika and the Wallabies team will also be influential in further developing our national coaching blueprint and the new resources for coaches across our pathways. I am also working on developing our
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Elite Coach Profile system which integrates with the University of Queensland and AIS in working with targeted coaches of national interest. We have identified this is an area we need to further develop and provide access and opportunity for coaches within our system. We also run a female development program for targeted coaches and they have the opportunity to continue their development in our National Wallaroo camps. Another exciting feature is the launch of our new Rugby Learning Centre (RLC) that provides full access to coaches, match officials, volunteers and administrators. Our framework and learning pathways are embedded within this system and this resource will continue to develop throughout the years to come.
Having over 20 years’ in sport experience across Education, Sports Science and High Performance Programs, Jayson is well equipped to lead the ARUs National Coaching Strategy and explains key strategic plans for coach development and the critical element of aligning education, training and professional development across all levels of the athlete pathway.
Our National Schools Strategy has also identified areas we need to evolve, so we will be piloting a new Emerging Coach Program this year for targeted school’s coaches. We know the environment that teachers and club coaches provide is critical in many ways for players, especially at the foundation and grass roots levels. I am currently Randwick Rugby First Grade assistant coach and have been at the club for over 15 years as a player then coach. My advice to any coach would be to develop networks, get out of your comfort zone and find a mentor that will ultimately challenge you for the better. During the Rugby World Cup last year, I visited 6 premiership clubs across the UK and 1 premier league academy. The year before I was fortunate enough to spend some time at a top League team in Japan, but I believe we have quality coaches and high performance systems right here in Australia. Our National Pathway programs will continue to provide opportunities for coaches and leaders across our sport.
Adrian Thompson is the National Performance Programs Manager for Australian Rugby Union. He currently coaches the Australian U20s and has had an extensive national and international coaching career including touring Japan with the Wallabies. He now focuses on player development and talent identification of future coaches.
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GRASSROOTS
AFL AUSKICK
The NAB AFL Auskick program makes learning to play AFL fun, safe and easy for boys and girls aged 5-12. Through weekly coaching sessions they will learn the skills of the game in an exciting, social and safe environment. The AFL Auskick program has many centres that operate all over the country. Children learn the fundamental motor skills vital for future physical activity and sport participation as well as how to interact with other children as part of a team in small group activities. The program also provides a great opportunity for parents to interact with their kids through the activities, have the opportunity to make new friends, learn about the game and spend quality time with their children.
NETSETGO The ANZ NetSetGO is Netball Australia’s junior entry netball program, which began in 2008 and has grown to reach over 145,000 children in 2014 aged between five and 10 experienced the program around Australia. It has been developed to provide children with the best possible learning and playing experience to develop a positive introduction to netball, ensuring enjoyment and continued participation. It incorporates skill activities, minor games, music, dance and modified matches in a fun and safe environment. The weekly program is coordinated by accredited coaches and umpires to ensure a quality www.coachinglife.com.au
Each centre is run by a qualified AFL coach with coaching courses and resources available to ensure all volunteers are well equipped to deliver a high quality program. The quality of coaching is one of the primary reasons why players either continue to participate in Australian Football or give up the game. The coach has significantly more influence upon players than any other official or person connected with football, hence the requirement for all coaches to be accredited at an appropriate level. Supported be partnership with NAB, Auskick continues to provide much needed support to over 180,000 participants and 20,000 volunteers, involved at the 2,900 centres around the country. Programs such as the NAB AFL Auskicker of the Year, NAB AFL Auskick Local Activity Fund and NAB AFL Auskick Free-kick
experience for all participants. Kim Ravaillion, an Australian Netball Diamond, is the current NetSetGO ambassador, and started playing at 7 years of age. The program consists of 2 tiers: “Net” and “Set”. The ages mentioned with each tier are not strict, more of a guideline for centres and coaches. The tiers are briefly explained below. Coach accreditation is through Netball Australia, with their Foundation Coach course now delivered online to reduce administration time and freeing up volunteers to mentor developing coaches. This level is primarily targeted at beginner coaches, teachers, parents and NetSetGO coaches, outlining introductory
initiative and the increase of 43,000 participants demonstrate how valuable the NAB partnership has been to the program. To get involved, see: http://www.aflauskick.com.au/ and for coaching pathways: http:// www.aflcommunityclub.com.au/
COACH ACCREDITATION • AFL Auskick & Junior orientation, Level 1 (Junior) • Club and school coaches of teenagers - Level 1 (Youth) • Coaches of adults (open age) Level 1 (Senior) • AFL Level 2 (Youth/Senior) • AFL High Performance (Level 3)
COACH ACCREDITATION • Foundation – beginner • Development – club • Intermediate – representative • Advanced – State League • Elite – State League and teams • High Performance – national and international coaching information and basic netball techniques. It is the first step on the national coaching accreditation framework. Find a local club by visiting: www.netsetgo.asn.au COACHINGLIFE
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AUSSIE HOOPS Aussie Hoops is the official Basketball Australia program for 5-10 year olds and their families. It was launched 13 years ago and re-launched in 2014 with Vicinity Centres as the principal partner from 2015. It has three-tiers: Rookie (5-6 year olds), Starter (7-8 year olds) and All-Star (9-10 year olds), and an array of digital resources for centres. In the last 18 months the number of programs delivered in all States/ Territories has increased three-fold and range all over the country – up to 1500km from capital cities.
HOOKIN2HOCKEY Hookin2Hockey is Hockey Australia’s Club program designed for boys and girls aged 10 and under. It helps participants learn the basic skills of the game, as well as develop fundamental motor skills and the ability to work as part of a team. It is delivered in 4-10-week blocks of up to 1 hour by hockey clubs and associations in every state and territory across Australia, as well as through schools. In recent years, the program has significantly boosted junior numbers for local clubs. The program is delivered by accredited Community Coaches through Hockey Australia’s National Accreditation program and operate within the ASC and NCAS. The Community Coach training program is directed toward teachers, parents and
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Over 26,050 have participated since it was re-launched, and is particularly popular with 5-6 year olds, with approximately 33% of participants being girls. Aussie Hoops provides an environment where children of all abilities can achieve on the court and reap the rewards of skill development, enhanced self-esteem, social co-operations and grassroots sports participation. Local centres generally use their marquee players from State League teams to deliver the program, alongside parents, teachers, current and former players. All coaches have access to online training and receive activity guides synched to our National Coach Accreditation Scheme (NCAS). Several local centres will also engage teenage coaches to assist and develop a coaching pathway within their local club, and act as role models for the “Aussie Hoopers”.
At all levels, being a coach often provides a richly rewarding experience. The opportunity to provide participants with a ‘defining moment’ in basketball is extremely important in the overall pathway of Australian players. The coaches are developing the next generation of basketball players in Australia and contributing both to the success of our sport and its sustainability. Coaches looking to deliver the program should approach the Aussie Hoops Coordinator at their local centre or contact their State/ Territory organisation. See: www.aussiehoops.com.au
other new coaches who would like to be involved with Hookin2Hockey.
The experience at Kedron-Wavell
CLUB EXPERIENCE AT KEDRON-WAVELL
family including siblings and parents
The Hookin2Hockey program started 8 years ago at Kedron-Wavell and draws in an average of 60 kids each year. Around 75% of all participants come through the program which has become the life-blood of the club.
More information and your local
Originally, the program was run on the grass 4 weeks but one year the grass was not available so practice was moved onto the turf which proved to be a big hit. The program was bought down to a 3 week program of one and a half hour sessions and has always been a “come and try” experience for the parents as much as for the kids. The program includes a stick and bag, shin pads, ball, mouth guard, training singlet, ref cards and a whistle. They are completely kitted out for the sport for $60 and they get some of that back if they sign on for the full season.
has attracted players from the whole – bringing the family into the sport.
club can be found here: www. hookin2hockey.hockey.org.au
COACH ACCREDITATION • Community Coach – Hookin2Hockey • Level 1 Coach – beginner level Club hockey • Level 2 Coach – Club/school/ representative hockey • Advanced Coach – up to Aus Hockey League teams
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DID YOU KNOW?
MYGOLF The MyGolf program was launched in 2010 by Golf Australia as a national juniors program, which was relaunched as a joint venture with the Professional Golfers Association of Australia (PGA) in 2013. The program has seen a substantial uptake in the last two years, and has recently announced Jason Day as its ambassador. There are 450 registered centres and tracking 6,000 participants in the second year of its relaunch, up significantly from 3,500 in its first year. There is also a MyGolf Schools program in conjunction with the Australian Sports Commission’s Sporting Schools program.
currently deliver 85% of all programs. These coaches are nationally accredited through PGA of Australia, with the volunteer accreditation framework recently restructured to give more purpose and direction for running the program. The Community Instructor accreditation is delivered completely online to make it more accessible. PGA Professionals can continue to develop their knowledge and qualifications through the PGA’s Accreditation and Continuing Development Education (ACE) program. It has 4 streams: Coaching, Game Development, Small Business and Management.
There are around 1,600 PGA Professional Golf Coaches around Australia who run the majority of MyGolf programs. Community golf instructors (volunteer coaches) also play a strong role in rural and remote areas, although professionals
Programs run in a 10-week, term-based format with 3 stages centred around the student’s golf development: Rookie (introductory phase), Star (skill development) and Master (prepare to play). It aims to progress students from a beginner to
MINIROOS AIA Vitality MiniRoos was launched on the 3rd February 2015 by Football Federation Australia CEO David Gallop with Ambassadors Brett Emerton (Socceroos legend), Steph Catley (Westfield Matildas) and Tomi Juric (Socceroos). Designed for kids of all abilities, aged 4-11 years, the nationwide initiative uses short, game-based sessions to introduce the sport of football to newcomers in an inclusive way. It focuses on learning new skills, being active, making life-long friends and, potentially, unearthing the next generation of Socceroos or Matildas. There were 193,000 participants in the program in 2014, and 214,414 in the following season, as the program is now delivered by over 1,600 clubs across the country. There are several programs: MiniRoos Kick-Off for ages 4-9 as an www.coachinglife.com.au
introductory program, and MiniRoos Club Football as a more team and game-based football option for ages 5-11. It is a key priority for the FFA and Member Federations to increase female participation, and the development of MiniRoos For Girls for ages 4-9 feeds significantly into this strategy. Local clubs deliver this program either concurrently with their existing MiniRoos programs, or in the pre or post-season period to introduce girls to the club environment and provide a playing option during summer in preparation for the coming winter season. Unfortunately many children miss out on sporting programs due to a lack of volunteer coaches. The MiniRoos Coaching Course is free and provides an introduction to coaching at this level. Coaches are exposed to basic rules of the game as well as tips on how to build a football culture
Pro golfer and World No.1 Jason Day’s coach (and caddy), Colin Swatton, has been a PGA Professional Coach for over 20 years and started coaching Jason when he was only a junior at the Hills Academy in Queensland.
playing on a course without pressure of skills testing or the risk of being left behind. It builds in golf, life and fundamental movement skills. Coaches can register to deliver the MyGolf program at their golf facility through the MyGolf website (www.mygolf.org.au).
