July 5, 2024 • 13 mins
In episode 4 of the 'Coach Education is Broken' series, titled 'Fixing the Leaky Bucket,' I delve into the systemic and mindset shifts required to change and modernise the way that the sport sector develops it's frontline workforce. I call for better insight and data collection to inform decision making into coach education and I challenge the isector's over emphasis on recruiting new coaches instead of focussing on how we support and retain the skilled practitioners that we already have.
01:50 - The Problem with Coach Education insights
02:44 - Understanding Coach Supply and Demand
07:00 - Retention Challenges in Coaching
08:55 - Shifting Focus to Retention and Support
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-talent-equation-podcast--2186775/support.
Ready to explore these ideas further? Join The Guild of Ecological Explorers – a community of practitioners committed to deepening their understanding of ecological dynamics and constraints-led approaches. Head to www.thetalentequation.co.uk and click the 'Join a Learning Group' button to become part of this transformative conversation
01:50 - The Problem with Coach Education insights
02:44 - Understanding Coach Supply and Demand
07:00 - Retention Challenges in Coaching
08:55 - Shifting Focus to Retention and Support
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-talent-equation-podcast--2186775/support.
Ready to explore these ideas further? Join The Guild of Ecological Explorers – a community of practitioners committed to deepening their understanding of ecological dynamics and constraints-led approaches. Head to www.thetalentequation.co.uk and click the 'Join a Learning Group' button to become part of this transformative conversation
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Good morning. This is a bitmore like it, isn't it. Some
has arrived forgot the foft shell onthe little press. But we've had a
few days of quite nice weather.Good and Nick sending July anyway. Yeah,
(00:22):
So dog Walker Diary episode full ofthe coach Education is Broken series.
This one is called fixing the LeakyBucket. In this whole series, I'm
in the process of, I guessdescribing a series of I calling them system
(00:45):
shift. So on the one hand, we've got to obviously make a shift
in the word of system educating systemthat we're part of. And also we
design and create, you know,whether that's locally or nationally or regionally or
brew and from a policy standpoint aswell, about how we allocate resources towards
(01:07):
this. So we call for asystem shift. But also that requires a
mindset shift. It requires a changeof thinking. So the system shifts are
as much about changing the way wethink about coach development and at the same
time using that change of thinking forus to then begin to design systems and
(01:32):
structures and things like that accordingly.And some of that might be to not
have things in such a systemic way, but we'll talk about that in future
episodes. So when we're talking aboutthis notion of fixing the leaky buckets,
one of the problems in coach educationis and this is really shown across the
(01:55):
board well. First and foremost,generally speaking, the data that people hold
that is held on coaches and theiractivities is really quite poor as a general
rule, And it's a generalization,and I'm always generalizing in these videos because
it's obviously pockets and good practice everywhere. Book in general, across the industry,
(02:19):
data is sell is quite poor.And one of the results of having
that data is that we, forexample, don't know how many coaches are
needed for any given situational role.Labor market analysis doesn't really provide organizations that
are put in resources into the educationand development and training of coaches, so
you don't know whether supplies meeting demands. So for example, you know,
(02:44):
people will say, oh, weneed three thousand new coaches. Why because
you know, we want to greatparticipation and we want to do these sorts
of things. But the problem you'vegot is that you don't know how many
coaches are active right now and howmany hours they're doing. So very rarely
do people make the connection and thinkactually, what are our existing coaches currently
doing. How many hours are theydoing? How many hours could they be
(03:05):
doing? Like are they maxed ordo they want to be doing more?
Could they be doing more if giventhe opportunity to. Likewise, very often
we're using very broad and general descriptionsof coaches, So we need X number
of coaches at from level one oractivator or whatever it might be. But
actually we need to be more sophisticatedthan that. As I've talked about in
(03:25):
previous episodes, you need to beable to answer the question of how many
coaches do I have that are appropriatelydeveloped and trained and resourced and professionally recognized,
that are able to work with people, for example, like young people
with moderate learning difficulties aspurgers autism ina range of different domains, maybe talent
(03:49):
development or club or a recreational space, or in an area of deprivation or
something along those lines. We don'thave that sophistication, and we don't have
an understanding of the kind of trainingand experiences that coaches have, because again,
a coach who's got experience of workingwith those audiences is as good in
(04:09):
some ways as a coach who's beentrained because being trained is no guarantee of
delivery and quality. Just because you'vebeen on a course doesn't mean you're any
good. So people's experiences could befactored into that. So could we gather
data around the experiences of our coachesand what they're capable of doing, so
(04:31):
that we understand a little bit moreabout what our workforce looks like and what
it is capable of doing Pretty challenging, pretty difficult, but not beyond our
capabilities. So why is that important? What am I talking about data?
