The Coaching Team have worked hard to blend diversity and collaboration – two of the hallmarks of the new Coach Development Programmes – together.
The 2023 programmes leverage collaboration to improve both the diversity of performance coaches on the programmes and consequently diversity of thought – both inside the learning environment and in the community ‘think space’ that operates outside.
Giving an example of how collaboration complements efforts to diversify the coaching workforce, Tom explains that the Coaching Team and EEDI Manager facilitated several online sense-making sessions with sports – entitled 'Fostering Diversity through Collaboration’ – at which governing bodies were encouraged to share the challenges they are facing around diversity within their own domains and share any potential solutions.
“What came out of that process was that sports are after solutions, and quickly, around diversifying their workforce. We also discovered that although sports can really vary, the challenges they were facing were similar.
“Now we don’t have all the solutions, but we’re a few steps further down the path to knowing who a lot of these people are because of the mechanisms we have put in place. From our point of view, we’re making small changes that will lead to a big difference over time.”
UK Coaching’s Coach Developers and Programme and Pathway Managers will continue this collaborative approach by creating a space – “we’re calling it a think space” – for sports to come together to talk and connect, which UK Coaching can support and steer.