in an entirely practical setting. The MiniRoos Coaching Course is conveniently delivered at many local football clubs across the country and leads into Football Federation Australia accreditation courses. For more information on getting involved at your local club and to find out more about MiniRoos For Girls, see: http://www.miniroos.com.au/
FFA COMMUNITY COACHING ACCREDITATION • Grassroots Coaching Course • Skill Training Certificate • Game Training Certificate • Senior Coaching Certificate
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MILO IN2CRICKET The MILO in2CRICKET program is Cricket Australia’s entry-level program designed for boys and girls from 5-8 years old, inclusive of those with a disability. There are 1,370 clubs running the program across the country, including in remote and rural communities, aided by local volunteers and state cricket staff. As a much-loved national pastime, it is not surprising that in the last season (2014/15), 37,683 children participated. It is a fast, fun and active program that emphasises maximum participation, basic motor and cricket skill development. It is experiencebased, and builds its foundations on the essentials for lifelong involvement in a physical activity and sport, along with a healthy lifestyle. The program runs for 8-12 weeks, with sessions lasting an hour. For safety they use plastic bats and
rubber balls! The focus is on gamebased activities where they will learn to hit a moving ball, throw, pass and catch, teamwork, communication and sportsmanship. These fundamentals prepare kids for junior competition such as Club based and the MILO T20 Blast. There is also a specifically tailored MILO in2CRICKET Skills Program for schools, designed to be run by teachers and aligned to curriculum standards. Coaches are volunteers and are provided with free training opportunities and plenty of resources through Cricket Coaches Australia (CCA) in partnership with State and Territory Cricket Associations. Those interested can start with the MILO in2CRICKET accreditation course, which is delivered entirely online for accessibility, and gives a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of cricket. Face-to-face training is also held for those who want to learn to deliver the program. All coaches and
volunteers help provide and promote long-term growth and sustainability for clubs, and are hugely valued for their commitment to the sport and community. Find your nearest club through the Club Finder at http://www. playcricket.com.au/learn/in2cricket/
COACH ACCREDITATIONS • MILO in2CRICKET Coordinator • MILO T20 Blast Coordinator • Introduction to Cricket • Community Coach • Representative Coach • High Performance Coach
PLAYNRL Rugby is a huge national sport, with over 1,000 clubs and nearly 1.4 million Australians participating across all levels of the game each year. The biggest growth sector is their Women’s league, with over 180,000 women and girls playing and 1,100 registered female coaches and referees. PlayNRL is the National Rugby League’s fun, introductory program for children aged 5-14 years in partnership with the Australian Sports Commission (ASC). It is delivered in two forms: the community program and the InSchool Program. These programs aim to offer participants a “non-competitive”
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approach that focuses on fun and participation. No formal scores are recorded, there are no competition points and no final series. There are modified rules for safety with touch, tag or tackle options. The program is structured around the distinct needs of school-aged children and their developmental requirements, and caters for all types of experience and skill levels, through touch, tag and tackle options and is a fun safe game for both boys and girls. The aim is to build confidence, improve fitness and endurance, as well as social and communication skills. Sessions are run by accredited coaches and match officials. Coaches in Junior Rugby League
COACH ACCREDITATION • Modified Games Coaching Course (6-12 Years) • International Games Coaching Course (13+ Years) • Senior Club Coaching Course (18+ Years) must be accredited by the NRL, which also offers an introductory coach accreditation program for new coaches. This program is delivered by their team of Game Development Officers, and includes a number of online modules and face-to-face components. To find out about coaching and playing opportunities in your local area, head to www.playnrl.com
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LITTLE ATHLETICS Little Athletics evolved from the idea of one man – Trevor Billingham. In 1964, he created the very first short program of running events, which evolved into Australian Little Athletics – as we know it today – in 1992. Now there are over 100,000 children participating each year across the country. It has expanded to offer both track and field events for children from 5 to 15 years old, modified to suit their age, developmental stage and ability. The emphasis is on fun, participation, performance, technique and family involvement. There are 500+ centres around the country running programs weekly through summer. Many centres offer a come and try session, with a retention rate of approx. 20% across each State. Qualified coaches often attend and offer
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extra training sessions through the week, alongside state-held coaching clinics for athletes. Little Athletics coaches are often sourced through the Australian Track and Field Coaches Association (ATFCA). Each State Association also runs a range of coaching courses suitable for becoming an accredited coach in track and field events. The Introduction to Coaching program is open to all interested persons over 16 years of age. Athletics Australia also delivers the Level 1-5 Coach programs within their Athletics Coach Accreditation Framework. Recognition of prior learning is also available to assist coaches wishing to explore their coaching options. For more information on getting involved, contact your local centre via your State Association. http:// www.littleathletics.com.au/
DID YOU KNOW? Sally Pearson, 100m hurdles World Record holder and Olympic gold medallist, was trained by her Little Athletics coach, Sharon Hannah, from just primary school age right through to her incredible Olympic and World Championship dominance. Where could your grassroots coaching take you?
COACH ACCREDITATIONS • Level 1 Community Athletics Coach • Level 2 Intermediate Club Coach • Level 2 Advanced Coach – Event Group Specific • Level 3 IAAF Coach – Event Group Specific • Level 4 IAAF Senior Coach – Event Group Specific • Level 5 Coach
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TRAIN WITH THE INSTITUTE OF EXECUTIVE COACHING AND LEADERSHIP We are Australasia’s premier organisational coaching and coach training company. In business since 1999, we have trained over 4,500 professionals via our Accredited Coach Training Program (ICF ACTP). We also offer: • • •
One-on-One Coaching (in all locations, and virtual coaching). Organisational Coach Training in-house for organisations wanting to build a coaching cohort. Leadership Development (coaching skills for leaders, high performance teaming, conversation skills training, and many other bespoke solutions).
We are headquartered in Sydney and offer coaching and coach training throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia. For more information: www.iecl.com +612 8270 0600 coach@iecl.com 32 // COACHINGLIFE
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RETAINING MOTORCYCLE COMPETITORS By Paul Caslick
GRASSROOTS MOTORCYCLE COMPETITORS HAVE ENTERED INTO A WORLD OF VASTLY DIFFERENT IDEALS TO THAT OF MAINSTREAM ATHLETIC-TYPE SPORTS. SOME MOTORCYCLING FAMILIES WILL ADOPT SOME OF THE MAINSTREAM SPORTS IN ADDITION, AS A MEANS OF CROSS-TRAINING FOR THEIR CHILD, SOMETIMES MORE THAN ONE.
T
hese are the ambitious parents of a child, eager to see their golden youth become the next motorcycling megastar. They are shuffled into race gear after school, riding lap after lap perfecting a program that leads to certain burnout, in many cases long before the kid reaches teenage years. As a coach, being “selected” as the one to guide and mentor a young child at first can be relatively stress-free. But as most parents want results and they want them now, this stress can at times become a nightmare. Young children do not understand goal-setting or future plans. From a young age they need to be motivated and encouraged to have fun and learn. In my view, most children should not be subject to motorcycle competition until they are at least 10-12 years old. By then they will have had their skillset and coordination developed over a number of years and can determine for themselves whether many weekends on the road, away from family and friends is really what they want to experience. Retaining competitors isn’t easy in motorcycle coaching, particularly www.coachinglife.com.au
competitors from a really early age. So many factors can alter outcomes and strain relationships. Cost is a huge factor in this sport, and on top of vehicles, machinery, trailers, motor homes, entries, licenses and travel, coaching also doesn’t come cheap. Some sessions can be 2 hours in duration, and up to 2 sessions per week if the family has the luxury to afford it. Many riders will also experience broken limbs very early in their career, so confidence is always a rollercoaster ride that has an adverse effect on one’s ability to enthusiastically want to take part in any sort of activity involving motorcycles, even though the parents insist on continuing with the program. Two of the biggest retaining tools are having an individualised step-by-step development system in place and trust. Trust between the coach and rider, and trust between the family and the coach, so that the family trusts the coach with any advice given or suggested. With pre-teenage adolescents, this can be difficult at times as parents have preconceived outcomes, and enthusiasm blinds the ability to listen and understand the slow process required to retain longevity in this sport. It’s a sport that’s tough and hard. I have a 3 strike rule with parents. If they are given information 3 times and don’t take it, I move on. In particular, when the information is more vital for safety and longevity than trying to buy winning.
This brings me to coaching the more elite competitors. These athletes have been through all the above mentioned trials and tribulations. They have been broken and stumbled on obstacles along the journey, but have the maturity and ability to trust and be their own judge on who is providing them with what they need to succeed. They no longer have their decisions made for them, as they are in control of their own future. Coaching riders from grassroots to elite level can be extremely rewarding. In most cases, the coach has become one of the athlete’s most trusted sources of information and they have forged a lifelong friendship.
Paul Caslick is an accredited motorcycle coach with over 30 years of experience, and multiple Australian and state championships along the way. He conducts elite courses with the AIS and trained many National and World Champions.
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SETTING THE STANDARDS
ByJill McIntosh
I STARTED PLAYING NETBALL IN GRADE 3 WHILE GROWING UP IN PERTH. WE HAD A VERY ENTHUSIASTIC TEACHER COME COACH WHO PUT TOGETHER A LITTLE TEAM WHICH PROGRESSED FROM GRADE 3 TO GRADE 7. IN HIGH SCHOOL I JOINED THE JAY DEES CLUB INSTEAD AND PLAYED THERE FOR A FEW YEARS. AT 15, OUR TEAM DIDN’T HAVE A COACH, SO I LED THEM, IN A NAÏVE WAY. IT WASN’T A COMPLETE DISASTER AND THAT’S HOW I GOT INTO COACHING. I ENDED UP COACHING ALONGSIDE PLAYING, RIGHT THROUGH MY CAREER FOR MOST OF THE TEAMS I WAS INVOLVED IN.
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W
e formed a few clubs along the way. The main club I played with was Bull Creek Netball Club where I was a player and coach for a few teams. We had dedicated parents who supported us, and we made it to the top grade, competing in a few grand finals, always just beaten for the win each year! Towards the end of my playing career, the competition was reshuffled from
club-based at the local centre to a district-based state league competition and I ended up playing for the Coastal Raiders. We finally won the Grand Final that year, in my last year before moving to Canberra. In 1990, I was appointed coach of the Australian Under 21 Team. Most of the players were based at the AIS, so I was given the opportunity to go to Canberra www.coachinglife.com.au
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for three months, coaching with Head Coach Wilma Shakespeare and Gaye Teede. After that 3-month period, Wilma left the AIS, so I was offered an AIS coaching position and I have been in Canberra ever since. In 1991, I was offered the National Coaching Director position with Netball Australia which had a heavy focus on coach education around Australia. I stayed in this position until the end of 1994 at which time I was appointed the Australian National Coach, a full-time position where I remained until 2003. In those days, the coach was the main resource. We had little sports science support or other personnel around. As the Head Coach, you were in charge – you ran the show. There was a manager, a physio, a doctor and an assistant coach who was not allowed to sit on the bench. Although I rather fell into coaching, now there is a terrific pathway for coaches who demonstrate skill and aptitude. There are many opportunities for coaches today, both voluntary and paid coaching positions as they climb the ladder, a reflection of how far our game and development programs have progressed. With the ANZ Championships, we now have 5 full-time elite coaches as well as State Institute and Academy coaches. The support around the coaches is far, far greater than it ever was. It is likely that our high performance competitions and programs will expand in the near future which will open up even more coaching opportunities for our coaches – keep an eye on Netball and it’s growth over the coming years! I am currently Chair of the International Coaching Advisory Panel, a component of the International Netball Federation (INF). We focus on coaching and what we can do to influence coach education and development internationally. Whilst there is limited funding at the INF level, the key successes from this panel www.coachinglife.com.au
has been the development of generic coach education resources and delivery of international coaching seminars, which we link to our major events. We delivered a successful International Coaching Seminar in Sydney last year at the Netball World Cup and also in 2011 at the Netball World Cup in Singapore. We also conducted a Coaching Seminar at the World Youth Cup in Glasgow in 2013 and will do so again in 2017 when Botswana are hosts. These events allow INF to reach many coaches across the globe who may not normally receive the opportunity to incorporate some professional development with their coaching. In Australia, we pride ourselves on a world-class Coaching Accreditation system which also aligns with our athlete and competitions pathways. Coaches are required to have specified levels of accreditation for various State and National coaching competitions and programs. For example, at Australian and ANZ Championship level, Coaches are required to have High Performance Coach Accreditation. It is all about giving the coaches opportunities to learn and to grow. When Lisa Alexander, our National Coach, visits the States each year, she undertakes coach education. I will also take on a coach mentoring and development role with Netball Australia this year in our Targeted Coach Program and in my capacity as Netball Centre of Excellence Coach. This new initiative will enable Netball Australia to identify and develop coaches who can and will
play a future role in our national High Performance system. Each of our member States coordinate our grassroots coaching courses. However, in February this year, Netball Australia launched the online Foundation Coaching Course which enables our time-poor volunteer coaches to access the course anytime and anywhere across Australia. Coaches can then progress through our coaching pathway via their respective States who deliver the Development, Intermediate, Advanced and Elite Coaching courses. The pinnacle is the High Performance Coaching Course which prepares coaches for the professional world of coaching and netball as a business. Like many other sports, coaches must be actively coaching and complete coach education training every 4-year period in order to maintain their COACHINGLIFE
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coaching accreditation. This ensures that coaches take responsibility for their own professional development and that they stay abreast of contemporary coaching information and practices. Coaches must stay up-to-date with cutting edge coaching practices no matter if they are in charge of the U10s or the Australian Diamonds. Just like players, coaches also have the potential to burn out, particularly now that netball is played all year round with coaches going from season to season without a break. However, somewhere along the line, if it’s not fun any longer to be a coach, then it is time to step away and take time out. They need to renew their enthusiasm and passion for coaching. For many the passion stays and we have had many coaching well into their 70s at a reasonably high level. You must ‘renew’ those around you as they are the ones who bring new ideas and new ways of doing the same thing to the table. They keep your mind open. Do the same thing all the time and you will end up with a group of very bored players! Coaches have to make sure that, at a reasonably young age, players are taught the basic skills and ethics of the game – the proper way to go about it both on and off the court. The coaches play an integral part in their growth. They are responsible for instilling the right ethics into the players at all levels. Perhaps it is a cultural and historical aspect of Netball whereby our athletes compete for participation and fun from the outset and win or lose with integrity. They therefore become great role models for our aspiring young netballers along the way. Winning is therefore seen as a by-product – get the basics and team behaviours right and the rest will follow. Until fairly recently, apart from the highest level, our players don’t get paid, so they play for the love of it. It’s the same with coaching. Most of the coaches do their job on a voluntary basis. Now our National Diamonds and
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ANZC players do get paid. We hope that, in the future, there will be more full-time netball players. Young netballers today aspire to play for their country and to wear the green and gold, they want to be a Diamond. It is difficult at the international level to have a global accreditation scheme. The INF Coaching Advisory Panel has considered it, but the differing financial and personnel resources in each country make it difficult to implement an International Accreditation Scheme with standardised content and competencies. Many countries do however have and conduct their own successful accreditation/certification systems, which are of similar standards. Our accreditation levels globally are fairly well recognised if going to another country, e.g. Australia to England. CAP has created a document where a member organisation can at least use a checklist to satisfy and receive an INF endorsement for their accreditation program. When the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) included the Australian Coaching Council arm, they would run an Elite Coaching Conference across sports every second year. It was fantastic to hear what the other codes and top coaches do. We could learn from each other and it is now something we encourage our coaches to do – go out, watch and liaise with other sports. Netball has had coaches working in many other countries, including at the elite level, when opportunities arise. Most will come back to Australia at some stage. The 5 ANZ Championship positions in Australia don’t open up that regularly and I don’t think it’s a bad thing for coaches to broaden their experiences. Australia and New Zealand have dominated the international scene for quite some time and although the competitiveness is there, all coaches want to coach. Sometimes coaches have to leave Australia and the result can improve the sport and international game.