Well, if you've got a betterunderstanding of what you work force looks like
and what it's capable of, youcan then be much more sophisticated and targeted
(04:56):
about the ways in which you redswell the ways in which you retrain your
to We need the changing demands ofsex and the problem without having that information
is what we've generally done is gone. We just need more. Are the
(05:18):
drivers of that? Well, oneis there's a demand you know, so
eat X number of people will presentto whoever the training provider is saying I
want to do a books, andwe take that demand and go, okay,
we'll take you on brilliant and wetrain these people and if they go,
(05:41):
they do whatever they do. Now, generally speaking, the fact there
is a demand means somebody wants tocoax, and generally speaking, you assume
that they've got somebody to coach,not always what you call badge collectors,
who you know, just the courseso that they can use it for a
future career and make sure that they'reyou know, they seem really employable.
But generally speaking, you know,somebody who wants to do a course wants
to do so for a reason.Not always and likewise, but also the
(06:08):
fact that somebody wants to do acourse necessarily means that that's kind of the
sort of individual that we need todevelop for a specific purpose. We don't
know that that's necessarily the case.So what we might end up doing it
just having the same person from thesame background, with the same sorts of
outlooks, So this, that andthe other coming to us because they're working
(06:29):
within the environments that we tend towork in, and then we just get
a perpetuation of the same level ofskills. It doesn't really help us opening
up the doors to coaching and bringinga broader range of people into the world
coaching to help us engage. Sowhat we end up in a situation of
doing is we end up with peoplecoming to us and we say yes,
and we have a demand. Soif we go, we just keep churning
it and churning it out. Sowhat we're not looking at is what are
the retention rates? And what we'reseeing when you start to see organizations that
(06:54):
have got improved data, have improvedanalytics on their coaching work course, is
that we see a massive drop.So people come, they get trained,
they coach for a period of time, is there's lines, then they stop
being more coughing. The question aboutwhy people are stopping it was down to
a range of reasons. Some ofthe obvious ones like my parents. I
(07:15):
got involved because of my children.My children no longer involved, so I've
stopped doing it. That's obvious.But equally you get a lot of people
saying they are disillusion with it.It's they're not it doesn't excite them anymore,
or they're finding it hard, orthey're finding it a challenged or they're
not supported, or they've not beengiven the resources to be able to help
(07:35):
them out, and so all ofthose things make a massive difference. All
those things make a massive impact onour ability or their abilities to identify how
many coaches with going a need forany specific role of specific purpose. So
what we end up doing is weworry. We keep recruiting, thinking that
(08:00):
going to solve the problem. Butwhat we're not doing is we're not recruiting
the people with the skills for theroles like that, the experienced people.
We're recruiting rookies for bringing new peoplein all the time. And that's fine,
but basically then you've just got rookiescoaching rookies constantly. That the shift
in thinking needs to move away fromthe idea of just continuously topping up our
(08:24):
bucket to fixing the leaks. Sowe need to shift away from thinking,
I just get new coaches, becauseany coach is as good as any coach
as long as I've got a warmbody to deliver a session, that's good.
I've tick my box and i canrun my activities. If we're going
towards the more quality assured approach anda more professionally recognized approach, then what
(08:45):
we need to do, if youmuch more sophisticated, what we need to
do is move towards thinking about howdo we keep our best people. How
do we ensure that our most skilledand experienced people are deployees with those with
the greatest needs. How do wemake sure that we don't allow a skills
drain to happen just because we aretotally focused on recruitment and bringing new people
(09:11):
in. It's what happens a lotof the time in different sort of retail
sectors. If you're an existing customer, there's no deals for you, you
feel like really marginalized and like they'rejust being taken advantage of. And it's
very similar for a lot of coaches. They feel like they're just being used
for their or they're not being giventhe support they need, They're not given
the resources they need, they're notgiven the kind of experiences that they might
(09:33):
want to get. So the callreally is to shift our thinking towards when
we've got people who've been within ourworld for a while and they're experienced,
and they've developed, and they're committed, and they're really providing great experiences,
we've got to do our level bestto think about not letting them just decide
to leave because they get disillusioned becausethere's no support. We've got to place
(09:58):
much much more emphasis on retaining ourskilled workforce. Now, think about this
like any other industry, Like ifyou were running a major company and you
had a sales force that was outthere delivering your product to the community,
and in our case, our productis a service in the form of physical
activity experiences. If you had aworkforce doing those kinds of thing, and
(10:22):
every time you put effort and energyand training and support into individuals to get
them to a point where they're reallygood, you' thener to take your eye
off the ball and just bring innew continuously, and you basically just lose
great skilled individuals and have to tryand replace them with brand new rookies.
