WG Coaching

There is no one thing that you can do which will guarantee success: no single change which, in isolation will create and sustain a winning culture in high performance sport.

There are however a combination of things that you can do to increase the likelihood of success: “The Culture Combination”: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation.

Here’s how it goes.

Your club has had another poor season.

People looking for answers come up with a lot of ideas on how to improve next year.

The management team determine that what the Club needs is a new high performance facility: new stadium, new meeting rooms, new computer lab, new medical facilities, a new gym and of course the obligatory new recovery facility.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

This is the Facility Fallacy.

We’ve all had “The” Talk. You know the one. The one where mum or dad or a coach or a teacher or a religious leader or a good friend looked you in the eye and told you the secret to success. Do you remember “the” talk?
It went something like this didn’t it? “You know (insert your name here). You could really be something special. If you find that one thing that you love to do and that you are passionate about, and if you believe in yourself and work hard and never give up and if you give all you have to relentlessly pursuing your dreams, nothing is impossible for you”. Remember “that” talk? Some people get “the” talk when they are just kids. Others hear it when they are teenagers. Some get to hear “the” talk as young adults while others don’t hear it until they are in their middle age. And most people get “the” talk over and over and over and over again throughout their lives as they move through school, sport, university and employment.

It is estimated that there were about ten million books written and published in the world in the last year. It is also estimated, that of those ten million books published, around 9,999,000 were on the topic of leadership. The rest were diet books, sporting biographies and Harry Potter. And just check out some of

Quick.

Write down your own list of the top ten skills of quality coaching. What does it look like? Something like this?

1. Communication skills;
2. Passion;
3. Empathy with athletes;
4. The ability to engage with athletes and inspire athletes to fully engage with the program;
5. Enthusiasm;
6. Technical knowledge;
7. An understanding of the relevant principles of sports science and sports medicine;
8. Energy;
9. Curiosity (which inspires a passion for learning);
10. A commitment to continuous improvement and accelerated learning.

You could add hundreds of skills to this list: experience, drive, initiative, the will to win, attention to detail, commitment, vision, determination, a strong work ethic…………there are as many desirable coaching skills as there are coaches.

But, in this century, there is one coaching skill to rule them all – creativity: creative coaching.

The question is…...can you teach coaches to be creative?

Is it just me or does it seem like every coach involved in rugby league and rugby union has the same game plan?

With all the money spent on coaching, analysis, technology, video, training programs, performance enhancement, player development, facilities, equipment, ball technology, strength training, conditioning, wrestling, leadership development, boots, nutrition, psychology, protein supplements etc etc you would think that rugby league and rugby union would be havens for innovation, creativity and genius.

So why does it seem like every team, every coach and every player is reading from the same play book when it comes to game plans?