We would like to develop a competitive top 6 countries for international competition: Australia, New Zealand, England, Jamaica, South Africa and Malawi. We’re very lucky to have a great system, with great coaches, players and teams. Australia’s number one status in the world is due, in no small part, to the coaches who have been developed and to the standards they have set.
Jill McIntosh is a netball coaching legend and the current Chair of the International Coaching Advisory Panel at the International Netball Federation. She was the Australian National Coach for 9 years, after an illustrious playing career at the top level and led Australia to two Netball World Cup titles (1995, 1999) and two Commonwealth Games Gold Medals (1998, 2002). She played 29 Tests for Australia and was part of the triumphant 1983 Netball World Cup team. Jill was inducted into the Australian Netball Hall of Fame in 2009.
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A LIFETIME OF SWIMMING By David Speechley
TIMES HAS CENTRED ON THE FACT
T
THAT THE OLYMPIC SWIMMERS
the desire to educate their children as
OF 2032 ARE ALREADY ENGAGED
to how “not to drown”. Once the child
IN SWIMMING. STATISTICALLY,
attains a skill level where they can
MUCH DISCUSSION IN RECENT
THIS CHILD IS PROBABLY 3 TO 7 YEARS OLD IN A SWIM AUSTRALIA SWIM SCHOOL IN SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND! RESEARCH ALSO TELLS US THAT THE IDEAL AGE FOR SWIMMERS TO PEAK IS AROUND 22 FOR FEMALES AND 24 FOR MALES.
he challenge in Australia is that most children commence aquatics through a parental
decision which in turn is motivated by
“save themselves” (which coincides with the current perceived standard for the child to progress to a competitive environment), the child will often drop out of a formal aquatics program due to either lack of motivation, cost versus time/effort versus perceived benefit, a move to other sports, or a decision by parents that they have attained the goal they set out to achieve.
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What few aquatic programs have is a 20 to 25-year plan for their “client”, yet our school education system has a detailed plan for the child from prep to university and beyond. What even fewer do is sell and deliver a medium to long-term plan to learners, swimmers and their parents or carers. Effectively, parents and carers need to be provided with a rolling set of goals for their child and be sold on the benefits that this will derive. The plan should incorporate marketing to children and parents about the next step, the next learning goal and the benefits of staying engaged in swimming for the whole of their life. www.coachinglife.com.au
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Of the all-time Top 100 in the 100m Freestyle for Age 17-18, very few were in the top 100 for their age groups while coming up through the levels. E.g. only 2% of the all-time top 100 were competitive as Under 10s for both male and female swimmers. AGE
MALE
FEMALE
under 10 years
2%
2%
11 - 12 years
6%
13%
13 - 14 years
11%
27%
15 - 16 years
29%
45%
Ages and year of birth for Olympic Games male swimming finalists in 2028 and 2032 BORN IN
2015
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2007
8
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
2008
7
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
2009
6
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
2010
5
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
2011
4
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
2012
3
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
2013
2
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
2014
1
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
2015
0
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
The challenges offered to children should be progressive and sequential with recognitions and rewards for milestones. Interaction between all ages and all components of the family should be encouraged. The program delivery should be fun and overwhelmingly, focus on positive feedback and encouragement. The outcome should be that the child is a well-rounded individual and remains involved in the recreation and sport for the rest of their life at a level of their choosing. The desire to do their best should be consequential and thus best performance is achieved. The usual swimming lesson delivery method is via a commercial swim school, commercial lessons at a council-owned community pool, or subsidised or free-of-cost lessons at a school or in a vacation program. More recently, subsidised and free-of-cost www.coachinglife.com.au
schools sport and after-school care programs have also appeared in the market, e.g. Active Australia and School Sports programs from the Australian Sports Commission. Generally, all these deliverers utilise trained and qualified teachers, most of whom are accredited by the Australian Swimming Coaches and Teachers Association (ASCTA). The style of “education course” or “learning program” is often developed by the individual teacher or in a multi-teacher program by the program manager. Interaction between all industry players and a commonality in the training content for teachers ultimately means the programs have a large degree of similarity when comparisons are made. A big picture overview however highlights some major deficiencies.
The challenges offered to children should be progressive and sequential with recognitions and rewards for milestones. The programs often have a shortterm approach with a focus on goals, embedded in each lesson. Even coordinated aquatic education programs may only have a forward focus towards a 10-week outcome, whilst advanced training programs undertaken by coaches of advanced swimmers may only extend to 26 weeks or at best, a yearly cycle. Many teachers and coaches will have several “levels” but a very small percentage will have a master plan for the next 5, 10 or 20 years to progress the child through the levels, provide goals, educate parents and children on the benefits and have a whole of life integrated approach. Even fewer collect and collate data to track retention rates! Often programs will have gaps. Perhaps the swim school only extends to junior squad and has no link to any further opportunities. The local swimming club often has no learn to swim program or the masters club may also only offer training and no Learn to Swim for adults. Hence the industry ends up with a lack of coordination and a disconnection between various stages of the skill and age continuum. Anecdotal reports suggest that the vast majority of Australians place their children in formal aquatic programs conducted by qualified professional teachers somewhere between the ages of 3 and 8. The issue is not getting children into lessons, it is one COACHINGLIFE
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of retention and desirable goal-setting once the initial safety goal of the parent is reached. The first flashpoint where parents and carers opt out of swimming is when the child has “learnt to save themselves”. This usually means that the child can swim the length of the learner pool proficiently (usually around 25m) using freestyle and backstroke, and probably has a basic knowledge of breaststroke, dive entry and possibly butterfly. This also happens to be the baseline for entry into a formal swimming club program. Whilst many of the elementary aquatic skills are taught in a progressive sequence, building on previously attained skills, they are not age-based, e.g. freestyle arms would usually be taught after floating and kicking have been taught, no matter what age the learner is. However, a good long-term program should provide examples to all participants. Adults swimming competitively combined with a junior swimming club are likely to reinforce and encourage teens to continue swimming into adulthood. A good long-term program will provide extrinsic motivators beyond the pool to encourage a person to move to the next step. For example, why not allow teenagers the “right of
passage” to become junior officials such as 13-year-olds holding a stopwatch and time-keeping at swimming club with two other adults, or at 14, swimmers could be allowed into the gym and use pulleys, weight bars and resistance machines. At 15 years of age they can progress to light weights, at 16 they could act in the capacity of assistant starter or a junior official such as Marshall, Announcer, turn judge, and so on. Each age should have a “privilege” as an incentive to stay and contribute, even if they are not the best swimmer. It may also solve some of our succession planning issues currently occurring due to our aging officials! Training could also include activities such as underwater hockey, water polo, ocean swims or anything swimming related that improves fitness and skills in the water and are challenging and fun. The proposed Swimming Australia (SAL) Junior Dolphin program is aimed to incentivise or formalise a process of encouragement to induce learners to transition to a competitive environment. SAL is seeking to develop product to engage with the grassroots (swimming and water safety area) to transition participants into a club environment with a view to nurturing talent within a long-term framework to grow the sport and enhance participation.
The ASCTA is already overseeing a swim school system as well as a coach and teacher education and accreditation scheme. They have worked closely and cooperatively with SAL for 44 years to grow the sport. This includes ensuring that: • the accreditation scheme underpinning coaches is the best it can be • teachers are educated on the SAL preferred athlete pathways into the sport • career pathways for teachers into coaching are clearly enunciated • continuous improvement via professional development to teachers and coaches is provided • representative coaches are subsidised to attend major international meets • SAL clubs are provided with advice on coaching and teaching strategies • employment services and advice and support to coaches, teachers, SAL clubs and others is offered Statistics show us that the 10-year-old age champion is unlikely to be the star at 17 years of age, or conversely the underachieving 10-year-old is most likely our champion of the future. Somehow we must keep those underachievers coming through the gate and into the pool.
The ASCTA ASCTA provides industry insurance, educational resources and professional development for individual teachers and coaches, aquatic managers and swim schools. Standards in the industry are improved through promoting professional and ethical conduct and enforcing this on members via our Codes of Behaviour and complaints mechanisms. They conduct education and accredited training for swimming coaches and swimming and water safety teachers.
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BUSINESS COACHING » STEVE BROSSMAN Authority Catalyst
GRANT O’SULLIVAN Director of Growth Coaching International WA, SA, NT MARGOT SMITH General Manager Engagement and Marketing, Australian Institute of Management GLEN GOLDSPINK Business Coach for Retail Capability, Bank of Queensland
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ATTRACTING LONG-TERM HIGH-LEVEL CLIENTS
By Steve Brossman
HAVING BEEN A COMPETITIVE SPORTSPERSON FROM THE AGE OF 7 THROUGH TO ADULTHOOD AND WINNING STATE AND NATIONAL TRACK RUNNING TITLES, I’VE HAD MY FAIR SHARE OF SPORTS COACHES.
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adly, a serious back injury brought my career to a sudden halt, forcing me to find another avenue to feed my hunger for sporting success. That’s how I ended up in the fitness industry which became the catalyst for a forty-year career in sports and business coaching.
STAND UP, STAND OUT OR STAND ASIDE Most coaches define themselves by either their profession or their qualifications, e.g. Sports Coach, Life Coach, Business Coach etc. and that is a BIG mistake. How can you hope to stand out when all you are doing is blending into the crowd?
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When you are seen to be the same as everyone else, two things happen: • People go straight to comparing you on price • You generally spend more time and money using marketing to overcome that “sameness” Your perceived position predicts your profits. To attract and keep more high-level clients, you need to be seen as the unique champion in your market. You need to become the leading authority on the specific way you do things. What is it that you do differently, or specialise in, that you could incorporate into an outcome-based professional title to stand out in your industry? www.coachinglife.com.au
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Here are several examples of my clients and how they have transitioned to stand out: OCCUPATION/PROFESSION-BASED
OUTCOMES-BASED
Mortgage Broker
Property Portfolio Strategist
High Level Dentist
Smile Architect
Spiritual Healer (money blockages)
Abundance Breakthrough Specialist
Lawyer (targeting online entrepreneurs)
Digital Protection Specialist
You are not your occupation, skills or letters after your name. You have your own Expertise DNA!
“Sure our most affordable is $XYZ. Is that OK?” Versus:
To be recognised as a leader in your industry, you must position your DNA (Distinct Niche Authority), in a way that portrays you as the ‘only answer’ in the eyes of your ideal, high-level client! For example, I am not Steve Brossman the personal branding coach, business coach, video marketer or digital marketer, even though all of these encompass my skills and expertise. I have positioned my brand as ‘The Authority Catalyst’: Australia’s leading mentor in Authority Marketing for personal brands and businesses.
“You have a choice of the standard procedure that will take around an hour, is often painful and your mouth will be numb for several hours. I understand you have a fear of pain when it comes to visiting the dentist. I totally understand. We also have a superfast, pain-free treatment which may be a little more expensive, however you will experience no pain or numbness, it only takes 15 mins and you’ll feel back to normal straight away. Which would you prefer?”
