NCCP Mentorship

Source: My personal notes from course by taught by Wayne Parro - works for Coaching Association of Canada, mentor coaches in Canadian Sport Coaching Program

Introduction

NCCP Core Competencies and Mentoring

Depending on what mentee needs, a competency could be more important.

• Problem-solving
  • Sharing problems and solutions
  • Explore how to support the mentee
  • Use paraphrasing to better understand the challenges of the mentee
• Valuing
  • Sharing values in mentor/mentee, Both value each others time.
  • Respectful listening
  • Understand the mentor and mentee relationship
• Critical Thinking
  • Improve and analyze situations and discuss them
  • Use strategies to help with self-reflection
  • Expand on cognitive coaching principles to better support the mentee
• Leading
  • Leading by example, “guide”, guiding mentee in their journey
  • Support coach development as a mentor and a role model
  • Lead the mentoring process
• Interacting
  • Different ways of interacting: in person, email, virtual, showing
  • Develop listening and communication skills
  • Practice variety of skills to help mentee

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the concept of mentorship as it is used in this workshop
• Understand the concept of cognitive coaching
• Perform the skills required to be an effective mentor
• Apply the three steps in the mentoring process

What are the things that impact mentorship?

• Informal mentorships that formed naturally can be the most rewarding
• Mentee looking for specific goals - mentor/mentorship program should match them
• Knowledge and good base of experience is relevant, appropriate
• Mentor with different sport experience can benefit mentees providing a different perspective.
• Mentor and mentee are both “sponges” absorb all information from others - they are both learners
• Guidance and communications, guided manner of critical thinking, increased difficulty
• Ability of reflection, critical thinking - improve performance
• Share passion, confidence for sport

What is Mentorship?

Mentorship is a relationship in which a more experienced/knowledgeable person (mentor) guides a less experienced/knowledgeable (mentee). Mentor usually provides technical instruction and/or support to mentee.

• Technical could mean practice planning, nutrition, non-sport specific things
• Mentor should guide mentee. Mentee also has role in directing the process.
• Emphasize develop of the mentee
• Informal mentorship develops over time and a trusting/supportive relationship (e.g. Wayne is an informal to us all in mentoring)
• Formal process - planning meetings, observation, reflective meetings
• Formal mentorship - structured process where mentor is trained in their role, support by organization
• Mentor ideally should not be a coach’s evaluator as it could be a conflict. Mentorship is less about evaluation and more about support.

To learn

• Need to make mistakes
• We learn from reflecting on our mistakes

Cognitive Coaching

What is Cognitive coaching? a set of strategies, a way of thinking and a way of working that invites self and others to shape and reshape their thinking and problem solving capacities (Costa and Garmston).

• Mentees have the resources they need to grow and change from within
• Mentees are able to evaluate what is good/bad
• Help mentees see how to get from where they are and where they want to be
• Build mentee skills: cognitive like reflecting, self awareness, different perspective
  • Like a “lighthouse”
    • Physically:
      • It warns you on dangers you cannot see by yourself
      • Illuminates dangers, invisible obstacles
      • General information, guides you to a safe place
    • Mentally:
      • Light at the end of the tunnel
      • Beacon of hope, safe passage
      • Positive ending to a journey
      • Most helpful in dark time, need to function all the time
        • Emergency light to path
  • Like a “mirror”
    • Reflection, check in
    • Reverse reflection
    • Process things
    • Active listening, visual
    • Acting
    • Like video feedback, people can have a different interpretation of visual
    • Good physical teaching tool
    • Good for mentee, it is not for mentor to clone themselves
  • Like a “GPS”
    • Cognitive coaching is like GPS by showing directions, destinations, ways to get there
    • Needs to be updated periodically
    • Tell us where there are problems (traffic, construction)
    • Tell us about tolls/free - costs
    • The more satellite use (mentors, different perspectives), the better the readings

Mentoring Functions and Skills

• Giving advice or suggesting strategies, resources, and ideas — formally or informally — that may help mentees
• Work together to plan and develop strategies
• There is a power relationship as mentor is usually more experienced
• Give mentors a chance to model processes (not tell explicitly)
• Avoid “should do this”, it can impact people’s confidence, keep a growth mindset.