That's not a good business model.By the way, it happens everywhere.
(10:43):
This is not unique to spot therelots. I think it was Henry Ford
who famously said he was asked aquestion by somebody on his boarder who said,
what if we train our people andthey leave? And Henry Ford said,
you're looking at it the wrong wayif we don't train our people and
they stay. And so he's kindof putting things to this fact that we
(11:07):
as in this people development world,we need to be much more human in
the way we approach this, thinkabout the people in our workforce and their
needs and work out the best wayswe have to support them. And I
promise you it can be in thesmallest thing. It can be getting a
personalized email from a head coach sayingyou're doing a great job and we value
(11:31):
you. It could be a videofrom someone like that. It could be
a conference that's organized and because you'rean experienced coach and you're credited and it's
shown that you're part of your CPD, you get that at a significant discount.
You know. It could be gettingyou know, kind of unique content
(11:52):
that's only you, as an experiencedindividual, benefits from. You know.
So at the moment, people whoare kind of to work considered to be
kind of like committed, dedicated advancedcoaches. The only way they're they're to
communicate because they've been on a course, an Advanced Coach course or something like
that, and then they become partof this community. What are all the
other advanced coaches who are out therewho are probably just as skilled, just
(12:15):
haven't done the course because it didn'texist at the time when they did.
Theirs doesn't mean any they're not skilled, but they're not recognized and that's you
know, and so those people justbegin to start to fritter away. And
what's happening to me, I'll behonest with you, you know, I'm
finding it increasingly difficult, partly becauseof different roles. I've got all that
sort of stuff. Anyway, that'sthe system ship. Let's stop constantly filling
(12:37):
up this bucket that's basically just gotgot water pouring out the bottom. Let's
fix the leaks with better support andhelp people to understand a little bit more
about you know, their value andhow much we value them. And in
so doing, and this can beby the way, this could be done
locally as well, and in sodoing, let's retain quality and grow sort
(13:05):
of physical activity together because we've gotpeople who are really well supported supporting other
people by providing really great experiences andhelping them develop. There you go well,
as always, if you're interested inany of this, then please share
this, you know, if youcan basically share this to people or so
that they can watch the video orlisten to the podcast. Definitely to the
(13:28):
point is really good the audio version, begin a conversation. Reach out to
me if I can help or providesome support or guidance. Then I'm more
than happy to a couple of peoplealready have and that's great. And then
the other thing to say as wellis that if you can subscribe, that's
great that Brillian, because that helpsit grow. So either this channel,
YouTube one or on the audio helpswith the growth rony. So anyway,
(13:50):
there you go, see you forepisode five.
Good morning. This is a bitmore like it, isn't it. Some
has arrived forgot the foft shell onthe little press. But we've had a
few days of quite nice weather.Good and Nick sending July anyway. Yeah,
(00:22):
So dog Walker Diary episode full ofthe coach Education is Broken series.
This one is called fixing the LeakyBucket. In this whole series, I'm
in the process of, I guessdescribing a series of I calling them system
(00:45):
shift. So on the one hand, we've got to obviously make a shift
in the word of system educating systemthat we're part of. And also we
design and create, you know,whether that's locally or nationally or regionally or
brew and from a policy standpoint aswell, about how we allocate resources towards
(01:07):
this. So we call for asystem shift. But also that requires a
mindset shift. It requires a changeof thinking. So the system shifts are
as much about changing the way wethink about coach development and at the same
time using that change of thinking forus to then begin to design systems and
(01:32):
structures and things like that accordingly.And some of that might be to not
have things in such a systemic way, but we'll talk about that in future
episodes. So when we're talking aboutthis notion of fixing the leaky buckets,
one of the problems in coach educationis and this is really shown across the
(01:55):
board well. First and foremost,generally speaking, the data that people hold
that is held on coaches and theiractivities is really quite poor as a general
rule, And it's a generalization,and I'm always generalizing in these videos because
it's obviously pockets and good practice everywhere. Book in general, across the industry,
(02:19):
data is sell is quite poor.And one of the results of having
that data is that we, forexample, don't know how many coaches are
needed for any given situational role.Labor market analysis doesn't really provide organizations that
are put in resources into the educationand development and training of coaches, so
you don't know whether supplies meeting demands. So for example, you know,
(02:44):
people will say, oh, weneed three thousand new coaches. Why because
you know, we want to greatparticipation and we want to do these sorts
of things. But the problem you'vegot is that you don't know how many
coaches are active right now and howmany hours they're doing. So very rarely
do people make the connection and thinkactually, what are our existing coaches currently
doing. How many hours are theydoing? How many hours could they be
(03:05):
doing? Like are they maxed ordo they want to be doing more?
