Tag Archives: Dynamic Youth Coaching

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.

The role of the Teacher

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A few Tuesday’s ago I was invited to be on the panel at a Teach First event, where we were exploring the idea of Leaders as Motivators. This got me thinking about the role of the teacher; the leader, the motivator, the coach, the role model, the mentor.

Teachers have a lot going on in the classroom, as well as teaching there are the behaviour challenges that they face form both the young people and sometimes their parents. There are the continual changes around what and how to teach. And then there are the tests, where the teacher is held responsible for the young people achievements/results and in turn this reflects on the schools position in the league tables.

No wonder teachers are stressed out, having trouble with their time management and life balance, and at the same time we expect them to be brilliant.

So a question might be, how does a teacher manage all these roles?

Well I think the answer is in how they lead, how they motivate, and how they inspirer those around them.

When I work in schools, it’s clear to see those teachers who understand that they are the leader in the classroom, but that doesn’t mean they are the ruler. They have conversations with the young people they teach, are strong, fair and consistent. That way the young people know where they stand, knows the rules of the classroom and the boundaries of the teacher.

The teachers that are able to engage their class in learning, through stories, personal experience, creative activities, are also motivating and inspiring. The young people are excited to learn and want to learn. However it takes time and energy to create exciting engaging lessons, which is where the time management comes in, which is an area a teacher and a coach can work on.

A lot of teachers find that they are overwhelmed with the amount of work that have placed in front of them. I wish I could cast a magic spell and make it disappear…bit that’s not quite possible yet. However what is possible is working together, working in teams so that you are able to share the workloads, share experience and share skills.

Once you have that motivated engaged classroom, the chances are that you will have no need to manage behavioural. Where you do have behaviour issues, you can take on the coaches role to explore what is needed, what’s going on in that young persons world, perhaps using the 3Fs model.

Asking questions to expand awareness, awareness by the young people of how their behaviour impacts their learning, and their future. A lot of the challenging young people I work with, have very little idea of how their behaviour will impact them in years to come. I remember talking with one young man who had been arrested for breaking windows for fun, and then, as the session moved on he realised that his actions would now stop him from travelling to America.

A teacher who is able to listen to a young persons challenge and help them find a solution through questions and a sharing of their own experience, steps into the role of the mentor. Able to both listen and share relevant experience. I’m not saying that teachers should share their life’s story with young people, but simply remember that they were young once, may have had similar challenges, and are able to give some options, ideas, and show that there is a positive way forward.

It’s not an easy life being a teacher, but it is certainly a rewarding one. We remember our great teachers, and perhaps teachers, coaches, and mentors working together can create great classrooms too.

I wonder how you might manage the various roles that are presented to you as a teacher,  a leader, motivator, coach, role model or the mentor?

Questions on Youth Coaching

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As a blogger I love it when people ask me questions that relate to my field.

As some of you will already know we, Nick Bolton and I, run Discovery Days for our Dynamic Youth Coaching and Mentoring Course. Afterwards, I usually get a few questions that I think will be best answered here so that everyone can benefit from and contribute to them.

I’m thinking about running both a youth coaching and business coaching business.

I find that a lot of coaches do this.  Some of the youth coaches I talk with have both a youth coaching and a business coaching arm to their practice.

Why is this?

I think it’s because a lot of youth coaching is dependent on schools, with their breaks and holidays, and to develop your business model, it’s a good idea to have other strands of income. Having said that, there is often a lot of work on holiday projects where coaching can be applied. And you can work directly with young people and their families.

Should I do public speaking too?

Public speaking is a great way to get your message out there. Getting in front of your audience so that they can hear what you do and how you do it. At the same time getting the opportunity to meet you face to face.

Networking is always good way to meet contacts and clients, and being able to do this with large numbers is just great, especially when you are centre of attention!

If you are doing some public speaking, make sure your message is clear, that you know what you want the audience to be left with. Plan and Practice.

How might volunteering be useful? 

When you work with a youth organisation as a volunteer, sharing and developing your coaching skills, there are a few ways that you can use this for your benefit.

Firstly, you are able to practice and hone your skills as youth coach, develop your models and your instincts. Experience is a great teacher and something your future clients will want to know about.

Secondly, you will be able to ask for testimonials, and create case studies from the young people that you work with, as well as their success stories.

Thirdly, when you have successfully volunteered for an organisation, you can ask them to introduce you to others in their field that would be interested in paying for your services.

Also you can research what the organisation got from working with you and how much they would be willing to pay for such a great outcome. This will give you an idea about your fees and the market that you work in.

How do I improve my coaching skills?

You can do this through your practice, gaining more and more experience. By collaborating and working with other coaches, sharing ideas and challenges. There are some great books out there that will help you with coaching in general.

And of course there is our programme!

I would love to hear if you have any more questions about youth coaching, so please leave a comment in the box below and I’ll get back to you.

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?

Youth Coaching and The Olympics

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So there I am getting ready to take the children, all of them, well I say all, there are about nine of us, heading to the museums and parks for picnics. When I catch a bit of the Olympic news.

The Team GB cycling coach is there talking about the philosophy behind creating awesome cyclist. How they looked at how to make someone the best they could be, then applied that to the cycle track, exploring how to make them the best clclist they could be.

The presenter asked, could you apply this to other sports, and he replies, yes you can apply it to anything, because at the heart of it, it’s about making the person the best they can be, then taking that to the sport or the job.

And that’s how youth coaching works, we look at the young person, and explore how they can be the best at being themselves, then look into how this ripples into their world.

Sport has always been a place where young people are able to understand the dedication and focus it takes to be the best, perhaps as youth coaches we need to take some of that focus and dedication and apply it to coaching and mentoring. Breaking down the skill sets needed to be the best, looking at whether the young person is a sprinter or along distance runner. Taking personality types and relating them to sports…at the moment it’s a thought, perhaps there is someone out there already doing this, and I would love to hear from them.

But right now, everyone is ready for the museum, so I’d better publish this post, and while I’m out and about today the thoughts of youth coaching, sports and performance will float around and perhaps a new model will emerge or an old model revamped.

I’d love to hear your thoughts as I’ve seen a few posts about the Olympics and motivation, and youth.