Reflections on Reflecting: And then I started thinking...

Six months ago, I thought I couldn’t possibly cram anything else into a day.  I was working full time, lecturing part-time, coaching and was half-way through a year long full time MSc in Sport Coaching.  And somewhere in there I was attempting to not be too much of a bad wife and mum of three little ones…

And then we moved house… meaning that three days a week I was going to spend anywhere from 4-6 hours driving to see students for my work. 

The first few days in the car I was incredibly grumpy, thinking about all the things I could be doing with my time instead of driving.  Thinking about the three assessments and the dissertation I had left to do for my Masters….

…but then I started thinking. A lot. 

This enforced time of doing nothing was actually an incredible opportunity to spend some real time reflecting on the previous six months; a six months packed with new learnings, lots of reading, teaching, experimenting with new ideas in my coaching, reflection in action and quickly iterating strategies and processes to improve my coaching.  But it had all happened at 100mph!

During these six intense months of learning and experimenting with ideas in practice, I had amassed a huge number of experiences to draw upon and a multitude of theories and concepts to help me begin to make real sense of it all.  But up until now, even reflection had been happening at an intense pace. 

This time of being unable to ‘do things’ suddenly created an incredibly rich opportunity for reflection: hours alone with just my thoughts – a slightly unnerving situation at first…especially when the first thing I was trying to get my head round was why I did things the way I did.

Having a greater understanding of myself brought clarity to why I coached in a certain way; I began to notice how parts of my personality constrained my coaching, and the potential negative impact on players as a result. 

I realised that, being quite introverted, at the start and end of sessions I typically busied myself with sorting equipment – anything so that I didn’t have to make small talk with players! Not because I didn’t want to, but because it didn’t come naturally and put me out of my comfort zone.  Yet a key learning from my MSc was about the importance of knowing your players and building positive coach-player relationships; the start and end of sessions was an ideal time to begin this process.

By recognising this was happening meant that I could start to create strategies to do something about it.  Previously I had been oblivious to it and the impact it had in my coaching.

I began to uncover biases in my coaching that I never even considered were biases, but again, strongly influenced how and what I coached, and what I valued in players. 

For example, as a player, although I was never the most skilful, I was always the fittest on every team I played for, at every level.  Fitness was something I felt I had complete control over – it was a choice and was all about making the effort to be fit.  I was unaware that as a coach, I was drawn to players who also valued fitness, and perhaps was less appreciative of players who didn’t, but who brought other important qualities to the team.

So when thinking about how best to spend your time, my advice is to start experimenting and iterate quickly.  Make it an intense and furious time of action.  And then stop.  Spend time reflecting just as intensely to break down what happened and what might have influenced this, and what this means for you moving forward.

Some questions that I’ve found helpful:

      ·      What was I actually trying to achieve?  Get clarity on this.
·      Why did that work? Or, why didn’t it work? Or, why did it work for some players and not others?
·      What theories and concepts are potentially at play?
·      Did it work?
·      How do I know if it worked?
·      Who decides if it worked?
·      Who did it work for? If it worked for me but not the players then did it actually work?
·      How can I use this learning? What does it actually mean for my coaching?