Could they be doing more if giventhe opportunity to. Likewise, very often
we're using very broad and general descriptionsof coaches, So we need X number
of coaches at from level one oractivator or whatever it might be. But
actually we need to be more sophisticatedthan that. As I've talked about in
(03:25):
previous episodes, you need to beable to answer the question of how many
coaches do I have that are appropriatelydeveloped and trained and resourced and professionally recognized,
that are able to work with people, for example, like young people
with moderate learning difficulties aspurgers autism ina range of different domains, maybe talent
(03:49):
development or club or a recreational space, or in an area of deprivation or
something along those lines. We don'thave that sophistication, and we don't have
an understanding of the kind of trainingand experiences that coaches have, because again,
a coach who's got experience of workingwith those audiences is as good in
(04:09):
some ways as a coach who's beentrained because being trained is no guarantee of
delivery and quality. Just because you'vebeen on a course doesn't mean you're any
good. So people's experiences could befactored into that. So could we gather
data around the experiences of our coachesand what they're capable of doing, so
(04:31):
that we understand a little bit moreabout what our workforce looks like and what
it is capable of doing Pretty challenging, pretty difficult, but not beyond our
capabilities. So why is that important? What am I talking about data?
Well, if you've got a betterunderstanding of what you work force looks like
and what it's capable of, youcan then be much more sophisticated and targeted
(04:56):
about the ways in which you redswell the ways in which you retrain your
to We need the changing demands ofsex and the problem without having that information
is what we've generally done is gone. We just need more. Are the
(05:18):
drivers of that? Well, oneis there's a demand you know, so
eat X number of people will presentto whoever the training provider is saying I
want to do a books, andwe take that demand and go, okay,
we'll take you on brilliant and wetrain these people and if they go,
(05:41):
they do whatever they do. Now, generally speaking, the fact there
is a demand means somebody wants tocoax, and generally speaking, you assume
that they've got somebody to coach,not always what you call badge collectors,
who you know, just the courseso that they can use it for a
future career and make sure that they'reyou know, they seem really employable.
But generally speaking, you know,somebody who wants to do a course wants
to do so for a reason.Not always and likewise, but also the
(06:08):
fact that somebody wants to do acourse necessarily means that that's kind of the
sort of individual that we need todevelop for a specific purpose. We don't
know that that's necessarily the case.So what we might end up doing it
just having the same person from thesame background, with the same sorts of
outlooks, So this, that andthe other coming to us because they're working
(06:29):
within the environments that we tend towork in, and then we just get
a perpetuation of the same level ofskills. It doesn't really help us opening
up the doors to coaching and bringinga broader range of people into the world
coaching to help us engage. Sowhat we end up in a situation of
doing is we end up with peoplecoming to us and we say yes,
and we have a demand. Soif we go, we just keep churning
it and churning it out. Sowhat we're not looking at is what are
the retention rates? And what we'reseeing when you start to see organizations that
(06:54):
have got improved data, have improvedanalytics on their coaching work course, is
that we see a massive drop.So people come, they get trained,
they coach for a period of time, is there's lines, then they stop
being more coughing. The question aboutwhy people are stopping it was down to
a range of reasons. Some ofthe obvious ones like my parents. I
(07:15):
got involved because of my children.My children no longer involved, so I've
stopped doing it. That's obvious.But equally you get a lot of people
saying they are disillusion with it.It's they're not it doesn't excite them anymore,
or they're finding it hard, orthey're finding it a challenged or they're
not supported, or they've not beengiven the resources to be able to help
(07:35):
them out, and so all ofthose things make a massive difference. All
those things make a massive impact onour ability or their abilities to identify how
many coaches with going a need forany specific role of specific purpose. So
what we end up doing is weworry. We keep recruiting, thinking that
(08:00):
going to solve the problem. Butwhat we're not doing is we're not recruiting
the people with the skills for theroles like that, the experienced people.
