Let’s look at an example: you coach a male U14 rugby team at the local sports club. What does this tell us? That they will all be boys, attend school (or education), live relatively locally to the club and presumably enjoy rugby. These basic generalisations can help you first connect with and understand the people you now need to find out more about.
There are so many things that can help you to engage with the individuals that you coach. Let’s start to consider these.
Consider how you can gain information about the people you coach:
- Public traits are shared openly by the person and include basic observations that reveal something about the person.
- Personal traits are those characteristics that require deeper and purposeful conversations to ‘open the door’ and reveal the insight. These are things you learn by asking great open questions, listening carefully and observing responses in conversations, as well as through interactions with others and their interests.
- Psychological traits emerge over time as you engage with the individual and begin to connect. You may have heard the term psychological safety; when a person feels safe enough within the environment with others that they can be themselves and open up. This will include attitudes, how they see themselves, how they see and view others and deeper thoughts (often genuine, rather than surface level). These come to light when they disclose/share things with you.
Now that you have some understanding, you can start to build a deeper picture and consider how this influences their decisions, choices, motivations and how they view the world.
Now you can ask yourself:
The answers to these questions can be sought over time, as you connect and work with the person. Its more than a quick-fire round and the opportunities to find these out, explore them further and discuss with evolve over time.
Build rapport through regular conversations, and by showing a genuine interest and ‘noticing’ during informal situations. Some of the ‘answers’ will come as you watch your participants in the session. For instance, consider what you may glean at ‘drop off.’ You could learn about how they travel and who drops them off at session, if applicable.
Similarly, in the session you can discover how they respond and act to challenges, different activities, grouping situations, providing you with the opportunity to do more of the things they respond well to.