A Guide to Mentoring Sports Coaches

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A Guide to Mentoring Sports Coaches

• Dale Welch
• sports coach UK
• Coach Development Officer
• Hertfordshire

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• Ice Breaker
• Find a partner and tell them
• Your name
• 1 thing youd like to get from this workshop
  (write on a post it)
• Finally, describe an experience where someone had
  a positive influence on your umpiring or coaching
• 5 mins

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Identify your role as a mentorDevelop your
mentoring profileIncrease the effectiveness of
your mentoring relationships by developing
practical mentoring skillsDesign a mentoring
programme that best suits your needs
A Guide to Mentoring
By the end of this workshop, you should be able
to
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Other specific outcomes

• What is mentoring?
• Benefits?
• Types of mentoring
• Roles of the mentor
• Skills of the mentor
• Learning styles
• Herts Badminton programme
• The type of mentor you can be?

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Coaches want

• A menu of opportunities
• Coach Education
• Workshops
• Mentoring
• Support and advice
• Resources and information

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What is mentoring?

• support, assistance, advocacy or guidance given
  by one person to another in order to achieve an
  objective or several objectives over a period of
  time
• (SOVA)
• One to one relationship supporting the
  development of another umpire

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Lessons from education

• It is ineffective to provide a series of
  one-shot professional development activities,
  undertaken away from the place of work, without
  specific follow up and without making links with
  previous learning
• Mark Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in Coaching
  Science, Oxford Brookes University

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Mentoring is essentially about helping people to
learn and take responsibility for their own
development
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Benefits of Mentoring

• What are the benefits for the Coach?
• What are the benefits for the Mentor?
• Group discussion

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Mentoring can

• serve as a motivational experience for coaches
• improve your own coaching by analysis of
  anothers methods and ideas
• improve your coaching by enhancing
  coaching-related skills such as communication
  skills, analysis and observation

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Mentoring can

• give job satisfaction and a sense of great
  achievement
• build greater awareness of the needs of other
  coaches
• challenge preconceptions and beliefs
• assist coaches with self-reflection

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Behind every successful person there is
one elementary truth somewhere, somehow, someone
cared about their growth and development that
person was their mentor(Dr Beverley Kaye Up
is Not the Only Way, 1997)
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Types of mentoring
Supporting coaches in their development
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Different Mentoring Relationships
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Pure Mentoring

• Pure Mentoring
• The agenda/issue and the solution rests with the
  coach
• Technical Advisor
• Coachs agenda, mentors solution

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Mentors Role

• To help to guide coachs towards learning
  experiences
• May be different with coaches at different
  levels?
• With novices it may be about empowerment
• With more experienced coaches it may be about
  challenging their beliefs and values

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The Roles of a Mentor

• Learning Stage of the coach
• modelling (Level 1)
• competency (Level 2)
• questioning (Level 3)
• autonomy (Level 4)

• Mentor Role
• role model, observer
• observer, provider of feedback
• challenger
• partner in critical enquiry

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The Mentoring Continuum
Informal
Formal
Qualification Programme
Ad hoc meeting
Friendship
Coach/assistant
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Mentoring Scenarios

• In pairs, discuss the level of formality that you
  would feel is most appropriate for your mentoring
  situations/sport/club?
• Decide on the mentoring situation that you are
  most comfortable using yourself

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Some Mentor Roles

• Role model
• Confidence builder
• Resource (information) provider
• Develop skills knowledge
• Challenge and question?
• Support and encourage the coaches learning
  process
• Be open minded and willing to reflect on own
  coaching performance/beliefs
• Adopt a listen and ask approach, rather than a
  tell approach

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Skills of the mentor

• Advisor
• Human resource
• Competency checking/observation
• Listening skills
• Action planning/goal setting
• Problem solving (shared)
• Knowledge of coaching/changes?
• Contacts/support network

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Active Listening

• Active listening try to
• listen actively use body language
• pay full attention to the coach, clarify details
• demonstrate you are listening by paraphrasing
  points
• Active listening avoid
• interrupting
• thinking about what you want to say rather than
  listening
• making judgements
• Use questioning to manage the interaction

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Break 10 minutes
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Learning Styles
OHT 5

• Theorists logical thinkers, it must fit the
  framework.
• Reflectors must think it through and feel in
  control of the new material/idea before
  using it.
• Pragmatists problem solvers who seek
  solutions to identified problems but rarely
  look beyond immediate needs.
• Activists learn by doing, happy to use trial
  and error.

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Learning Styles

• Visual (Pictures and diagrams)
• Kinaesthetic (by doing, physical and practical)
• Linguistic (talk/discussion/words)
• Auditory (Listening)

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Group task

• In groups plan a session / mentoring situation
  or meeting that would suit coaches with the
  following learning styles
• Auditory
• Linguistic
• Kinaesthetic
• Visual

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Structure of a Mentoring Situation

• Pre-session meeting
• A shared understanding
• Clarifying expectations
• Establishing priorities
• Agreeing goals
• Session
• Normality (dont try too hard)
• Interaction depends on event, stage of learning
  of the coach, level of acquaintance
• Reflection
• Quality of communication
• Coach leads
• Beware of advising and fixing

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Mentoring Agreement

• What is it?
• A mentoring agreement is an understanding between
  both the coach and their mentor as to the level,
  commitment and focus of the mentoring
  relationship
• Why have a mentoring agreement?
• To avoid confusion
• To ensure that both the mentor and coaches
  expectations are met

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Examples of agreements

• 1 phone call a week
• 1 meeting a month
• 1 practical session meeting a month
• Review meeting every 2 months
• Some or all of the above?
• Keep it simple and achievable!!!

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Goal Setting

• Identify why the individual wants to coach
• What motivates them to coach?
• Identify their goals as a Coach
• This will clarify where they want to go
• How ambitious are they
• Do they feel they want to learn and achieve more

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Performance Profile

• The coach outlines the qualities of a good coach
  in his/her opinion.
• The meaning of each quality is clarified by the
  coach
• The coach selects the most important qualities
• These are plotted on the profile sheet
• The coach rates him/herself in each quality on a
  scale of one to ten
• The score is plotted on the profile sheet
• The coach then discusses how to develop in these
  areas (with the mentor)

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An example of an individual profile

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The Personal Development Plan

• Link the coachs goals with the gaps identified
  their performance profile
• Identify qualities with the biggest gap between
  current and ideal performance
• Set goals to improve these areas
• Identify any gaps in experience that the coach
  needs to overcome in order to reach their goals
• Develop clear actions that the coach can take to
  reach your goals
• Identify which form of education will best fit
  the coachs needs for each goal e.g. mentoring,
  course, practice
• Ensure actions are realistic and achievable

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Giving feedback

• Giving feedback
• Make sure your comments are relevant to the
  umpires immediate aims and objectives.
• Ask the coach to explain his/her thinking before
  you offer feedback.
• Avoid advising and fixing where possible.
• Feedback should
• be specific
• be immediate
• be understood
• help the coach evaluate himself/herself
• be for the coach and not about the coach
• BE POSITIVE!!!

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• Have a go yourself
• In pairs one person is the coach, one person
  is the mentor
• Create a mentoring agreement
• Agree and prioritise needs, goals and targets
• Create a coach profile
• Discuss learning styles
• What mentoring situations have you agreed upon???

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Questions and discussion?