6 minute read
Coaching Development: Take the “Scenic Route”…
Take the “Scenic Route”…
By Heidi Thibert, MFS, MM, MC
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When someone says, “We took the scenic route,” we all know it means to travel the route that isn’t the fastest, but that has beautiful scenery along the journey. If you think of your coaching as a journey from one milestone to another, it’s clear there a couple of ways to approach it — just like taking a road trip. Some coaches will cruise along the easiest and fastest route (the highway) to get to the destination, therefore missing some of the highlights along the way. Other coaches enjoy the “drive’ taking the challenge of navigating the scenic route to their career goals. But what does choosing the scenic route in coaching mean? It may mean…
Choosing to be different from the ‘norm’
When you take the scenic route, you are choosing to separate yourself from the rest of the coaches. You might decide to pursue your PSA ratings, choosing to take yourself out of your comfort zone. This means leaving behind the most convenient option of just coaching what you already know, and instead taking the path less travelled to affirm and validate your methods and process. By choosing this path, it can take you to innovative ideas and new results. You might be the first in your rink or club to climb the rating ladder. You might decide to save up and attend the PSA Summit in Chicago in May. If you do, you won’t believe the ideas you will go back to the rink with. You could sign up for PSA’s Foundations of Coaching Course, Ratings Prep, or decide to subscribe to PSA TV to view the hundreds of videos with content from our greatest coaches.
Choosing to take your time and enjoy the journey
Savoring the moments of true coaching delight…the first student to get an Axel, to pass a senior test, to qualify for a national championship…are all gifts you can give yourself. Those coaching milestones only happen for the “first time” once. To get the most out of the coaching journey, make sure you slow down and enjoy those experiences. Pause at those moments and look at the time and effort you and your student had invested. It's called a “scenic route” for a reason! Don’t fall back into just going from one competition or test to another. Give your coaching journey meaning, adventure, and acknowledgment. Make the most of every single moment, every accomplishment, every struggle, because once you reach your destination, the journey ends.
Choosing to look for the “views”
Without searching for the “views” that put the joy of coaching in perspective, coaching can become stale, routine, and joyless. Our view of the rink and environment around us starts with our own mindsets. Every coach reaches points in their career of disappointment, indifference, boredom, and even resentment. When you take the scenic route, it puts these feelings in perspective. Our perspective colors our perceptions of our surroundings and, in turn, our effectiveness on those we teach and work with. A healthy practice is to choose to focus on all of the wonderful things you will accomplish with your students, and how much joy and satisfaction those accomplishments will bring to them. It only takes a moment to either see those highlights during a coaching career or to completely miss them because of being too busy trying to see what's ahead.
Realizing that the road is never straight
Sometimes in coaching (or life), we can feel like we are in the middle of nowhere on a winding road with no phone reception and light fading. We might begin to panic because we feel lost and might not even be able to call for help. With the speed of changes in our sport, it’s easy to get worried about where we are on our journey in comparison to the other coaches in the rink or region, and we can feel pretty isolated and alone even inside a crowded coaches’ room.
It is impossible to know what is around the corner, but we can learn to accept and enjoy the “drive” for what it is – an adventure to a place in our coaching where we have never been and can’t imagine what the experience will be like. Dictionary.com literally defines adventure as “an exciting or very unusual experience. Participation in exciting undertakings or enterprises. A bold, usually risky undertaking; hazardous action of uncertain outcome.”
When is the last time you did something to improve your coaching skills that wasn’t a requirement for the season? Coaching is a profession of continuous growth, and if we aren’t growing, we are standing still. We guide, advise, and yes, sometimes push, our athletes out of their comfort zone in an effort to further their development as an athlete. However, we are far less likely to push ourselves towards continuous improvement in our profession. Why is that? What gets in the way? Time, of course. And life’s demands of our families, our students, and our commitments. That said, just like any thing that is worth doing, continuous improvement as a professional takes time and effort. We as coaches need to see the importance of refreshing our quest for excellence to the ultimate outcome of our work with our athletes. Not because we have to, but because we want to… and that’s leads us to our why.
Preparing for the journey
Without a doubt, the most enjoyable adventures are those when we are prepared for what is to come. For example, when your car has a full tank or a full charge, you aren’t as limited to how far you can drive without stopping for gasoline or an electric charge. The more that you prepare for the journey ahead, the more you can get out of it
Grasping the concept of taking the scenic route allows us to embark on our coaching pathway knowing that there will be many challenges, making sure we are prepared for those challenges, learning to make the most out of every moment, finding the positivity in our work, and enjoying the fruits of our labor.
We can prepare ourselves for an adventurous coaching journey ahead by constantly working on our professional development. You only have the one coaching journey – consider taking the “scenic route.” In your professional development quest, I wish you all the "joy of the journey". - Heidi Thibert, PSA Senior Director of Coaching Development
