Thinking about Investing in Coach Development

Coach Education is hard.

Accessing the data about what to coach and how to coach it is difficult. There is technical data, which is generally the entry point. There is data about systems, tactics and drills. There is data related to science and medicine. There is data related to how to teach and how people learn. There is data related to the psychosocial development of the human beings that a coach is coaching. Some coaches spend their life collecting this data.

That is a noble pursuit and it makes you a good educator about coaching, not a good coach.

In organisations the role of most Coach Education frameworks is to turn this Data into Information. The DIKW paradigm describes this well.

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Coach Development is REALLY hard. Like, super super hard.

Having collected all this information as part of the education process, coaches need to understand the meaning of this contextual information. Organisations can help support this development but coaches also have to want to do it. It is really hard (see above), and it takes a long time. Like any learning, there will be moments of inspiration where things click and periods of time where nothing seems to help.

Investment

As sporting organisations turn their attention to 'Coach Development' as the latest thing (definitely no irony there) they need to be prepared to invest in coaches. If the organisations see coaches as a necessary evil, or, worse, an income stream, then those sports and organisations will die out. But if organisations see coach development as an investment, the sport will thrive. 

Coda

All the coaches I know who coach at the highest levels but didn't play at them, spent any moment they could reading, learning, talking, finding opportunities.