Tag Archives: Creativity

Just add Youth Coaching

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images-9It’s the beginning of the year, and as we get back into the swing of things a few thoughts might come to mind about how you and your students can get the best out of the year.
It’s known that everyone is doing the best they can, both teacher, students and pupils, working hard to make learning a positive experience, although sometimes this becomes challenging and support is needed. Often we are aware of the challenges, however time can often be a factor.
Sometimes the challenges that are faced by the students and pupils can be over come with their own ideas, and it is those ideas, the ones generated by the students, that have the most passion and determination behind them. When young people are facilitated in the creation of their own solutions, they are more motivated and committed, working harder to achieve their solution.
Even the most challenging of students wants to improve their lives, not always knowing the best way forward, confused with the pressure of the media, peers and even parent’s. This can lead to students finding themselves on the edges of the classroom, outside of the groups with a desire to be involved, but without the skills to interact successfully.
And often, once we find the key for these students, the person they admire as role model, a loved one they want to show how great they can be, or a skill they already have and shine at.  Once we find a way of working with what they are already doing well and facilitate the expansion of this into the rest of their world and thinking, we become the inspiration for positive change. And in that change we support the creation of positive, respectful, motivated young people, with the desire to do their best, leaving behind a positive legacy and role model for others to follow.
So how do we go about creating these changes?
One of the first steps is to ask question and listen deeply to the answers. Young people want their voices to be heard and it is providing that space that can make all the difference. Teachers are often in the best place to take that first step, but time can be the challenge. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, short focused conversations with an individual can make a big difference. Also a whole class can explore the challenges faced by a few with disassociated role play and creative approaches.
You can hire a professional youth coach to work with your young people or train your teachers in the skills of youth coaching, both on short and long courses designed to fit your needs.
If you have any questions about how youth coaching can help you create positive, motivated, inspired young people, then please get in contact.

The Curious Coach

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120909catproof-03I’m currently re-reading “Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions”. This is one of the Coaching books that sets out some of the theory behind Dynamic Youth Coaching and Mentoring.

DYC&M has both a theory and an experiential side to it. The theory has been related to and placed against the experiences of the work that I do currently do with Young People, giving the course a real solid foundation.

There is a lot to explore in the book that relates to working with Young People and we will get to that in later posts. However today as I was reading away a phase jumped out at me;

“…maintain your curiosity…”

Now as a coach you will be aware of keeping the curiosity channel open when working with your clients. It becomes even more important when working with Young People. It almost becomes part of the personality of coaching.

I say this because, as a coach working with Young People, you have to have your curiosity on all the time, it has to be a part of how you work. That way whenever you ask curious questions to enable deeper thinking or exploration of a challenge, the Young People don’t see this as something new, just as part of the way you work.

Often when working with adults, we become curious when the client has a set back or creates an unforseen solution, and we are working to enable the client to become aware of the solutions they have created. Or to enable them to understand the learning within the set back.

As Young People are often sent to coaching, the Youth Coach can use the “Curios Persona” to find out why the Young People believe they have been sent to see you, you can also use it to explore multiple options, asking questions like;

  • I’m curious to know what your parents/teachers think you’ll get form coaching, what do you think?
  • I’m curious how you managed to create that solution?
  • I’m curious to know that, even during your set back/challenging week, you were able to make it to todays session.
  • I’m curious to know what your “miracle” day will be like?

I’m sure there are many more questions that the “Curious Coach” can ask, in fact I would love to hear your “Curious Coach” questions. In the meantime, keep the curiosity channels open when working with Young People. Be curious about their lives as well as their goals and solutions.

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.

“What would you choose to do if you had u...

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“What would you choose to do if you had unlimited resources?” was the question asked in the book I’m currently reading; Change your life in 7 days by Paul Mckenna. He says, just before asking the question, to open your thinking, to allow your mind to dream and dream big…well maybe some of those are my words too, but that’s the idea, to dream big.

So dream big I did, in fact it’s a dream that I’ve had before, it’s the one where I open a coaching centre for young people. It’s more than a coaching centre, it’s a place where young people receive coaching, creative, confidence, self esteem, career, communication training. All underpinned with the coaching ethos, to enable them to be the best they can be, doing what they love.