You too have to stand out amongst the mainstream. And to do that you need to create your own Expertise DNA and market yourself as the authority to become the client attraction magnet.
To their detriment, the first example is how most professionals promote their services. If you focus on the client’s outcome and personal experience rather than the price, you’ll be way ahead of most of your competitors.
Are you still charging by the hour? STOP! In the real world your clients actually are not interested in buying an hour of your time. What they want from you is the outcome, experience or transformation that the hour delivers. Your job is to communicate and deliver the outcome they want that fulfils their pains, wants, needs and desires in a way that leaves no doubt in their mind that YOU are the “unique solution” that can transform their life. Here’s an example: A person walks into a dental surgery with a bad toothache and asks the price. They are told: www.coachinglife.com.au
5 STEPS TO ATTRACTING HIGH LEVEL CLIENTS! 1. Identify your core strengths, e.g. how you transform people’s lives and/or businesses 2. Position your unique services (Expertise Distinct Niche Authority) 3. Package your products and services in an outcome-based framework 4. Niche down into a section of the market where you are seen as the unique solution to your ideal clients 5. Communicate your ‘Authority Positioning’ using innovative mediums including videos, books and speaking
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH VIDEOS Videos now accounts for 80% of internet traffic and are the fastest way to be seen as an authority in your industry. When used correctly, they are the most effective way to start a relationship before even meeting your prospective clients. One of my favourite stand out strategies using videos is very successful securing new clients, by creating a lasting first impression. After our initial meeting, I shoot them a very quick and personal video (usually on my phone) and send it off in a video email. The client receives this video in their normal email and it opens up, fully branded, with me talking directly to them. This personalised follow-up communication strategy has the ‘wow factor’ all over it. Not only is it unexpected and pleasantly surprising, it’s also innovative and creative, putting you immediately on the ‘memorable’ list with your customers and clients. It should be your preferred choice for doing business and coaching. This is standard practice now for me for clients or ex-clients I haven’t seen for ages, or coaching clients I want to follow up with on something specific.
CATAPULT YOUR POSITIONING WITH A BOOK Becoming an author is the most powerful way you can be seen as an authority and stand out in your market. With today’s digital age, books are much more than just words on paper. In my book ‘Stand Up, Stand Out or Stand Aside’ I have links and QR codes to free training videos. By the end of the book, not only have they read my words, they feel like they already know me even before our very first meeting or call. Do you think that if a person has read my book, watched my free training videos, filled in a survey, booked in a free strategy call, they are pretty interested in taking the next steps with me? Absolutely! COACHINGLIFE
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In the real world your clients actually are not interested in buying an hour of your time. What they want from you is the outcome, experience or transformation that the hour delivers. Not only does this save me time, but it weeds out 95% of non-ideal clients giving me more time to focus on my desired affluent target audience. The latest technologies can be used to enhance or distract from the relationship with your people. How you use them is up to you.
LEVERAGING YOUR VOICE Speaking has been labelled the most lucrative skill you can develop in your coaching business. Not only are you seen as the authority because you are front and centre in the room, you are also leveraging your time and expertise by being able to attract more of the right people all in one go. The belief that you have to be big, loud and bold to successfully master the art of closing clients in a room is incorrect. The only skill you need to learn, is how to connect with the audience, to engage with them in a way that identifies you as the only person who can help them get their desired outcome and inspire them to take action. If you can master this, then speaking will be the most lucrative skill you will ever own in your business.
COACHES IMPACT LIVES! Whether you are a Sports Coach, Business Coach or Life Coach, ultimately you transform lives for the better. When you are seen as an authority and focus on the relationships and impact, you will attract your ideal long-term clients and become the ‘stand out leader’ in your industry.
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A LONG-TERM SUCCESS STORY Nearly 20 years ago, a mum brought her son to me to coach as he wanted to win the 100m sprint at his school athletics carnival. His progress was very quick early on, so he entered the 100m, 200m and 400m races at the school carnival just to get extra points for his house. He ended up winning all three events, and his times in the 200m and 400m were very impressive. His original goal was to get to Zone and be competitive. We totally exceeded that by winning all three events again, however I looked at his times and together we made the tough call to focus only on the 400m race for regional. It turned out to be a good move as he made the final and came 3rd, winning a trip to the State Championships. This was not even a goal on the radar earlier in the year. I truly believe coaches are the catalyst to self-belief. 3 weeks later at the State Championships, he won bronze making it into the National Titles and we were both
blown away. That was the moment when he really started believing in himself and found a hunger to see how far he could go. He ran his best race in the National final and was 3rd, beating everyone from his home state. In one season he had gone from a kid who wanted to do well in his school sport, to being a National medallist and school hero. As a coach it was a proud moment that I will remember always. He continued training and running with me for several years until he moved away to University although we stayed in touch. Recently I received a heartfelt message from his mum that made me realise just what an impact a coach can have on another human being’s life: “Steve, I wanted to let you know that Matt has just become a father. I want to thank you once again for everything you did for him going through his teenage years. I’m not sure you realise the impact you had. Thank you.”
Steve is a former National Track Champion and is the author of the Amazon No. 1 bestseller ‘Stand Up, Stand Out or Stand aside’. He has had several businesses of his own, selling 4 million units into 26 Countries. He also has over 20 years TV and video experience, including hosting and producing his own TV Show for Channel 9. Steve has spoken in 15 countries and trained over 21,000 Speakers, Coaches and Business Owners on how to position themselves as an Authority. Known as the ‘Authority Catalyst’ he now consults and coaches ‘Knowledge Professionals’ (Coaches, Trainers and Consultants) on how to create their own Authority Factor and grow their business.
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WE HAVE CREATED A PLATFORM FOR YOU TO COMMUNICATE WITH COACHES OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES. FROM ‘COACHES TO BE’ TO ‘COACHES WITH EXPERIENCE’, COMPANIES AND TEAMS LOOKING FOR COACHES AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN. Our readers tell us they are keen for information on how to maintain health and wellbeing, advance their craft and enhance their lifestyle. Now you can be part of this conversation by advertising in COACHING LIFE, the premier magazine for coaches of all disciplines in Australia.
DID YOU KNOW… Coaching is the second fastest growing industry in the world behind IT, growing at 18% per year. With over $1 Billion being spent each year in the US, Australia is rapidly following the trend with over 250,000 coaches already. If you want to reach this growing market, download the media kit from the website or contact the office for more information.
WWW.COACHINGLIFE.COM.AU/ADVERTISING As well as national coverage via newsagents and subscribers, we also have strategic contacts for distribution with the following organisations. Australian Institute of Sport Football Federation Australia Cricket Australia Netball Australia Swimming Australia Powerlifting Australia Karate Federation Australia Kung Fu Federation Australia AFL NRL Golf Australia Tennis Australia Hockey Australia Surfing Australia Cycling Australia Judo Australia Australian Institute of Management Commission for Small Business Leadership Management Australia International Coach Federation Life Coach Institute Frazer Holmes Coaching National Coaching Institute Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership www.coachinglife.com.au
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UNLOCKING POTENTIAL IN SCHOOLS
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By Grant O’Sullivan
IT HAS LONG BEEN THE CASE THAT GREAT SCHOOL TEACHERS HAVE BEEN MORE FACILITATORS OF STUDENT LEARNING THAN JUST FOUNTAINS OF KNOWLEDGE WHO SIMPLY SPRAY THEIR KNOWLEDGE ACROSS THOSE BEFORE THEM. THINK OF THE BEST TEACHERS YOU HAD AT SCHOOL AND IT IS HIGHLY LIKELY THEY ARE THE ONES WHO BUILT A STRONG RELATIONSHIP WITH EACH STUDENT AND BELIEVED THAT EVERY STUDENT IN A CLASS HAD THE POTENTIAL TO ACHIEVE GREAT THINGS.
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hey individualised the learning opportunities based on each student’s needs. They supported each student to set achievable learning goals and asked them questions to help create the problem-solving, goal-achieving steps that they would take towards achieving that goal. They followed up very regularly, celebrating even small signs of progress. They affirmed for the student the strengths available to them, so as to help them take the next steps. In effect, they coached each student and had a natural understanding of the power of the “relationship to results” coaching methodology. It is not surprising that the teachers who practice this coaching approach with students, also use the same approach when they move into leadership positions. Research indicates that one of the common
traits of high performing school systems all over the world is that a coaching approach is evident throughout the school. It is used in how leadership manages staff and is the approach that teachers use with each other, supporting peers by continuously reflecting on their teaching practice (pedagogy). Of course, the outcome of that reflection with a peer coach is to subsequently change their practice where required, so that they have the most impact on student learning at all times. This approach is now reflected in the Australian Professional Standards for Principals (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership) where having a coaching approach to developing others is listed as a required personal quality of Australian school leaders. www.coachinglife.com.au
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WHAT DOES COACHING LOOK LIKE IN SCHOOLS? As we have all been to school as students ourselves, we know that all schools are different. We know from our own experiences and those of friends, family and colleagues that various schools approach teaching and learning in different ways. Some schools emphasise aspects such as sport more than others, while others may specialise in music and the arts, or have an emphasis on religious education. It is the same in building a coaching culture in each school, with each requiring a different focus and approach according to the context of that school. In saying that, our experience at Growth Coaching International, where we worked in training over 8,500 Australian educators in 2015 alone, does suggest that there are some common approaches in the schools that have developed a coaching culture. These schools are reporting a shift in student outcomes due in part to a coaching culture and when they operate in a high-trust environment. Quality conversations are the privileged unit of change at all levels across the school. The leadership of the school models enable this by trusting that their teachers are professional and have the desire to do all they can for the benefit of each student. The quality of the teacher is the single most important factor within the school’s control when wishing to improve learning for students. By coaching teachers in a high-trust relationship, the teachers are far more likely to make changes to their teaching practice and www.coachinglife.com.au
in turn have greater impact on their students’ learning. Building a high-trust environment enables everyone in the school to live by the mantra “know thy impact”, so eloquently stated by Professor John Hattie 2015, in his world renowned research, ‘Visible Learning’. It seems obvious that teachers should always be reviewing and adjusting their teaching practice to ensure that everything they ask the students to do is evidence-based and has a high impact on learning. Many teachers have and do live by the “know thy impact” philosophy, however like all professions, many others have set ways of doing things and are somewhat reluctant to change the teaching strategies they have used for years. Change in teaching practice is higher when school leaders use a coaching approach for conducting the teacher performance development conversations. This, in turn, helps teachers to use a coaching approach in supporting their peers.
A COACHING APPROACH TO PERFORMANCE DEVELOPMENT Research the world over confirms for teachers what other industries have also known: the performance appraisal process is often not valued. In schools where a coaching approach to the process is well embedded,
Many teachers have and do live by the “know thy impact” philosophy, however like all professions, many others have set ways of doing things and are somewhat reluctant to change the teaching strategies they have used for years. things are often different. While some of these conversations may look somewhat formal with goals and actions recorded in performance agreements or appraisal forms, the process in practice is very relational. The teacher can feel comfortable to set stretch goals that will result in them adjusting their teaching strategies for the greatest impact. The leader/ coach skilfully weaves the school’s bigger picture goals and directions into the conversation with each individual teacher, coaching them to plan actions that will bring these whole school goals to life, in their classroom. COACHINGLIFE
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PEER COACHING Teachers in this coaching culture are empowered to work collaboratively with peers using peer coaching to provide the day-by-day support for the changes they are implementing in their classrooms. The teachers use peer observation of their classroom teaching, followed up by coaching conversations, all the while focused on the teaching strategies that have the highest impact.
STUDENT COACHING There are a number of portals or entry points to coaching in education. Two of my colleagues, John Campbell and Dr Christian van Nieuwerburgh, have developed the Global Framework for Coaching in Education where the four portals are clarified. Leadership Coaching and Coaching for Professional Practice are by far the most common portals in schools at this stage, however there is an exciting development around Student Success and Well Being approaches. A school we are currently working with in Adelaide is training students to be coaches of other students.
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This is different from traditional models where older students are appointed as mentors to younger students. Under the project at St Johns Grammar School, selected students are provided coaching training to equip them to be coaches for other students. Recent research is indicating this can have a positive effect on both coach and coachee (van Nieuwerburgh & Tong, 2013). Of course, this also provides a valuable resource for the school and a wonderful skillset for the student coaches to take well beyond school life.
THE FUTURE OF COACHING IN EDUCATION As schools are fundamentally learning organisations for students and teachers, with the core purpose being to unlock the potential within every student, it was always going to be a natural fit that a coaching approach would help. The research and now Standards for Australian teachers and leaders (AITSL) clearly points to this approach being woven into a school’s culture. The future is very bright for coaching in education and I believe, for students in schools who embrace coaching.