Mentoring Skills

• Building rapport
  • Close and harmonious relationships
  • Techniques:
    • Active listening - check understanding, communications
    • Shared interests, get along
      • Sharing is caring
      • Play together - like a game
    • Informal conversation
    • Agreed upon situation, you both want to be there
    • Trust - open, honest, feedback, respect
      • Give meaningful feedback, tell them what they did well and considerations
    • Do as you say, say as you do - leading by example
    • Planning - where/how/when meetings, reasonable expectations
    • Approachable, make yourself available, flexibility
    • Continuous learning - both people
  • More techniques:
    • Get to know each other, likes and dislikes
    • Goals - realistic, short/long term
    • Video feedback - reflection enhancement, video of them coaching
      • Need permission to video/photo
• Listening
  • “People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care”. Show you care before sharing knowledge.
  • Steven Covey’s five levels of listening:
    • Ignoring
    • Pretending
    • Selective
    • Attentive
    • Listening with empathy
      • Listen with intent to understand vs just respond
      • Restate what was said, reflect speaker’s words in listener’s words
    • Barriers to listening:
      • Environmental, other sounds, Loud environment due to ongoing Find a quiet space away from
        • Meet in a time with quieter practices
        • Know person’s communication needs (e.g. disabilities)
        • Provide written communications to support
        • Amplifier, radio
        • Eye contact, active listen - “Feelings first, facts follow”
      • Physiological - Short time periods to interact, weather affects (cold/hot), personal physiological restrictions
        • Make sure you have enough energy prior to meeting (sleep, eat, rest)
        • Plan in advance what you would like to talk about
        • Adapt to noise
      • Psychological - criticism, hot-button words - “it’s simple”, hard to understand someone, learning fatigue
        • Change match ups of people communicating
        • Ask questions to confirm comprehension
        • Find someone who can help if you cannot
        • Self care
        • Self awareness - aware of your communication style
        • Set rules for interactions, give feedback in a respectful place (e.g. 1-1 instead of in front of others)
• Asking questions “Shift from judgment to curiosity”
  • Closed-ended question: Involve clarifying facts, verifying information, or directing mentees to examine specific information, e.g. Who will demonstrate the skill?
  • Open-ended questions: Encourage mentees to describe, explain, or rationalize their knowledge or feelings, e.g., tell me about your relationship with the athletes
  • Both types of questions are useful

Questions

Scenario: Working as a mentor, you are observing an inexperienced coach introduce a relatively difficult skill to a group of young athletes. The coach provided a short and concise demonstration of how to perform the skill, followed by a verbal explanation. During the explanation, the coach provided an overly detailed explanation of each part of the skill. After completing the explanation, the coach remembered something he forgot to mention earlier in the explanation. So the coach introduced this point – followed by a full summary of the entire skill. During the summary, the coach noticed two athletes laughing and pushing. The coach handled this behaviour by shouting at the two young athletes and sending them to the far corner of the field. Now distracted, the coach started a drill for practising the skill without explaining the rotation needed to perform the drill.

Purpose of the Question	Closed-ended Question
Example: To think of ways to improve the explanation	Do you think you could improve on this explanation?
To get the coach to recognize what he did well during the demonstration and explanation	Did you do a good verbal explanation?
To get the coach to recognize what he did well during the demonstration	Did you do a good demonstration?
To get the coach to take partial responsibility for the two athletes who misbehaved during the explanation	Did you lose the attention of the two athletes that were talking?
To get the coach to think of ways of improving the drill for practising the skill	Could you improve how you taught that skill??
To get the coach to reflect on the demonstration and explanation and identify specific ways to improve	Are there ways you can improve teaching that skill?

Scenario: Working as a mentor, you are observing a coach providing feedback to an experienced group of athletes. The coach did a good job of analyzing the performance and pointed out every error the athletes made. Then, in front of the group, the coach identified the mistakes every athlete made and followed each error with the appropriate correction. After providing her feedback session, the coach finished with “Now don’t make those mistakes again.”

