Last Saturday Yorkshire Squash led the way to empowering female coaches. Delivered by a specialist training company, Sport and Beyond, the 3 hour workshop titled ‘Confidence – Building it, Communicating it’ was held in Hull in conjunction with Allam British Open.
The Squash Girls Can project recognises the need for more female role models and coaches. One of the reasons given for a lack of female coaches is confidence so driving confidence in females is a significant part of the solution.
The course started with a focus on self awareness. Each coach was asked to complete a Thomas PPA assessment prior to the programme (a simple, easy to use assessment which takes about 8-10 minutes to complete online and is carried out by over 1.5 million individuals per annum). Using the DISC framework it assesses the strengths at work of each coach. The assessments were really accurate and so individual.
Having established our strengths in the coaching arena we then sought to consider how this affects our behaviour with our players and with other coaches. Firstly we ran a competition in groups and then we considered different coaching scenarios, and the effect on our players and other coaches.
Looking at how to embed these strengths we considered a growth mindset approach to our coaching – having the confidence to try new ideas, maybe fail at times but learning from this set back in order to improve.
The final session looked at communication skills – can you believe that talking means less than our body language and the tone we use? Try it and you can see the result.
Overall everyone enjoyed the day.
Here are some comments:
“Really enjoyed the morning and it certainly made me more aware of myself. I feel I now need to get my thoughts more in order so I can use it to improve myself as a coach practically. Thanks so much for the opportunity and guidance”
“Extremely interesting content. Thought provoking. Delivered in a very supportive and fun atmosphere. Thank you – a well worthwhile morning”
Sport and Beyond deliver workshops in confidence and self awareness to a wide range of organisations throughout business, sport and education. They work with individuals and teams, with a focus throughout on driving high performance. Their female coaches course can be delivered nationally and internationally depending on your needs.
For more information contact nickyh@sportandbeyond.co.uk
