Career Tips
for Young Coaches
BY
JOHN LEONARD
- Get
a mentor. Use the mentor. Learn from the Mentor, don’t try to
impress the Mentor with all you “know.”
- Learn
to sell your ideas. Go to the bookstore and buy a book on sales. What
you do all day is sell your ideas to parents, athletes and support
personnel. Learn to be good at it.
- Go
watch another coaches workout. A great coach if you know one. Any
coach if you don’t. You can learn and reflect on your own coaching
while watching anyone else coach. Sometimes good to watch coaches in
other sports (which are naturally inferior to swimming) do their thing
also.
- Have
someone video tape you for an entire workout. What do you look like?
What do you want to look like? Does your style match your words? Are
you someone you’d like to swim for?
- At
swim meets, ask permission to “listen in” while other more
experienced coaches talk to their athletes pre and post race. This is
one of the most crucial interactions in our sport. Learn to be a good
“meet coach.”
- Make
friends with your fellow coaches. The “opposition” is not “the
enemy.” You will know many of your fellow coaches for years. Make
them a support group for yourself, and be a supporter for them. Speak
well of each other. Encourage each other. Help each other. As a coach,
you are trying to get many children with low motivation, to do
difficult and challenging things. Make some of your fellow coaches.
- Don’t
lose any friends over swimmers changing teams. Swimmers do change
teams. Swimmers also drop out of swimming. Swimmers and their parents
can easily get the “grass is greener elsewhere” syndrome. Loyalty
is hard to come by in society today. Don’t take out your frustration
on the coach they go to… they are his problem now (and if they
change clubs very often, they are “a problem”) not yours. Be
thankful.
- Make
some lists of what you want to do to improve your coaching this month,
this season, this year, next season, etc. Do a plan for your personal
development… not goals of what you want to achieve, but plans on
what you want to improve.
- Listen
first, speak later. Listen first, speak later. Listen first, speak
later.
- “You
can get everything you want in life by helping enough other people get
what they want in life.” Zig Ziglar. Pick up any of his books or
tapes. They’ll help you more than any other coaching you’ll ever
get from anyone.
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