You+(+): #coachlearninginsport

I have an opportunity to meet some rugby union coaches on Sunday. (Not the ones in the slide above.)
It will be the final morning of an intensive four-day course. Some of them will have long journeys home ahead of them. I imagine all of them will have cognitive fatigue after three days of conversation, practical activities and classroom sessions.
I have been thinking about how to approach this session.
As with many of my presentations at the moment, I have flipped the presentation and shared it in advance … in case the coaches would like to access it when it is convenient for them.
I am using Google Slides for this presentation. I have speaker notes for each of the slides to indicate where my thoughts are taking me.
The theme of my talk is about personal learning journeys in coaching. In the title You+(+):

You refers to each coach’s autobiographical experience

+ refers to the qualifications they have been awarded

(+) refers to what each makes of the You+ on their learning journeys

I have a Pdf of the presentation here. The hyperlinks should work in the document to take you to two videos I might use on the day. Both are very short. Both are from 2012.
The first encapsulates some of my thoughts about my experience of playfulness and speaks to Roger Caillois’ concept of mimicry in play and games.

The second might be a good way to end. I think it facilitates a conversation about the role of a coach in supporting and creating cultural values. Clarity about values creates We and Us possibilities that might lead us into the magical space symbolised by (+).

There is delightful laughter at the end of the video.
I am hopeful that this is the essence of #coachlearninginsport … an intrinsic delight in trying to be someone who changes their life and the lives of those people they touch.
Perhaps the group might leave the room energised on Sunday. I am excited feeding forward to it as aspiring to Peter Dowrick’s sense of “being able to learn through observing successes they have not yet had”.

Photo Credit

This is Slide 5 in my presentation. These are my speaker notes about the compilation:

Rugby Coaching has emerged in my lifetime. I had the opportunity to meet some very special coaches in my formative years. Carwyn James was a tutor on my WRU coaching course. Ray Williams’ thinking gave me ideas about principles of play. Jim Greenwood took me to a completely different place to understand performance. Tony Gray helped me understand clarity of message. John Dawes helped me with the art of coaching … and then Pierre Villepreux disrupted everything!