Grant O’Sullivan is Director of Growth Coaching International WA, SA, NT which is part of an Australian-based company, Growth Coaching International, that each year provides coaching and coach skill development training for thousands of educators across Australia. Prior to becoming a facilitator and leadership coach, Grant spent 18 years in school leadership, including rural, remote and city schools, in various positions including school principal and as director of schools.
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IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THEN MAYBE YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO JOIN THE ELITE AND BE PUBLISHED IN COACHING LIFE. THE PROCESS IS PRETTY SIMPLE. YOU SUBMIT AN ARTICLE BRIEF AND OUR TEAM WILL REVIEW IT. WE THEN GIVE YOU OUR EXACT REQUIREMENTS OF WHAT WE NEED TO FIT IN THE SPACE WE HAVE. IF YOUR FOCUS IS ON SPORT, BUSINESS OR LIFE COACHING, WE HAVE AN AUDIENCE THAT WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU.
WHAT ARE MY CHANCES OF BEING PUBLISHED? We cannot guarantee that your masterpiece will make it into the published version but we will also allow a number of exceptional articles onto the electronic and web version that don’t make it to print. This means that you have lots more chances of getting the recognition you deserve. WHAT DOES IT COST? It costs nothing to submit a brief, but if you are accepted into the published magazine, it will cost you time to write the article. We don’t charge or pay for articles.
WHAT DO I NEED? Firstly, you need a great article that will be useful or inspirational to other coaches. Each issue of Coaching Life Australia is themed, so it is important to ensure you are addressing the theme from your perspective. Articles are expected to be between 1,000 to 1,500 words though exceptions are allowed. Of course, if we need to trim or change your article, we reserve the right to do so. If your article is accepted, then you will need to supply a print-quality photo of yourself, professional details and a signed release for your article.
WHAT DO I GET? If your article is accepted, you get recognition of your peers, family and friends as a published author. WHAT ELSE DO I GET? As published author, you also get preferential treatment to any future articles you want to submit. You may also be asked to help the team with surveys and thoughts as an industry leader.
COME ON.. WHAT ELSE? OK. You will also be added to a Private Contributors Group where published authors can discuss the upcoming issues and industry hot points. This group will also have special access to upcoming Coaching Life functions.
I’M IN, NOW WHAT? Go to the Coaching Life website and complete the Submission Form www.CoachingLife.com.au/Submissions and we will be in touch.
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ENGAGEMENT MATTERS
By Margot Smith
FOR 75 YEARS THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT (AIM) HAS BEEN HELPING PEOPLE BECOME MANAGERS, AND MANAGERS BECOME GREAT LEADERS. AS THE PEAK BODY FOR MANAGERS AND LEADERS, WE BELIEVE THAT LEADERSHIP MATTERS.
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ith more than 12,000 individual and corporate Members, and a further 5,000 organisations that purchase our diverse range of management and leadership products and tools – AIM is the go-to organisation for managers and leaders. In my role as General Manager, Engagement & Marketing, I am responsible for the Member experience of AIM professional (i.e. Individual) Members. This is my fifth role with a Membership body – Membership organisations are in my DNA and delivering to Member expectations is something I strive for every day. The other portion of my career (about a third) was in the corporate spheres, such as the energy, telecommunications and publishing industries. I have to say, Membership bodies are much more satisfying to work with for a number of reasons. Having a sense of purpose, supporting whole professions or groups of Members is something that really drives me.
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AIM’s vision is “better managers and better leaders for a better society”. I love knowing that I have contributed to someone’s personal or professional journey, and that I am making a difference to their career and their life.
AIM – WHY MEMBERSHIP MATTERS AIM has recently been through a vast amount of change. In 2014, four out of the five state-based ‘divisions’ of AIM merged to form the AIM Group. Then in 2015, after detailed analysis and review, AIM divested of AIM’s Education & Training (AIMET) business, which means that AIM is now focused solely on our core business: Membership. We still partner with AIMET to offer AIM Members discounted access to market-leading education and training products. Over the past few years our Member numbers have been declining. The real challenge for us now is to recover lost Members and build a new and expanded Membership base. www.coachinglife.com.au
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I love knowing that I have contributed to someone’s personal or professional journey, and that I am making a difference to their career and their life. I joined AIM in 2015, after these changes had occurred. What excited me about the role was the opportunity to engage with our Members in a new way and the ability to have an impact on the state of management and leadership in Australia today and into the future. The transition to becoming a dedicated Membership body once again saw AIM returning to our roots, enabling us to deliver products and services with much more clarity. For this reason, our focus has become razor sharp on delivering value to our Members – in short, Membership Matters.
LEADERSHIP MATTERS: A COLLABORATIVE TEAM, A NEW VISION AND A NEW MEMBER ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY. The team at AIM work together to achieve the shared goal of delivering Member value with the focus on Member engagement and Membership growth. At the heart of this is our commitment to offering a broad range of management and leadership products and services to Members in as many locations around Australia as
importance of leadership both within the workplace and throughout society in general. Management and leadership skills make a contribution both within and outside the workplace and that’s exciting to me. I firmly believe that AIM is an organisation that has a role to play in supporting all of us, both personally and professionally, throughout our journey. As I mentioned, part of my reason for joining AIM was to have a real impact on the state of management and leadership in Australia. I, like many of you, have had strong managers and leaders, and not-so-strong managers and leaders. In hearing about AIM’s vision of ‘Better managers. Better leaders. For a better society.’, I wanted to help to support our Members and, in turn, achieve AIM’s mission to raise the standard, number and profile of professional managers and leaders.
I have engaged with Members for twothirds of my career, but never before has the content been so ‘juicy’. I get to work with managers and leaders every day, as they learn and grow. How cool is that!
LEADERSHIP MATTERS: AIM’S 3 YEAR STRATEGY With the vision in mind, AIM’s 3 year strategy is an engagement-based strategy that places our Members and Member services at the heart of the organisation. Leadership Matters is built on one simple premise: that Members want to see AIM add value to their leadership journey.
SO WHAT DOES ENGAGEMENT LOOK LIKE AT AIM? We have defined the AIM Member Value Proposition, highlighting a broad range of products and services that Members can access. Having worked at five Member bodies now, this is the most comprehensive Member Value proposition that I have seen, and had the privilege to co-create. Services such as our free mentoring program, Member Exchange, is a real drawcard for both mentees who are seeking guidance from someone who has paved the way before them, but also mentors, who want to give back to the profession.
possible.
AIM’S VISION: BETTER MANAGERS. BETTER LEADERS. FOR A BETTER SOCIETY. AIM’s vision ‘Better managers. Better leaders. For a better society.’ speaks to the importance of sound management and leadership practice and its farreaching impact. We believe that the Vision truly embodies the sentiment of our Members. They recognise the www.coachinglife.com.au
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Add to this our Management Diagnostic Tools, such as DiSC (a personality profiling tool) and Genos (an emotional intelligence profiling tool). AIM is the largest supplier of DiSC in Australia which is complimented by our onsite facilities of the AIM Library and Member Lounges in a number of locations.
BUT HOW DO WE ENGAGE WITH MEMBERS? At AIM, we have created a Membercentric culture in order to retain and grow our Membership base. We have decentralised Engagement & Events Teams to ensure that we have local staff to engage with Members in the major capital cities, and also some regional centres. Our Engagement Managers’ KPIs are based around Member retention, Member acquisition and Member engagement.
As far as AIM is concerned, networking is working, so we offer many opportunities for Members to connect with like-minded (and not so like-minded) professionals. We offer Member-only events and open invitation events, in order to facilitate networking opportunities. We also offer virtual-connectedness via our Linked In Discussion Group, where Members can lead the discussion on topics or questions of interest to them.
matter experts – our engagement levels are stronger because of it – but even more than that, our content is richer and more robust with the input from our Members.
Another important part of our engagement strategy are the Regional Advisory Committees, comprised of local Members in 8 existing locations, with another 6 Committees being formed in the coming months. We see local engagement as critical to retaining and growing our Membership, in addition to engaging with the regions for specific programs such as the AIM Leadership Excellence Awards.
Members of AIM also receive a range of content on management and leadership practice. From our monthly policy and advocacy newsletter, Insight Edge, and our professional development online tool, Leadership Direct, to our bi-monthly magazine Leadership Matters. AIM is increasingly having a voice on the subject of the sound practice of management and leadership. We invite Members to participate in the content as our subject
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We are really just beginning this amplified engagement journey, but the signs are already encouraging. For example, AIM’s recent Leadership Outlook Series, on the topic of culture and strategy, was delivered across 12 locations to more than 700 participants, mostly Members. Our International Women’s Day events in 5 locations, attracted over 2000 guests – both Members and non-Members. From the high engagement levels with Members through our newsletters, our new-look magazine plus our Member
Services Team and Engagement Team – the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
LOOKING AHEAD: 2016 AND BEYOND After a period of significant change and consolidation, AIM has embarked on an exciting new journey, but in many ways it’s ‘back to the future’. The Institute was established in 1941 as the membership body for professional managers and leaders. The vision of the original founders was
to create an organisation that could accompany its Members throughout their careers. An organisation that offered a place for like-minded managers and leaders to get together and learn from each other – and from others – about sound management and leadership practice. Without our Members there would be no AIM and without AIM there would be no professional body to advocate for better managers and better leaders for a better society.
WHAT ENGAGEMENT LOOKS LIKE FOR SOME OF AIM’S FELLOW MEMBERS, WORKING WITH THEIR CLIENTS: John Goddard FAIM, Director, Better Managers “Engagement as a concept and as a real measure of performance is as important as profit and customer satisfaction to build a sustainable business. During my career as a manager and leader, the best businesses have always focused on improving staff engagement and providing an environment for personal learning and growth. Do this well and you will build an organisation that stands out from the rest.” “Building a close working relationship as a coach or mentor requires a box full of trust from both
parties. It’s like any relationship, progress will be slow when trust is low so it may be best to walk away early (qualify-out) from a potential coaching opportunity. Of course, when the signs are good, both parties should invest their time to build trust.”
David Ross FAIM, Director, Phoenix Strategic Management “For me, engagement with clients and affected stakeholders is vital in protecting brand and transforming performance. It involves drawing on compassion and collaboration to inform a greater understanding not only of our context, but just as importantly, of ourselves and the commitment to create a shared direction. Therefore, engagement truly informs better decision-making
www.coachinglife.com.au
Margot Smith is the General Manager – Engagement & Marketing at the Australian Institute of Management. She has worked in five associations, engaging with Members in accounting, finance, law, governance, and management and leadership. Managing and leading teams is also something that she is passionate about, and sees this as an ongoing learning journey. She is also a Fellow of AIM, a Certificated Member of Governance Institute and holds a BA in Psychology & Education as well as a Grad Dip in Business Administration.
but may be viewed by the leader who lacks self-awareness as risky due to the need to share power and control.” COACHINGLIFE
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FINANCIAL LONGEVITY THROUGH COACHING
By Glen Goldspink
THE BANK OF QUEENSLAND (BOQ) OFFERS A UNIQUE BUSINESS MODEL WHERE ALMOST TWO-THIRDS OF THEIR BRANCHES ARE RUN BY OWNERMANAGERS. OWNER-MANAGERS NOT ONLY RUN THEIR BRANCH, THEY ALSO OWN THEIR BRANCH. AS SMALLBUSINESS OWNERS THEY HAVE THE FREEDOM TO PERSONALLY MANAGE THEIR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS AND THE INCENTIVE TO DRIVE THEIR BUSINESS’S SUCCESS. THIS UNDERPINS RELATIONSHIPS AND BOQ’S PHILOSOPHY THAT IT’S POSSIBLE TO LOVE A BANK!
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he Fitter4Biz program was the brainchild of the BOQ franchise network’s leadership team. They realised the network was made up of banking specialists with incredible technical expertise, that sometimes struggled with the broader remit that comes with owning a small business. Now, as well as being bankers, OwnerManagers were expected to put on their marketing hat, their human resources hat, their business operations hat – a vast new wardrobe of responsibilities! So the goal was to deliver a program that partnered with Owner-Managers to help them become exceptional business managers who excelled at banking. BOQ brought in specialist coaches to develop and deliver the ‘Fitter4Biz’
program: including Glen Goldspink, a banking expert, who helped tailor the program for a banking audience. The original program was delivered over a 12-month period and focused on business development areas such as: • the business planning cycle • training staff • developing a customer-contact program • leadership and growth • leverage strategies The program included webinars in-between sessions to allow participants to discuss topics as a group. Participants were also given a range of supporting materials including leading business books, white papers www.coachinglife.com.au
BUSINESS
Without reservation, the coaching uptake by business owners translated to the top and bottom lines across the board. and YouTube clips such as TEDx Talks. Participating Owner-Managers were partnered together in a buddy system to provide an extra layer of support throughout the program. Participation in the Fitter4Biz program was completely voluntary to ensure those that enrolled were prepared to roll up their sleeves and get involved. 45% of the Owner-Managers participated across seven different state-based cohorts. The 12-month program was rolled out progressively with the first group starting in April 2014 and the final group completing the course in September 2015. The program was so successful for Owner-Managers that BOQ decided to deliver a similar program to corporatelyowned branches in January 2015.
