In coaching circles, there is a phrase that crops up time and time again. It is prevalent in handbooks, coach education courses and online learning platforms and is a favourite expression of coach developers:
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to coaching.”
Don’t mistake this for a banal coaching cliché. Its frequent use should not detract from its value or its truth. Coaching is a people business and people are complex.
People’s incentives for engaging in sport and physical activity are wider than the sky. Their lifestyles and backgrounds are equally diverse. And what’s more, people’s individual wants, needs, goals and interests are in a constant state of flux. They are adapted, modified, discarded and reborn at regular points throughout their journey.
With the coach’s role to nurture and inspire people to perform and improve in accordance with their ever-changing needs and impulses, it is imperative coaches make a concerted effort to get to know every person they interact with, to understand what drives them to want to come back week after week, so that they can respond appropriately.
And to do this, they must possess a toolkit of essential skills and behaviours that strengthen their versatility and thus their ability to flex and tackle any coaching challenge that comes their way.
The good news is that these indispensable qualities are transferable – meaning they can be applied to any setting.
To become the best coach that you can be, and to help the people you coach achieve their best, it is vital you sharpen each one. And here are some handy tips – an illustrative but not exhaustive list – that will help you do just that.
The golden nuggets of advice have been collated from conversations, interviews and tips posted by members of ConnectedCoaches, UK Coaching’s free-to-join online community for coaches of all sports and activities.