Working in groups and individually with coaches, NLPers, and creative practitioners. The work would explore all the senses, almost like a school…perhaps it is a school, an alternative school where the aim is to learn about self through the arts, creativity, coaching and NLP.

It would be like all the best projects I’ve ever done rolled into one. Visits to the theatre, where we explore the characters and their relationships to each other, seeing how we would play out their roles differently, returning back to the centre where we role play the events. Using a mixture of Forum Theatre, NLP, coaching and artwork.

We would also have creative development days, spending time exploring the minds of great creative thinkers from history, from present and of course the future. Young people have wonderfully creative minds, however tif hat creativity is not put to productive use it can create all sorts of problems. So we would look at how they can use their creativity in positive ways.

There are lots of young entrepreneurs projects, and I’m sure they do wonderful work. We would not only work with the young people and their ideas, we would also enable their ideas to take shape, creating role models for the future. And jobs right now, jobs doing what the young people love.

We would have healthy foods and exercise, team sports and meditation. A space where young people can discover what they are good at, where there skills lay, and a safe supportive place where they can explore their futures.

Of course this would be expensive, but it’s a dream, and while I’m dreaming lets have the very best in technology available, lets have a design space where the young people create the technologies of the future. With music and fashion studios. And at the front a shop where we sell what we create.

This is a wonderful dream, I wonder what your dreams might be? And who is there to help and support making our dreams come true?

“What are you good at?”

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Yesterday I spoke about the 5 steps you can take to enable a smooth, engaging and creative session when working with young people. You can use these steps if you are a teacher, youth coach or mentor.

This morning as I was thinking about these steps and how you might employ them, a thought came to mind. Often we spend a lot of time and energy working on new skills that we haven’t done learnt before, as opposed to doing what we know, young people love to do the things that were already good at.

I think it’s important to remember that and give them to space to enjoy the confidence that comes from doing something they are already skilled at.

Now I’m not saying only do what they know, of course not. We need to enable young people to extend and develop their skill set, to push the boundaries of their comfort zone, as well as learning how they learn new skills

But I’m sure you remember how it feels when you have a skills or ability that you’ve honed over time, and are given the chance to share your ability.

When you are working with young people, remember to give them the chance to shine, to feel good about themselves. To recognise that they have skills and abilities. In Dream Tree Coaching, this is represented by the star, their star quality.

So my suggestion is, that when working with a group, especially for the first time, to explore what they are already good at. And over time, as the rapport and trust builds, to re-ask the question; “What are you good at?” 

Give yourself and the young people the safe space and time to explore their own skills as well as developing new ones. Take the time to explore how the things they are already good at link onto the new learning you are exploring. And by making those links, the steps to the new learning become smaller, easier, less daunting. Thus removing resistance and creating flow.

Take a few moments to ask yourself the question “What are you good at?” and post your responses below.

5 steps to working with young people.

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Recently I’ve been working on developing training for mentors. It’s part of the Mosaic mentoring in schools programe. The mentors are from local businesses, a lot of whom have not worked with or mentored young people. So part of the training is to get them to recognise their skills that can be shared with the young people, to be open to understanding young people and their world, as well as developing their confidence to work with the young people.

Now when I talk about confidence to work with the young people, it’s more about developing the confidence to work with young people when things are going…not as planned.

As a Youth Coach, I know that there are days when the plan just doesn’t seem to be working. This can be because one of the young people are in a particularly bad mood, upset, challenged by the work, or just having an off day. It can also be because I haven’t understood the young people and their needs.

So if you are going to work with young people, as a coach, mentor or teacher, there are a few things you can do to enable your sessions to go as close to plan as possible. Although I have to say, that sometimes throwing the plan out is just what’s needed.

  • Check in with the group or individual. Get a sense of how they are currently feeling, understand what is going on for them, right now and recently. Also check in with what is coming next in their worlds.
  • Listen to what is said and unsaid. Really hear the words that are being used, and check their meaning. Coaching and NLP enable you to develop your sensory skills. There is so much to be learnt form body language, watch it, read it, check it.
  • Share your plan. A lot of young people are not given the bigger picture, or the opportunity to discus, develop or change it. Which leads to flexibility.
  • Flexibility is a strength, the strength to let go of your plans, and your ego. Often we hold onto our plans because we feel that, that is part of our control, or part of our identity, and if we let go of it then we are giving something up.
  • Creativity to develop interesting and engaging sessions/lessons. And remember to bring your own creativity in. Use your known creative skills, be that music, storytelling or art.