RESULTS Performance outcomes of the program were measured at the beginning of 2016. Participating branches average loan settlements were 37% higher than non-participating branches and their customer run-off was 3% lower. Without reservation, the coaching uptake by business owners translated to the top and bottom lines across the board. Other great results from the program included the level of peer support where business owners previously working in isolation had the opportunity to discuss ideas and work through solutions to common issues. This boosted engagement and collaboration amongst the retail network.
LESSONS LEARNT BOQ received exceptional feedback on the value of the program, and also learnt some lessons along the way that www.coachinglife.com.au
fed into the ongoing improvement of the program that re-commenced this March. The first improvement made was to include dedicated course time to turn course content into specific, personalised action plans for each participant’s business. Each session is now split into two, with the first half focusing on content from the topic expert, and the second half on developing specific action plans to take straight back to the business. Another key learning was how critical Regional and State Managers’ involvement is to the success of the program. These managers look after a number of Owner-Managers in their region, and are the natural reporting lines for the franchise network. They play a crucial ongoing business development and coaching role which is recognised in the new program which now includes separate preview sessions for them. This helps Regional Managers support Owner-Managers to implement their action plans. Now there is also more time allowed between sessions so participants have more time to put what they’ve learnt into practice. The new program allows 6-7 weeks between sessions. Finally, the variance in performance from the corporate branches following the program highlighted the need to have much more personalised and prescriptive professional development action plans for corporate branch participants. This will help ensure participants can achieve similar benchmarks across a range of metrics. BOQ has now also partnered with the Australian Institute of Management and their specialist coaches who they’ve
enlisted to help deliver the program content. Following on from the success of the previous program, 57% of the franchise network have enrolled.
FROM THE PARTICIPANTS BRETT DAVIES, BOQ Owner-Manager Coorparoo Having a business plan is one thing, making it a working document that changes with your business is another. I was also reminded of the importance of practical, and more importantly, achievable goal setting, as well as how to readjust if something goes wrong and you don’t achieve what you planned – don’t just give up. I learnt that having a buddy or a mentor to run things past and vent to is extremely helpful, you don’t have to do it all on your own. I enjoyed the friendships I built with peers. We are all different but face the same issues and have very similar goals. There was accountability that came from setting goals publically and then the support when things didn’t go to plan. It is easy to set goals, but if there is no one to answer to there are no consequences for not achieving them. The program helped me refocus on what I needed to change to make the business as successful as it could be and reminded me that I was the only one that could do that. I have had strong improvement in all parts of business, better systems in place, better results which in turn has benefited financially. MELISSA GREEN, BOQ Owner-Manager Mackay City Systems and processes will improve the business – McDonalds even have a process for emptying the bin. It was eye-opening once I understood that, COACHINGLIFE
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BUSINESS as well as making sure the business had an operating rhythm. We had open and honest rapport between group members about what was working and not working in our businesses. The members provided feedback on what they saw we could do better without judgement. I was blessed to find people who genuinely cared. I have chosen two managers within my team to be the cheerleaders of what I have learnt. I can see they now interact with their immediate team in a more confident way. We’re able to get the most out of our team by knowing more
now about how to extract that extra effort, doing the work because they want to not because they have too. I was able to turn my business around to become one of the top performers in my tier again. In the banking industry, policy can change very quickly and I have been given the tools to understand more clearly that I need to focus my energy on what I can control, and when these events occur I now understand more clearly that the outcome is directly related to what my reaction is to that event.
Glen Goldspink is the Business Coach for Retail Capability where he shares his knowledge and skills with both BOQ Franchisees and Branch Managers. He assists them on their journey to becoming exceptional business owners and managers who excel at banking.
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Established over 140 years ago, BOQ is a leading Australian bank that focuses on building long-lasting customer relationships. One of its key differences is its unique Owner-Manager branch model which enables bank managers to own their own branches and truly embed themselves in their local communities. BOQ gives customers a genuine alternative from larger, lessengaged banks for finance and insurance services to individuals, families and smallto-medium business. BOQ is ranked among the top 100 companies on the ASX.
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DR MICHAEL CAVANAGH Chair of The Helmsman Project Coaching working group and Deputy Head Coaching Psychology Unit, The University of Sydney SHANNAH KENNEDY Life Coach WYOMIE ROBERTSON Life Coach GLEN MURDOCH Founder, The Life Coaching College
LIFE COACHING » www.coachinglife.com.au
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THE HELMSMAN PROJECT: By Dr Michael Cavanagh
TAKING COACHING TO A NEW LEVEL
THE HELMSMAN PROJECT REPRESENTS A NEW APPROACH TO COACHING, AND ONE THAT IS TAKING BOTH COACHES AND CLIENTS TO NEW LEVELS. SO WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
T
he Helmsman Project is an innovative blend of developmental coaching and adventure education targeted toward Year 9 students who are at danger of not fulfilling their potential. The program is not aimed at either the best kids, or the worst. We are looking to help the invisible kids – those who are most likely to simply fall between the cracks. These students are drawn from schools located in communities affected by disadvantage. At its essence, the program seeks to help the students take bigger perspectives on themselves, others and the world. By doing this we help them build hope, self-regulation and resilience. So why approach it this way? When you think about the people who have made the most difference in your life, usually they are the people who have seen you in a bigger way than you see yourself. They are not the people who set goals for you or monitored your progress. They are the ones who have helped you see yourself, others and the challenges you face in a bigger, more complex way. As a volunteer for The Helmsman Project, I have witnessed the extraordinary impact a broadened perspective can have on young people
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through exhaustion to get to the campsite before dark. The feedback from their efforts is immediate and they have to adapt based on the consequences of their actions. However, just placing people in a novel and challenging situation is not enough. We know this from our work with corporate clients. This is where the coaching comes in. For these experiences to have long-term impact, it is important that coaches take part in the adventure education and support the participants to make meaning of their experiences. This allows them to experience the lessons on offer in the adventure education, and generalise them back to their day to day lives.
The adventure education component is a core part of the programme. It involves hands-on activities such as hiking, camping and sailing – experiences that can be both physically and mentally demanding. It helps the participants experience themselves in a way that is different to their everyday life and enables them to see themselves as capable of setting and achieving stretching goals. This perspective is a prerequisite for hope and self-regulation. Resilience also comes from the understanding that one can experience failure and setbacks and still keep striving. It is this bigger, more expansive, perspective on themselves and the world that is so necessary to navigate life’s challenges. The program runs for one school year. Participants are challenged to set www.coachinglife.com.au
personal goals for themselves and, as a team, to develop and implement a community project. This adds another element critical to achieving one’s potential – the ability to work with others on something that is bigger than themselves. In working toward these goals, participants’ perspectives begin to include others and consider the impact their actions can have on the world. But it is not just the long-term goals that are important in the program. Participants have to work in the here and now, learn to adapt and consider the consequences of their choices. For example, when participants are hiking in the bush, they need to quickly learn how to navigate, how to resolve disputes about which direction the team should go, and how to push
The challenges of adventure education provide great opportunities for reflection and help young people experience themselves in a new way, achieving things they never imagined possible. Importantly, the developmental coaching also helps the students notice and make sense of patterns in their thoughts and responses and in the way they interact with each other and the challenges. The reflective process used in the coaching scaffolds a new understanding that opens up a wider range of choices for responding, which is aided by coaches and involves understanding what happened and making meaning of that by bringing in wider perspectives. From here, participants are challenged to consider what the implications of this may be. As a coach, I find this invaluable for the development process. It’s not just young people who benefit from a mix of adventure education and developmental coaching. We have used similar processes with teams of executives and found them to be effective. This approach works for adults for the same reasons that it works for young people. Putting people in situations that are outside their comfort zones and that place new demands on them helps them COACHINGLIFE
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As a coach, I am continuously inspired by these stories of change, each reminding me that broadening someone’s horizon is the single greatest impact a coach can have on someone’s life long term. to see the world in a different way. It also highlights dynamics that exist within teams, which can be particularly important when coaching in workplaces. The community project aspect of the program is just as critical to life skill development as adventure education. Increased engagement and wellbeing, key goals of the program, come not just from working on your own development, you need to be involved in something bigger than yourself. Carrying out a community project provides young people with this experience, and helps them see they can have an impact on the world. What difference does the programme make? A couple of examples can illustrate this. One group of girls we worked with initially could not see themselves as having anything useful to contribute to their school or community. By the end of the program this group of girls had produced a creative, informative science show for an audience of sick children, parents and staff at Westmead Children’s Hospital. Behind the scenes, this included putting together a project brief, budget, plan of action, and pitching for funding in front of a panel of adults. To me, this demonstrated the girls’ ability to see themselves differently and it was a clear sign of the program’s success. In another school one of our graduates went on to become school captain,
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while another now leads the school choir. When they started the program, these sorts of aspirations were not even a distant possibility. Developmental coaching, from a psychological perspective, is about helping people to meet challenges that that are not possible given their current way of viewing the world. According to developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, challenges can be dealt with in two ways. The first he called Assimilation: Here the person fits the challenge into their current view of the world – treating it as if it just another example of something they already know. This enables them move on but does not help them build a more useful, expansive view of the world. The second way challenges can be faced is via Accommodation. This requires the person to develop a bigger, more complex, perspective on the issue in order to solve it well. By presenting young people with the challenge of developing and implementing a project that will create a positive impact on their community, The Helmsman Project strives to facilitate accommodation. For any type of coaching, understanding motivation is essential for helping clients work towards their goals. The Helmsman Project uses a variant of Vroom’s Expectancy Theory of motivation to help young people set and achieve goals. According to
Expectancy Theory, motivation towards a goal is a function of three things: • Interest in the goal • The ability to picture a pathway towards that goal, and • The ability to picture yourself on that path. As a coaches we work with the participants on these three areas. Another strategy to broaden young people’s perspective of the opportunities available to them is to foster their development of a growth mindset. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck developed the theory of Mindsets, and it helps to explain one reason people don’t always reach their potential. According to Dweck, there are two types of mindset: Fixed and Growth. People with a fixed mindset believe that their capacities (personality traits, intelligence and abilities) are static, and fixed by nature. They believe that people have certain talents and that these can’t be changed. As a result, people with fixed mindsets are hesitant to undertake challenges they don’t think they have the natural ability to overcome. Furthermore, they see effort and struggle as indicating they are in some way deficient. So they avoid challenges that are difficult. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset, see their personal attributes www.coachinglife.com.au
LIFE as something that can be developed. Struggle and effort are therefore valued as necessary for development. By helping young people develop a growth mindset, the Helmsman Project is able to have a long term impact on how they respond to the challenges life holds in store for them. Changes in mindset and perspective manifest in many different ways for the teenagers I have coached through The Helmsman Project. When I asked one boy what changed for him through the program, he told me that he hadn’t been in detention since the program started. This particular boy had previously been in detention 3 times a week, but had remained detention free for the last 5 months. Through a change in his perspective, this young man was able to see himself as worth more than misbehaving. It showed he had really developed his self-regulatory skills as a result of this new perspective.
Dr Michael Cavanagh is both a Coaching and Clinical Psychologist. He holds a BA (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Sydney, and a PhD and Masters of Clinical Psychology from Macquarie University. Michael is currently the Deputy Director of the Coaching Psychology Unit at the University of Sydney, where he has co-developed the world’s first degree programme in coaching. Michael contributes his expertise as a volunteer for The Helmsman Project and has played an integral role in the program’s design and research evaluation. Michael has coached several groups of young people through the program and is a member of The Helmsman Project’s advisory committee. To find out about coaching opportunities at The Helmsman Project, visit: www.thehelmsmanproject.org.au.