Purpose of the Question	Open-ended Question
Example: To reflect on the purpose of the feedback session	Please explain to me the purpose of giving the athletes feedback.
To get the coach to think of alternative ways of providing feedback	What might be other ways of giving feedback to help athletes improve their performance while knowing their mistakes?
To get the coach to reflect on what the athletes were feeling during the session	What do you think the athletes were feeling during the session?
To get the coach to take responsibility for making the session more effective	Tell me about how you will plan a future session based on your experience this session.
To get the coach to think of ways of improving how she provides feedback	For each athlete, how might you improve feedback to them? What our other ways of saving “Now don’t make those mistakes again” differently - how do make it a positive statement?
To get the coach to identify what she learned through this process	In our discussion, what might you do differently in the future? What do you feel you did well in that session?

• Paraphrasing
  • Restate speaker’s message (facts, ideas, feelings) to check understanding
  • Check accuracy, get feedback
  • Summarize information
  • Rule of thirds: The mentee should talk for at least 2/3 of the time, the mentor for at most 1/3 of the time
  • Focus could be on fact, idea, feeling of what the person was saying
  • Guide mentee to acknowledge fact/idea/feeling
• Pacing and leading
  • Agree, accept understanding, and validate mentee’s feelings
  • “The lead” - encourage mentees to think
  • States of Mind and purpose of lead question to mentee
    • From novice to skilled — Efficacy
    • From less flexible to more flexible — Flexibility
    • From external to internal locus of control — Control
    • From lack of awareness of thought processes while coaching to full awareness — Consciousness
  • Lead - establish understanding / paraphrase, ask question to focus on state of mind
    • Look for opportunities for coach to learn
  • Example:
    • I’ve been motivating my team by giving them decals for their helmets
    • Pace: Yes, I see the decal reward their efforts
    • Leading: Flexible purpose - what are other ways to motivate them?, Novice to skills - how do we get their buy in?

Mentoring Process

Planning Meeting

• Done before meetings
• Example: Meet with coach before observing them for a practice
• State goal
  • Goals
  • Actions
  • Indicators of success
  • New Learning
• Summarize task
• Clarify roles
• List actions
• Itemize the challenges and opportunities
• Say what completion looks like
• E.g. plan with items, journal, feelings and thoughts

Mentor:

• State goal:
  • What are your goals?
    • Technical: passing
    • Mental: encourage players
    • Organizational: show different way of skills
  • How can we work together best? do you have a preference for type of feedback?
• Summarize session / order of session
  • Goals, what we are going to do, success, learn
• Activities
  • Roles: coach like you normally would, I observe. We will meet after for feedback
  • Drills / training
• Describe what success looks like
  • What does success look like for you?
  • Success: One coaching point - how would you know? demonstrations, check highlights
• Identify what they want to learn about themselves as a coach
  • How you coach
• New learnings
  • What do you think you / your athletes will learn from the session? - ask at pre-brief and mentor debrief (feedback) meeting

Mentee:

• Goal of session
• Verbal explanation of skill
• Demonstration of skill
• A drill for practising the skill
• Indicators that athletes have learned to perform the skill

Observation

Item followed by indicator of success

• Organization - Practice provide activity and sufficient time for rest
• Planning and execution - practice plan, on time, goals of practice, what did you learn about not meeting your practice plan
• Interactions coach/athlete - attention/listening and comprehension, natural progression of practice, asking questions, appropriate words/attitude/age/level
• Class management - Athletes are engaged, discipline as necessary, modelling good behaviour, clear communication of expectations
• Sport specific Technical knowledge - demonstrations, various teaching methods
• Safety - injury prevention, no dangerous drills, inspect environment/equipment/athletes
• Focus on what the mentee is looking for feedback on

Debrief Meeting

Mentor:

• Express feelings
• Analyze their performance
• Synthesize relationship with plan/thoughts/oucomes
• Transfer learnings

Mentee:

• Your thoughts on session
• Actions taken during session
• Athletes’ performance
• Relationship of athlete’s performance and your thoughts
• Modifications to next practice

Mentoring Process Conclusions

Do:

• Ask closed-ended questions
• Ask open-ended questions
• Paraphrase
• Pace and lead
• Maintain eye contact
• Express in Body language
• Build rapport
• “Trust the process”: Pre-brief > Observation > Debrief