Putting these steps into play when working with young people, will enable your session to run more smoothly, and if you are able to manage your own state then you are onto a winner.

I’d be interested to know the results you get from taking these steps. And the steps that you take to enable smooth, productive and engaging sessions, when  you’re coaching/mentoring young people.

Creating Safe Space

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I’m doing some reading this week; Change Your Life In 7 Days by Paul McKenna. I was reading it as part of my NLP and Hypnotherapy studies, and as I’m reading it a few thoughts came to mind.

As always everything I read or come across, I think about how it would work with young people, how I can change, adapt or develop it. I have this belief that whether I’m working with adults, teenagers or young children, the approach and ideas are the same, it’s just the language that changes, and it doesn’t really change, it’s just that you find the access point for whoever it is you are working with, but the content is still the same.

The book starts off by talking about our thinking, and some of us are already aware of the ideas around, what we think we create, and that our thinking creates our experiences. Henry Ford said, ‘Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right’.

So this leaves me thinking about young people’s thinking, and how we enable them to have the thoughts that says they can, how do we create environments that allow them to have positive images about themselves and their abilities.

The first points of call are the parents and the teachers, they are the ones who are in contact with young people most of their formative years. So part of enabling young people to have positive images of themselves, is by enable teachers and parents, giving them the  ability and skills to create the environments where these thoughts can be about what they can do, and how great they can be.

There are ideas that Paul McKenna shares about our thinking of ourselves, he calls it: The Three Selves; and at the heart of our three selves is our authentic self, the real us, the person we are deep down.

The work that I do with young people tells me that the only way you can access the authentic self is when the environment is one where the young people feel safe. So as Parents, Teachers, Mentors, Youth Coaches and Dynamic Youth Coaches, we have to find ways of creating this safe space. And a first step might be to ask the young people we work with, what would make a safe space for you?

I’m keen to hear their responses, so if you work with young people please ask and let me know their answers. In the mean time, perhaps ask yourself what would a safe space look like, feel like, sound like for you to be your authentic self?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if…

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all this positive appreciation for sporting achievement could be transfered into the classrooms, the youth clubs, the street corners. And young people began to see how hard work and determination works.

If they could see that setting goals in the first place, was one of the first steps on the journey to achieving them and the work you put into achieving them was the second. That goals are an important part of life, being able to know what you want and move towards it, knowing what you are aiming for, able to put the hard work in and be supported in the process.

Like the sports men and women, supported by your coach, trainer, physio, family, and all the people that are in the background, enabling you to make it happen.

And I wonder how many young people feel this support around them? From school, friends, and family. How many of them have a Youth Coach to work with them, a Mentor to share their knowledge and experience.

Some schools are doing a fabulous job of supporting their young people, other schools are doing the best they can. As a Youth Coach, I want everybody, every young person to have that support, that guidance, to be in a position where they are able to see the opportunities and possibilities of the life before them, able to see the positive changes and contributions they can make.

Working with young people can be challenging, I know this to be true, however when you get past that, get to where they are, their start point and work with them. The rewards are amazing and something to be proud of, both for you and them.

I listened to the athlete, the long jumper who is now an Olympic gold medalist, Greg Rutherford, talk about nearly giving it all up, and with the help of the team behind him was able to continue. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be part of that team for young people, as teachers, coaches and mentors. Working with them to achieve their own golds, their own goals.

I work in schools, youth clubs, summer schools and on projects to be part of making this happen. Let me know where and how you work with young people to facilitate their goals and dreams, perhaps we can find ways to work together.

Circus School and the Youth Coach

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This week I’m spending it teaching young people circus skills. They range from 6 years old, up to 11. And the funny thing is that you can’t turn off being a youth coach. I’m full of energy and positivity all day long, needless to say I’m spending the evenings on the sofa unable to move…not as young as I once was :-)

Whether you are running a coaching session or a circus skills class, there are approaches that are similar. Firstly you have to have a clear goal for all, the young people need to know what the aim of the classes are, just as in a coaching session you are exploring the issue or creating the goal.

