Coaching is a series of uncertain choices

Advice I wish I'd known sooner, Coach Education, Courtside Conversations, Practice

How can you ever be certain what you do will work?

Players have requirements & demands, that keep changing!

Have you learned the skill (art) of the ‘best guess’?

Planning is important but,

when the voice inside you head suggests something different what do you do?

The conversation that started it all

We spoke about those ‘in-the-moment’ coaching decisions

During an afternoon coffee with another coach, I asked if they found it challenging to select what to coach when working with a player.

Did they experience those ‘in-the-moment’ coaching decisions?

How much did they feel that any planning was a best ‘a guess’ (based on experience).

Choices during the session often feel like compromises between what they wanted to achieve (planned), and what the performer needed and was capable of in the session?

How did they cope with those ‘in-the-moment’ thoughts?

Yes, lots of questions about what is happended inside the mind of a coach when actually coaching

We chatted about listening to our inner ‘coach’s voice, the choices we were faced with

Choices before the session, choices during the session and also those instant, almost unplanned coaching actions.

Yes, we make unplanned choices and changes.

We both agreed that, whilst unplanned, these choices felt right, often normal, as we knew (hoped) that they had the effect we wanted.

I described these thoughts as an ongoing discussion (often mini-arguments) in my head. My inner coach voice can be quite loud sometimes

Ok, my coaching buddy didn’t see them as arguments; that was just me.

However, they did question where their ‘best guesses’ came from.

You will always have to leave some choices unused in your mind

Are you skilled at deciding which is the best of your ‘uncertain cchoices’ ?

We wanted this skill to be taught in coaching courses

The skill to plan and also to adapt with a ‘guess’, all because of a coaching ‘feeling’.

Who was helping coaches explore what concepts, strategies and thought processes to use?

What are the observations, triggers and player needs that cause coaches to make these choices and changes?

The sad thing was that neither of us had ever been taught or introduced to this concept on an official Coach education qualification. We both agreed that we were always comparing one coaching option or another in our minds before acting.

So why was it not part of a qualification?