We're recruiting rookies for bringing new peoplein all the time. And that's fine,
but basically then you've just got rookiescoaching rookies constantly. That the shift
in thinking needs to move away fromthe idea of just continuously topping up our
(08:24):
bucket to fixing the leaks. Sowe need to shift away from thinking,
I just get new coaches, becauseany coach is as good as any coach
as long as I've got a warmbody to deliver a session, that's good.
I've tick my box and i canrun my activities. If we're going
towards the more quality assured approach anda more professionally recognized approach, then what
(08:45):
we need to do, if youmuch more sophisticated, what we need to
do is move towards thinking about howdo we keep our best people. How
do we ensure that our most skilledand experienced people are deployees with those with
the greatest needs. How do wemake sure that we don't allow a skills
drain to happen just because we aretotally focused on recruitment and bringing new people
(09:11):
in. It's what happens a lotof the time in different sort of retail
sectors. If you're an existing customer, there's no deals for you, you
feel like really marginalized and like they'rejust being taken advantage of. And it's
very similar for a lot of coaches. They feel like they're just being used
for their or they're not being giventhe support they need, They're not given
the resources they need, they're notgiven the kind of experiences that they might
(09:33):
want to get. So the callreally is to shift our thinking towards when
we've got people who've been within ourworld for a while and they're experienced,
and they've developed, and they're committed, and they're really providing great experiences,
we've got to do our level bestto think about not letting them just decide
to leave because they get disillusioned becausethere's no support. We've got to place
(09:58):
much much more emphasis on retaining ourskilled workforce. Now, think about this
like any other industry, Like ifyou were running a major company and you
had a sales force that was outthere delivering your product to the community,
and in our case, our productis a service in the form of physical
activity experiences. If you had aworkforce doing those kinds of thing, and
(10:22):
every time you put effort and energyand training and support into individuals to get
them to a point where they're reallygood, you' thener to take your eye
off the ball and just bring innew continuously, and you basically just lose
great skilled individuals and have to tryand replace them with brand new rookies.
That's not a good business model.By the way, it happens everywhere.
(10:43):
This is not unique to spot therelots. I think it was Henry Ford
who famously said he was asked aquestion by somebody on his boarder who said,
what if we train our people andthey leave? And Henry Ford said,
you're looking at it the wrong wayif we don't train our people and
they stay. And so he's kindof putting things to this fact that we
(11:07):
as in this people development world,we need to be much more human in
the way we approach this, thinkabout the people in our workforce and their
needs and work out the best wayswe have to support them. And I
promise you it can be in thesmallest thing. It can be getting a
personalized email from a head coach sayingyou're doing a great job and we value
(11:31):
you. It could be a videofrom someone like that. It could be
a conference that's organized and because you'rean experienced coach and you're credited and it's
shown that you're part of your CPD, you get that at a significant discount.
You know. It could be gettingyou know, kind of unique content
(11:52):
that's only you, as an experiencedindividual, benefits from. You know.
So at the moment, people whoare kind of to work considered to be
kind of like committed, dedicated advancedcoaches. The only way they're they're to
communicate because they've been on a course, an Advanced Coach course or something like
that, and then they become partof this community. What are all the
other advanced coaches who are out therewho are probably just as skilled, just
(12:15):
haven't done the course because it didn'texist at the time when they did.
Theirs doesn't mean any they're not skilled, but they're not recognized and that's you
know, and so those people justbegin to start to fritter away. And
what's happening to me, I'll behonest with you, you know, I'm
finding it increasingly difficult, partly becauseof different roles. I've got all that
sort of stuff. Anyway, that'sthe system ship. Let's stop constantly filling
(12:37):
up this bucket that's basically just gotgot water pouring out the bottom. Let's
fix the leaks with better support andhelp people to understand a little bit more
about you know, their value andhow much we value them. And in
so doing, and this can beby the way, this could be done
locally as well, and in sodoing, let's retain quality and grow sort
(13:05):
of physical activity together because we've gotpeople who are really well supported supporting other
people by providing really great experiences andhelping them develop. There you go well,
as always, if you're interested inany of this, then please share
this, you know, if youcan basically share this to people or so
that they can watch the video orlisten to the podcast. Definitely to the
(13:28):
point is really good the audio version, begin a conversation. Reach out to
me if I can help or providesome support or guidance. Then I'm more
than happy to a couple of peoplealready have and that's great. And then
the other thing to say as wellis that if you can subscribe, that's
great that Brillian, because that helpsit grow. So either this channel,
YouTube one or on the audio helpswith the growth rony. So anyway,
(13:50):
there you go, see you forepisode five.
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