Monthly Archives: October 2012

The Four Critical Qualities a Youth Coach Must ...

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By guest blogger: Nick Bolton, Smart School founder

The House of 4 Qualities

Whilst there are a plethora of skills and qualities that a youth coach must have, we believe there are four key qualities that a youth coach absolutely must have.

These are:

  • Respect
  • Openness
  • Curiosity
  • Tenacity

And for us, it all starts with…

Respect

It seemed to us that one of the key things young people need to feel from the coach is respect.

And of course we don’t mean a deferential respect but rather an authentic respect for the person.  The coach needs to respect that young person as a human being capable of more yet good enough as they are.  Time and again research has shown that when prejudices and assumptions are held by professionals working with young people, these unconsciously affect the very work that professional does.

So a youth coach needs to be able to authentically and congruently respect the young person as a whole person.  This doesn’t mean they accept any kind of behaviour or endorse any kind of belief.  It does mean that they hold that young person in what is often known as unconditional positive regard as a human being.

This respect shows itself in many ways.  For instance, it leads to an attitude of being non-judgemental.  Being non-judgemental doesn’t mean accepting anything and everything – it means holding the young person as the final judge of their own life and you as the creator of space to explore this.  After all, any judgement you make is simply a reflection of your own set of standards.

Respect also leads to a belief in that young person’s ability to change, to grow, to adapt and try new things.  It means that as a coach we allow the young person to make mistakes and to see this as merely part of the journey.

Respect is about trusting the young person as a person to develop.  It brings with it warmth, rapport, trust, a platform for collaboration, the right and ability to challenge and it brings friendship.

Curiosity

If respect is the foundations of youth coaching, then curiosity is how the house is built.  Curiosity is not unwanted nosiness but an enriching process of uncovering.

And what gets uncovered gets changed.

So curiosity allows for the coach to ask the questions that lead the young person to a new view of themselves or of others.  It allows for the questions that bring out issues that are being ignored, trivialised or avoided.  Conversely, curiosity brings out the questions that bring new perspectives to drama, catastrophe and powerlessness to show that the young person has the capacity to cope or even that they are seeing things as worse than they are.

Curiosity is infectious!  It spreads to the young person and makes them question why, when, who, where, which and how.  When the young person gets curious about themselves and the world, you know that you’re bringing around lasting change.

Without curiosity, coaching is process driven.  It is grey and dead.  Curiosity breathes life into the questions and allows them to be felt for what they are – a genuine unfeigned interest in the wellbeing and growth of the young person.

From curiosity come those skills that make coaching work: powerful questions, open-mindedness, a “what if” attitude, the ability to learn from mistakes, having more options, digging beneath the obvious and not accepting the unconsidered easy cop-outs.

Openness

If respect is the foundation and curiosity the way the house is built, then openness is the space you create to live in.

Young people can smell inauthenticity!  But they can equally feel and fully respond to openness.  And by the way, the same goes for adults!  We neither gain this skill nor lose it at age 18.  Perhaps some people just forget it!

As a result, openness is a core quality that leads to a rich experience for both the coach and the young person.

How does this play out in practice?  One of Robert’s important moments in coaching is when he tells something about himself.  Of course, technically we call that self-disclosure!  But really it’s just being open. It’s trusting the young person to deal with who you really are, just as you will deal with who they really are.

It’s being able to say, “I’m stuck right now with this coaching?  How about you?”

Such openness brings about a genuine space for collaboration to take place.  The young person feels mature enough and trusted enough to share in the adult world.  This is a growth activity, a catalyst for change.

Openness bring with it trust, humour, honesty, candidness and along with them the most authentic space possible for that young person to explore their own world.

Tenacity and commitment

We now have the foundations, the way of building and the space to live in and so, to continue this now tortuous metaphor, tenacity is the cement that holds it together in the face of a storm.

One thing we saw quickly with the adult-trained coaches who worked with young people was how frustrated they got by the seeming careless attitude of the young people.  And although they held on and kept turning up to the sessions, I could tell that they had lost patience.

But as a youth coach, you have to hold that space for the young person despite their seeming indifference.  There can be many reasons for the young person’s “frustrating” behaviour we can’t explore these comprehensively here.

However, understanding that many young people have been through tough experiences should give us pause to reflect on what is happening for them.  Perhaps they are testing the coach’s commitment having been let down by adults before.  Or perhaps they don’t believe in themselves enough to think coaching matters.  The reasons are many but the need for tenacity supreme.

That’s when the youth coach is needed most.  That’s when the coach’s mettle is tested and when they have to prove themselves.

Tenacity is that commitment to be there, to hold on, to allow that young person not to think, “I knew all along that coaching was a waste of time.”

From tenacity and commitment come those qualities without which the coaching would fall apart: reliability, consistency, trustworthiness, holding to account, steadfastness and, simply, being there.

It’s a quality often undervalued yet its impact cannot be valued highly enough.

Summary

Now of course it goes without saying, though I’ll say it, that these four qualities do not comprise all of youth coaching.  But without them, youth coaching is nothing.

All the skills of asking questions, giving feedback, understanding the young person’s model of the world, having sensitivity to the right moment to challenge – none of these can exist without the four qualities of Respect, Curiosity, Openness and Tenacity.

Circle of Excellence – Confidence

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The other night I was working with a group of mentors, exploring how they can best equip themselves for working with young people. The mentors are new to mentoring and many of them have not worked with young people in this way before.

As we spent the evening exploring tools, exercises and games, that they can use when working with the young people, someone asked about their own confidence and how that could be developed.

You see the work that the mentors will be doing is around developing the young peoples confidence, self efficacy and employability. And as a new mentor, confidence is something that they wanted to explore for themselves.

So we had a look at the circle of excellence – confidence. I know that you maybe familiar with this, or you may have your own way of using or exploring it, and here is how we went about it.

Firstly draw a big circle on the flip chart, with the title of the excellence you want to achieve, in our case it was confidence. The write all the words that relate to confidence for you, what confidence would look like, sound like and feel like.

Once you have your words in the circle, then remember times when you felt like, looked, like, sounded like that. So if for you confidence looks like someone standing upright, standing tall, then remember a time when you were standing tall. You might want to write that into your circle or just hold onto the memory.

Go through all of the words until you have a clear strong memory for them, and if you don’t have a memory, just make one up :-) . Then place the paper on the floor and step onto it, taking in all those memories, feelings, sounds, and sights. Filling yourself with all the elements of confidence.

When practicing this, we were able to see the difference in the mentor as they stood on their paper, it was like instant confidence, not only could we see it, but the mentor could feel it too. This can then be anchored for later use.

As we continued to discuss how we could use it ourselves, we began to talk about how we could enable young people to use it. Not only with words, but also by adding their own images from the internet or of their own creation. By recording music as well as their favourite songs, by using coloured paper that relates to the colour of confidence for them.

This simple exercise could become an entire session or workshop, creating your very own vision board/circle of excellence, not only using confidence, but other emotions or states that would be useful for the young people, like calmness, creativity, resourcefulness.

With the young people you work with, or yourself, I wonder what might be a useful circle for you to create. I would love to hear your thoughts. Have a go and let us know how you get on.