Outcomes like this are common at The Helmsman Project and while the program is designed to help young people affected by disadvantage develop life skills (hope, self-regulation and resilience) and broaden their horizons, the manifestation of these developments is different for each young participant. The benefits might include, as we have heard from teachers and parents, increased interest in school, reduced absenteeism, improved engagement in the classroom, boosts in confidence, improved ability to work as team, as well as many other educational and personal benefits. The coaches too do not go unchanged. We provide them with free training in developmental coaching and free supervision. Speaking personally, this coaching has been one of the most important developmental activities I have done. I know many of the coaches would (and do) say the same. We are better coaches for our involvement with The Helmsman Project. As a coach, I am continuously inspired by these stories of change, each reminding me that broadening someone’s horizon is the single greatest impact a coach can have on someone’s life long term. www.coachinglife.com.au
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HOW TO SUCCEED WITH ALL TYPES OF CLIENTS I
By Shannah Kennedy
I HAVE NOW BEEN COACHING FOR 15 YEARS BUT MY BACKGROUND
INCLUDES STOCKBROKING IN MY EARLY 20S. AT THE TIME, I DIDN’T SEE ENOUGH SCOPE FOR WOMEN IN THE INDUSTRY, SO I ENTERED INTO THE SPORTS MANAGEMENT WORLD.
was blessed to be employed by Pro Sport Management who looked after 10 Australian golfers. The owner was an incredible man who taught me everything from how to run a business from the ground up, to negotiating contracts, travelling with the players, running corporate golf days and managing the athletes. It was fantastic and I worked very, very hard. The owner then went to the USA, and I was offered a job at a sunglass manufacturer as their sponsorship manager, going from 10 athletes to 200 and suddenly becoming Jerry Maguire! Buying athletes, negotiating, living at sporting events and working 7 days a week. It was a dream and I loved it all but the pace was unsustainable and I ended up getting chronic fatigue.
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To help overcome the syndrome, I employed a life coach (no one had heard of them yet but they were quite big in the USA) and she assisted me with my short and long-term goals as I was spiralling into a depression. My A-type, over-achieving personality and perfectionism didn’t mix well with chronic fatigue. During this process it occurred to me that no one really assisted the athletes with their goals in life during and after sport, so I studied coaching and started my own practice coaching athletes into retirement.
SHORT TERM VS LONG TERM While the definition of ‘short’ and ‘long’ is generally unique to each coach, as a frame of reference, my short-term clients work with me for up to 1 year, and long-term clients for several years or more. www.coachinglife.com.au
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While the definition of ‘short’ and ‘long’ is generally unique to each coach, as a frame of reference, my short-term clients work with me for up to 1 year, and long-term clients for several years or more.
SHORT TERM CLIENTS PLAN The client is ready to learn, is starting their coaching journey or needs a refresher. These are exciting, powerful conversations to gain clarity, vision, structure and form a plan to get going over a 12-month period. To cement our time, we complete the following: • An inventory of achievements in life and lessons learnt • A clear and very concise foundational piece on personal values – these form a decision-making point for life choices • A “check and action” of all the drainers in the client’s life: personal, professional, health, finances, home environment and wellbeing • A responsibility vs. blame check • A clear vision for the 12-month period • A more detailed plan for the above period, broken down into clear monthly tasks that will service the overall goal-setting space • Vision creation for a 3-year period (written and visual), with a finely tuned definition of healthy success
LONG TERM CLIENTS PLAN With these clients, we are a team and one unit. Many CEOs I have had the privilege of working with, along with some of my own role models, have www.coachinglife.com.au
been with me for 5-10years. We are on a very long journey together and meet once a month to refine, tune, iron out wrinkles, so that they can be the best version of themselves personally and professionally. These clients are exciting as we embark on a great journey together covering every aspect in life. We start with setting out a 20-year plan to map out their life goals and projections, year by year, also considering how old those around us will be. Encompassing their partners, children, parents, friends and colleagues, the picture the plan creates is incredibly powerful.
I have worked with athletes at the beginning of their career creating their Plan B, one that they can be working on whilst embarking on their immediate sporting career. We set out small tasks and goals along the way that focus on making them feel like a whole human being, not just an athlete. Injury and selection policies can force unforeseen changes, and they need to know who they are without their sport. This propels them forward with confidence in their sport as they feel like the driver in life, not the passenger. We cover the 20-year plan, looking at vision creations, emotional intelligence, resilience, Plan A, Plan B and build an COACHINGLIFE
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education platform together so that they are constantly learning, usually via audiobook. I think this is a very underutilised tool. You can listen in your car, on your run, in your rest time, and keep growing the brain.
bring it back to the corporate world. It is
Education in this area with long-term
a fundamental skill set that people lack
clients is incredible as we address
and it is a part of my coaching. Wellness
goals, visions, plans and structures,
skills are essential for longevity in our
but also our basic mental, physical and
career, whatever you may be doing.
emotional health needs to be able to
Whether that is coaching, competing,
execute all of the above. Learning
HOW TO SUCCEED OVER A LONG PERIOD OF ENGAGEMENT
managing or running a business.
about the breath, meditation practice,
You need to have a stress reduction
fight or flight, commitment vs. trying,
As a coach, you need to keep yourself excited, challenged and 2 steps ahead of your client! My 3 golden rules:
action plan and understand how to get
and setting up a toolbox of skills for
the most from your mental and physical
ourselves to train the brain is all part of
health.
the long-term journey.
1. LOOK IN THE MIRROR I challenge myself to keep growing, be authentic, inspired and motivated. Keeping it all simple helps with maintaining momentum with the client. Are you great to be around? Do you bring energy to the table? When your client sees you, do they see you growing too? Do you have the best knowledge and tools for the client? My business is run purely on referrals, so when speaking, authenticity is key. 2. BE ON THEIR JOURNEY I challenge the client on their plans and keep them accountable, making sure the plans and goals are the right ones, setting them up for success. Clients often say that my voice is in the back of their minds, keeping them in check, remembering the fundamentals and providing perspective. Their wonderful journey is assisted by you as a coach, offering snippets along the way, being available in between sessions if needed and remembering where the client came from. Many athletes forget where they came from very quickly, with success comes new opportunities, doors open quickly and we can capitalise on this, but we can also be grateful when we are reminded of where we started and remember to celebrate the journey and keep revisiting Plan B for when the door may close. 3. MAKE IT HEALTHY I am also an ambassador for a health retreat and teach their “Masterclass of Wellness”, the boardroom retreat for corporates. This is where we take the skillset you learn at a health retreat and
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TOP TIPS FOR COACHES AND CLIENTS Know yourself – look in the mirror and really connect with who you are, what is going on for you and where you want to be. Don’t just exist on the treadmill of life; own it, live it and drive it the way you want to. Have a clear vision for yourself – know what you want the next 5 years to be like. This way you can start a great plan to support yourself, set up a few safety nets and not get caught out by the unexpected. Look after your finances – I always say you work for the business of yourself no matter who pays you. Do you know your finances inside out? Are you taking responsibility for them? They are your choices for the future and your freedom. Know them, love them, understand them and have a good system for wealth
creation to support why you are working so hard. Get some structure – use the diary, program your phone, really set up a foolproof system so the thinking is taken out the mundane things and nothing gets too hard. Structure is where I find most people fall apart as they are not skilled enough in this area. Your health is your wealth – no matter who you are or what you do, if your health is not there, you cannot do anything. So it is your first and foremost concern. Our mental, physical and emotional health need a good solid plan, a good team and a good, healthy mindset with some great brain training. The mind is an incredible tool!
Shannah Kennedy is a Life Strategist who has coached Olympians, CEOs of businesses and entrepreneurs. She travels the country speaking at conferences on two main messages: Simplify Structure Succeed, and The Masterclass of Wellness, recently run nationwide at Macquarie Bank. She is the author of “The Life Plan”, published by Penguin Books, and is married to a CEO of sport with two children.
www.coachinglife.com.au
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IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS EVEN MORE COMPANIES REPORT THE SAME CHALLENGES
Support for ‘flexible working’ in
93%
of companies reported employees
waste 2+ hrs a week* on manual or repetitive tasks in the last 12 mths
This is a huge increase from the 67% who felt the same way 12 months ago.
* Research conducted by Tech Research Asia, 2014-15
Our latest research across Australia’s major industry sectors reveals that organisations are struggling with automating manual tasks and digitising paper based processes. Plus the need to address Mobility has become more pressing than ever.
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Call 1300 363 442 or visit canon.com.au/stayahead Follow us on Twitter @CanonBusinessAU www.coachinglife.com.au
STAY AHEAD Canon WORK 3.0 COACHINGLIFE
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THE LONGEVITY OF COACHING
By Wyomie Robertson
COACHING PEOPLE IS REWARDING, FOR BOTH THE CLIENT AND COACH, THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. LIFE COACHING IS A RESOURCE FOR ANY AREA OF LIFE, AS IT FOCUSES ON SELF-AWARENESS, MINDSET AND CREATING STRATEGIES FOR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. AS LIFE PROGRESSES AND EVOLVES SO TOO DOES OUR FOCUS, CHALLENGES AND GOALS. THEREFORE, COACHING HAS A PLACE LONG-TERM IN OUR ONGOING AND EVOLVING JOURNEY.
M
ost people just want a chance to be their best selves. They’ve been holding back from lack of confidence, frustrated with themselves as they know they can do better. They are going through change and need support, but fear sees them procrastinate. I get a buzz from seeing clients find resolutions to their problem quickly and easily. We are all the same, we sometimes need someone to listen and ask us the right questions. I had an early introduction to personal development when my mother took me to Alateen at 11 years old to help me through my father’s alcoholism and eventually his sobriety. This support program for young people taught me the fundamentals of self-awareness, mindset and wellbeing, and provided me with living and communication skills. Although following this experience, I was now living in positive household with my parents and younger brother, I went off the rails for a chunk of my
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teenage years, having a close call to youth detention. This reality check quickly redirected my attention back to school and to my father’s boxing club, Kurbingui, where I spent my remaining teenage years in boxing training and sparring with the boys, traveling away to tournaments and assisting with cornering fights. This grew my self-esteem and confidence, and with continued personal development, reading countless books and completing positive therapy programs, my improved mindset and behaviours flourished. I am now able to take these life-learned skills into my coaching approach to benefit clients.
HOW I COACH I coach clients both short and long-term, and my approach is that the length of coaching is dictated by them. Initially, most clients begin in the same way, with one-to-one fortnightly coaching sessions (of 1-2 hours) for a 3-month period. This gives them an opportunity to work on and through the priority areas of change www.coachinglife.com.au
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Once a trusted relationship is built, clients will often raise other, more personal, areas that require attention or explain the reasoning or history behind some events and feelings.
• confused partnerships create happy relationships • the disorganised become organised and in control with efficient systems • overworked business owners living happy, balanced lives
HOW IT CHANGES OVER TIME and enables time for momentum to build, so they can sustain new habits and patterns. Following this, the client goes off and continues to implement and maintain these new strategies. From here, some clients have monthly or quarterly ‘maintenance’ sessions and some have sessions ad-hoc when and as needed. I still coach clients that began with me 7 years ago and I still see a continued longevity and evolution to our coaching.
8 POSITIVES OF COACHING FOR LONGEVITY:
1
It creates trust and rapport – the client can relax and tell you what you need to know to help them.
2
You will understand the bigger picture and complexities of their life, including influence, relationships, habits, concerns, mindset and motivators.
3
When things change, the client is able to speak with you as someone with objectivity and confidentiality who knows their history. www.coachinglife.com.au
4
The client can be reminded of the tools they have used in the past successfully or create new tools.
5 6
Familiarity often makes it easier to communicate and share
You will get to know their personality and communication style, making communication easier and quicker for outcomes.
7 8
You will learn their capability and capacity for changes. You will know when they are being realistic or over-ambitious.
CLIENT EXAMPLES I have been fortunate to see: • self-employed clients create multimillion-dollar businesses • professional athletes achieve their sporting goals • unhappy and stressed professionals transition into areas of passion • individuals learn the art of communication so that they can stand up for themselves in their personal and professional lives
Initially it’s getting to know each other and building rapport, trust and relationship. Their desired outcomes are often instant because the action of engaging a coach often comes at the ‘I need help to sort this out now, because what I am doing is not working’ stage. So they get some quick wins, if they are prepared to make changes, that is. Once a trusted relationship is built, clients will often raise other, more personal, areas that require attention or explain the reasoning or history behind some events and feelings. This is where deeper work can be done and sometimes at this stage, I refer clients to a therapist to ensure they get the right assistance to deal with and resolve important issues. Otherwise, as a coach you become a trust part of a (hopefully!) successful team of professionals, with the intention of assisting the client to get what they need and want in an empowered way. COACHINGLIFE
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Keeping in contact is important. I send clients a text or email every few months to check in and see how they are tracking. 5 NEGATIVES OF COACHING FOR LONGEVITY
5
Both client and coach can become too relaxed.
1 2 3
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO COACH FOR THE LONG-TERM?
The client can lose their sense of accountability to the coach.