As a coach you need to know and prepare your tools and templates, with the circus school I’m busy setting up the spinning plates as well as untangling the diablo strings. I’m sure there is a metaphor in there somewhere, about the time it takes to untangle the string in between each class, knowing that they will be tangled again…

There are two things that mostly resemble the way I coach the most when running the classes. How the young people treat each other and the language they use when attempting to learn new skills.

The young people, some of which know each other, are her to learn and to have fun. That being the case sometimes the behaviour can be quite challenging as they run around and get quite excited with the games and the equipment. However during all this it is important that they remain respectful to each other, allowing people to have a go at new things without feeling embarrassed about not being great the first time, so I spend lots of time and energy getting them to treat each other with a positive attitude, getting them to watch and change their language, to share the equipment and making sure that everyone is involved.

When the young people are trying out new skills, like juggling, they often start with the statement “Oh I can’t do this” or “This is going to be hard” And like any great youth coach or teacher, we begin by talking about giving something a go first then seeing how it goes, we talk about the idea of practice and what happens when you do. Also I spend lots of time getting them to try all of the various types of equipment until they find what they are good at.

That way they have something to shine with, as well as the new things to learn. I love what I do, even if I’m totally knackered at the end of the day. Watching the young people learn and develop is wonderful, seeing them have a great time whilst learning is just the best. Also knowing that all this fun and learning of skills will also go into them become great young people, with memories of success and being listened to. Of having a safe space to explore new things and gain confidence.

Whenever you are working with young people, explore how you can bring your own coaching skills into the experience. Perhaps you too will find that caching is possible what ever you are doing.

Let’s CREATE

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In order to have engagement when working with a group of young people you need to be creative. Often people say that you are creative or not…Well I believe everyone is creative, in one way or another. To be more specific, you might be the creator, the ideas person, the thinker, or the questioner, the maker or the go getter. There are many parts to the creative process, each as important as the next.

When we were putting the Dynamic Youth Coaching course together, I wanted there to elements of creativity within it, but in a way that anyone would be able to follow, would be able to be creative with. But most importantly It had to be something that I had used, had been successful and was repeatable.

So we created C.R.E.A.T.E.

  • Create Curiosity
  • Remember your outcomes
  • Enquire (what might the YP want/need?)
  • Alternatives and Actions
  • Time frames
  • Encouraging reflection/Ending of session

Create Curiosity by beginning a session with questions. This works really well with groups as it gets discussion started. And the questions can be focused to the areas you are working on, or used as a way of finding out about the group. If it’s to find out about the group, you might want to play “Change Chairs if” A great drama exercise that enables you to find out about the group as well as getting them moving. Sit the group on chairs in a circle, you stand in the middle and ask questions. I always begin by saying they have to be true of you, that way it’s an easy start that you can develop later. So you might say “Change chairs if you are wearing black shoes” and all those wearing black shoes change chairs with someone else in the circle. With the aim being that you try and sit down too, leaving someone else standing who will then ask the next question.

Remember your outcomes as this enables you to stay focused, often we can get so involved in being creative that we can forget the aim of the session. Also by sharing the outcome with the group, you all become responsible for making it happen. This begins the shift of accountability. Later, once rapport has been generated, you can get the group to create their own outcomes for the session.

Enquire, what the Young People might want or need? This can be done before the session, or during. The aim being that you align the session with the needs of the group. Often sessions are prepared without any thought for what the Young People are interested in. This can be mixed with the “Change Chairs if” exercise, where you use the exercise to find out the Young People’s interest, adapting your session to meet their needs.

Alternatives and Actions. Always have a Plan B in mind, extra exercises, games,  questions or even your Personal Story. And the Actions are the steps for the group before your next session. You don’t always have to have actions, especially on the first meeting, where you are developing rapport.

Time frames are simple but important steps to remember when putting your plans together. You want to work out your timings for the session, how long you want to spend on introductions, how long each game should last, always leaving time for questions. When I’m putting sessions together, I just do rough timings, which enable me to move things around and respond to the groups needs.

Encouraging reflection and Ending of session. I often ask the group to write down what they have learnt from the session or any ideas they have had. If I am working with them over a number of sessions, I will request reflection journals, where the Young People can place all there ideas and thoughts. The have a clear end of session, where they can ask any question about what has happened, and about what might happen next.

Following these simple steps will enable you to develop your own creative sessions. Let me know how you get on, and please share any ideas for session frameworks.