Keeping in contact is important. I
The coach can become too friendly and want to please the client rather
months to check in and see how they
I guess I like change too and even
Your sessions can become too chatty and less action-based.
send clients a text or email every few
But just like any job, at times over the years I have thought, do I really want to keep doing this? How hard is it meeting with successful people to tweak their systems or thinking for greater positive change?
are tracking. There is no expectation
though the subjects are often positive,
than assist.
to arrange another session, it is simply
inspiring and forward-moving, I too can
4
a reminder of the strategies and goals
feel tired and drained and need a break
they had set when we met last.
occasionally.
The coach can lose objectivity and become biased.
My top tip s:
sess ion deta ched to the d n a h es fr e m Co is is a bout judgem ent – th d n a as bi ny a Let go of them, not you ations Let go a ll expect n d cha llenge whe n a ve ti ec bj o Continue to be needed ta bility -u p a nd a ccoun w llo fo h it w ck Don’t get sla Be open-m inded to that you wa nt s nt ie cl ch a co Ensu re you on ly ten Listen, listen, lis d w ith a ny ks like you woul ea br d n a ys a Ta ke holid other job t coa ched n needs a nd ge w o ur o y of re Ta ke ca eeded yourself when n elopm ent professiona l dev l ua in nt co in Pa rta ke a nd debriefing
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Wyomie is a Life Coach who has been a finalist twice for ANZI Coach of the Year (2011, 2012). She works with some of the most successful people in their field, including business owners, entrepreneurs, pro athletes and industry experts both locally and internationally. She provides professional development to the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and is student trainer and mentor.
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Diploma of Life Coaching 5 Incredible Qualifications in One Program
Practitioner of Life Coaching
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Diploma of Life Coaching
Our Diploma Course Includes: least 100 Hours of ü At‘in-room’ Training Our diploma program includes 11 days of ‘live’ training in a room with a real life person! Step Personal ü12 Coaching Program All TLCC Coaches are taught how to Coach and market our Trademark 12 Step Personal Coaching Program.
Therapies Training ü Matrix Learn to clear the negative influences of people and events in your client’s past. Recognition ü International Our Diploma of Life Coaching course is recognised by the International Coach Federation. NLP Practitioner ü 7OurDayDiploma Course includes the 7 Day NLP Practitioner Certification.
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Fear
Beliefs
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ü Mentoring You will be assigned your very own mentor to help you grow your Coaching business.
At TLCC we teach you your very own Coaching System. We call it the personal Coaching Program (PCP) and it gives you the first 12 coaching sessions (scripted) for you to have with your clients. This gives you a systemised product that you can take to market complete with marketing to support you. We have found over the years that this system is the best way to assist coaches to build their coaching hours and experience as they grow their Coaching Business.
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HOW BECOMING A COACH CHANGED MY LIFE
By Glen Murdoch
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT FIRST MOMENT WHEN YOU DISCOVERED THIS WHOLE CONCEPT OF COACHING OR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT? I DO! I WAS SITTING IN A HOTEL ROOM WATCHING AN OPRAH EPISODE ABOUT “THE SECRET”. I WAS BLOWN AWAY BY THE WAY THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT THE WORLD, MY WORLD, THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME SEEMED TO MAKE SENSE.
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I
My great friend and PD colleague, Pip Mckay, has always said that to move forward we must heal the past, and man did I have some past to heal!
My aim was simple: I wanted to change the world one person at a time! What I didn’t know at the start was that I was the person who had to change first. I had never been brave enough to admit that I was holding on to some events in my past that had shaped pretty well every outcome I’d had up until then.
Over the course of my life I have had an abusive childhood and so lost my Dad after he left in my early teens, lost my mum at 18, was the fattest kid in school (I can tell you the words to the fat Albert song word perfect!), lost 40 kilograms and developed anorexia nervosa (no longer that fattest kid in school!), created for myself a disease called Bulimia Nervosa (which I had for 20 years… oh the money I wasted!), was homeless and lived in my Toyota
ran straight out and bought The Secret and read it cover to cover. I then started Googling (Don’t you just LOVE Google!) and I found my first mentors: Robbins, Rohn, Hill, Nightingale, Tolle and Jeffers, which started me on a life-long journey of change.
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Corolla whilst at university, became a chronic binge drinker, replaced that with drug-fuelled weekends where sleep was non-existent Friday to Monday, attempted suicide twice (the second time in a Dubai prison cell, but that’s a story for another time) and lost almost every cent I earned gambling at Crown casino. I own all of this stuff now and look back fondly at the challenges – but it wasn’t always like this. I was living a life without any real meaning and I found it almost impossible to build lasting relationships because most of the stuff I was doing was super destructive. I had met and fallen madly in love with a girl called Beth but I was screwing it up. Nothing I was doing was helping me to have the relationship that I know she deserved and that I really wanted until I watched that episode of Oprah and discovered coaching. The timing was perfect because I needed to change, I needed an avenue to change, and it was wrapped up as me changing the lives of others, so my ego didn’t know what was coming! I’ve never been a “one glove fits all” kind of coach and even now with my
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school, The Life Coaching College, I’m not really attached to how our guys get outcomes. But I will share the one thing that started the life change for me. It’s so little and seems so trivial, but for me it really was everything. Have you ever known anyone that taps their fingers all the time? I was a finger tapper, perhaps not so much a tapper as a whole-hand-one-finger-at-a-time mover. I remember one night Beth said to me, “Why do you do that?” I hadn’t realised that I was constantly tapping away but told her it was actually me thinking. Each tap was a word and I was talking to myself. Her next question terrified me. She asked, “What are you saying to yourself?” I didn’t answer straight away because I had to fumble a lie. I said I was thinking about us and all kinds of other happy things! Actually my tapping was always aligned to destructive negative self-talk. Mine normally went a bit like this: “You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’ve got no real friends, People don’t like you…” That kind of really wonderful stuff. One of the first things I learnt in a coaching weekend with Joe Pane at The Coaching Institute, was self-talk
and how we have all of these thoughts each day, with 95% of those thoughts are repeated the next day. I studied a little more and learnt that thoughts are the mental activity of our language and that they directly correlate with our underlying ‘model’ or ‘map’ of the world. No matter who we are, how we speak to ourselves not only reflects but affects every aspect of our life. What we tell ourselves on an ongoing basis, whether it be good or bad, right or wrong, reflects
Over the course of my life I have had an abusive childhood and so lost my Dad after he left in my early teens, lost my mum at 18, was the fattest kid in school (I can tell you the words to the fat Albert song word perfect!), lost 40 kilograms and developed anorexia nervosa
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not only what we think but also how we feel and act. This can directly influence our results in life. So from that day forward I learnt and applied a cool little NLP technique that involved placing an elastic band on my wrist (one of those big, bad-ass purple ones) and then actively noticing my self-talk. Each time I thought something bad about myself, I snapped the band and replaced the thought with a positive statement – “I am an awesome partner with lots of love to give” for example. The rubber band is a pattern breaker that gets your attention and reminds you that you are choosing a new behaviour. It acts to snap you back into the present moment, so you can consciously choose a new behaviour until that new behaviour becomes your automatic response. This one little technique took about 2 weeks to work for me (and a whole lot of welts on my wrist) but sure enough my self-talk dramatically changed! Once my self-talk changed, I found that I was so much happier because what you focus on really is what you get! Isn’t it amazing that this one little technique helped so much? My story however wouldn’t be complete without talking about NLP. I’m assuming if you’re reading this, then you are probably a coach or looking to be one, so my advice would be make sure you do an NLP course.
QUICK NLP OVERVIEW: Neuro – the mind and the brain and how they interact with the body. Linguistic – Linguistics is language. Programming is the habits of thought that lead to habits of behaviour and how to change them rapidly, effectively and for profound and lasting change. NLP is the ultimate communication tool, making you an expert in both
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Although I started out in coaching to change lives, becoming a coach ended up changing my own life in ways I hadn’t even thought possible. verbal and non-verbal language. As a result, NLP greatly enhances your ability to learn, train, manage and negotiate, making it an extraordinary resource for those in business, sales, education and therapy. NLP shows us how to use the language of the conscious and unconscious mind to program ourselves for lasting success and happiness. It is therefore the most effective tool for personal and professional evolution.
Beth and am a doting and passionate dad to our two most beautiful children, Aidan and Lara. I have created an unbelievably successful coaching school where we are all committed to having fun and changing lives. Our students are the most beautiful, caring, talented and inspiring coaches. Although I started out in coaching to change lives, becoming a coach ended up changing my own life in ways I hadn’t even thought possible. What will be your long-term coaching story?
NLP is usually used for the following four purposes: • Enhancing communication in personal and professional relationships. • In management, leadership, team building, sales, marketing and personal and relationship therapy. • As a tool for teachers and trainers for developing group rapport and communicating to different learning styles. • As a tool to help overcome dyslexia, poor memory and other learning difficulties. During my NLP Training, I was able to completely let go of the emotions from events and people in my past that I’d allowed to limit me. I walked in a little boy and walked out a man. As I write that, I know it seems hard to fathom but all I can tell you is that process of becoming an NLP Practitioner helped me make enormous change in my own life. I got rid of drinking, drugs, and even threw away a fear of heights for good measure! When I look at who I was and who I am now, I’m super proud to tell you that I am now married to my incredible wife
Glen Murdoch is the Founder of The Life Coaching College. TLCC runs Internationally approved, classroom-based Coach Training all over Australia. Glen and his team are fully committed to changing the world one person at a time. Mention Coaching Life when you book a Diploma in Life Coaching and receive a further 10 % off.
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REVIEWS » COACHES BOOKSHELF The Life Plan by Shannah Kennedy ARTICLE REFERENCES THE LAST WORD
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REVIEWS
COACHES BOOKSHELF THE LIFE PLAN BY SHANNAH KENNEDY (2015) The Life Plan by leading life coach, Shannah Kennedy, is a practical, useful tool that sets out step-by-step strategies to identify and achieve life goals. Having coached both business executives and athletes extensively, Shannah’s beautiful tome is applicable to all who aspire to greater heights in life, in the boardroom, and on the sports field. It will guide you toward knowing yourself and finding your purpose – both daily and longterm – as well as learning to declutter your thinking, stretch your yourself and goals to greater heights, and find balance and control for greater freedom to explore your dreams. All of these points lead into improving your health and wellbeing, and working on your personal priorities without the regular daily distraction of a chaotic life! Find some mental breathing space with this well considered book, published by Penguin Random House Australia (2015).
ARTICLE REFERENCES Knowing the person behind the successful coach (pp.20-23) By Professor Cliff Mallet, University of Queensland • Mallett, C. J., & Lara-Bercial, S. (in press). Serial winning coaches: People, vision and environment. In M. Raab, et al. (Eds.), Sport and exercise psychology research: Theory to practice. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Unlocking Potential in Schools (pp.46-48) By Grant O’Sullivan, Growth Coaching International • van Nieuwerburgh, C. & Campbell, J. (2015). A global framework for coaching in education. CoachEd: The Teaching Leaders Coaching Journal, 2015(1), 2–5. • OECD (2013).The Teaching and Learning International Survey(TALIS) Australia Country Note. Retrieved August 2014 from http://www.oecd.org/australia/TALIS-2013-countrynote-Australia.pdf • Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) http://www.aitsl.edu.au/ • Hattie, John (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: NY: Routledge
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THE LAST WORD… “have a strong focus on the soft skills – people, communication and interrelationship skills”
“change the world, one person at a time”
“have much more personalised and prescriptive professional development action plans”
“develop networks, get out of your comfort zone and find a mentor” Jayson Brewer
Glen Goldspink
Adam Sachs
Glen Murdoch “It only takes a really small amount of effort to create a long-lasting impact in someone’s life” Layne Beachley “you work for the business of yourself, no matter who pays you”
“the core purpose being to unlock the potential within every student” “the challenges offered … should be progressive and sequential with recognitions and rewards for milestones” David Speechley
Shannah Kennedy “if it’s not fun any longer to be a coach, it’s time to step away and take time out” “it’s an ongoing process upskilling yourself, observing, watching”
“most people just want a chance to be their best selves” Wyomie Robertson
Steve Desovich
“local engagement is critical to retaining and growing our membership”
Grant O’Sullivan
“What is it you do differently? You have to stand out amongst the mainstream.” Steve Brossman
Jill McIntosh “a more rigorous and systematic approach to the identification, recruitment and development of high performance coaches is necessary” Cliff Mallett
Margot Smith “The two biggest retaining tools are having an individualised step-by-step development system, and trust”
“broadening someone’s horizon is the single greatest impact a coach can have on someone’s life” Dr Michael Cavanagh
Paul Caslick
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SPORT
JUNE 2016 EDITION ADVERSITY BEATING THE ODDS As coaches we all face adversity. In June’s Edition we face adversity head on and see how the best handle the challenge.
plus so much more!
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