Belonging, magic and theory
They're connected, I promise.
I may have said this before, but I often think about a quote I remember hearing about time: if time feels like it’s moving too quickly, it’s because we are not present. Now, it feels like this month absolutely flew past, and I can’t quite remember where it all went, but I don’t think I was not present for it this time. So many incredible moments have been packed into the last 30 days, and sitting down to write about them feels disingenuous, because these abstract words and descriptions of the rich phenomenons that I managed to find myself entangled in will never compare to the feeling of experiencing them. Instead, I can try to bring you along with me, as I wandered through Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth, finding new threads to knot with, and strengthening some of my favourite existing threads.
The opposite of belonging is fitting in.
I stumbled upon this Brené Brown quote just the other day, and I repurposed it with a new friend of mine later that afternoon. Brown explains that belonging is being your authentic self in a space and knowing that you will be accepted as such, so the antonym to belonging cannot be outcast, because that’s not quite the same as not belonging. Instead, feeling the need to “fit in”. to performatively adjust who you are to make sure you seem like you belong somewhere is the opposite of belonging.
I think this quote resurfaced just as I needed it to, because I went to two events this month where I genuinely felt like I belonged. Firstly, the joy I felt while attending the National Youth Sport Conference was almost unexpected. Academic conferences aren’t really known for being joyful experiences, although I often gravitate towards such events and am incredibly lucky to work in a field where most conferences are equally enjoyable and thought-provoking. But like most things, it is not the events themselves, but the moments between them.
It’s not necessarily the incredible keynote by an author that changed your life, but the conversation in the hallway afterwards as they prepare to have a table tennis lesson (ask me later, or even better, ask Glen). It’s an action packed schedule that just becomes overwhelming, so you finally learn to self-regulate and sit outside, and find someone else doing the same, so you reconnect over the fact that you hijacked their roundtable discussion at a conference 4 years earlier, even though you were a last minute addition to the guest list.
It’s not really about watching your friend present about a topic that every sports coach takes for granted (parents are the problem! 🙄), but listening about her hunt for kangaroos the moment the day is over!
And it’s not (just) about learning that too many children have an adverse childhood experience as a result of abuse in youth sport, but also sitting at a pub close to midnight with a thinker that you’ve admired for years, watching him rearrange our phones, wallets and pint glasses to illustrate how the sports participation model we currently use is broken and drop out is inevitable so we’re not even trying to fix the right problems in the first place while the bar staff impatiently wait for us to finally go home!
These in-between moments are the ones that resonate the most for me. This negative space is symbolised by the Japanese character ‘ma’ 間, and I’ve loved this concept since the moment it was shared with me. What does your negative space look like?
I’m not magic
Whenever I travel, I often have an idea of who I’d love to see while I’m there. I assume that each time I reach out, I’m almost asking for a favour, a bargain for their time. I forget that sometimes, people can be equally excited to see me too! I know that’s a reflection of my own self-perception, but it does allow me to stay genuinely open and curious each time I sit down for a coffee or beer with someone, and I’m so glad I’ve stopped hesitating to reach out and ask for that time with the people I admire.
I had the immense pleasure of catching up with two people who have profoundly shaped my perception of coach development while in Adelaide (that city is so spoilt!). I’d be lying if I said I had lost count of all the rich correspondences I’d had while there because I may have accidentally let slip that I keep files on everyone.. hear me out. Whenever I have a conversation with someone, or schedule a meeting, I like to keep notes about that interaction. All those files add up, and as I continue to correspond with people, they end up with their own file, linked to all the things we’ve spoken about, what I remember they’re passionate about, and often ideas for our next catch up (because having an agenda is too formal, but we often forget why we were having the catch up in the first place!).
“I’m not magic” was said quite flippantly at the time, but I do think it speaks to the fact that as someone who is familiar with skill acquisition, and has a particular view of how (inter)actions emerge, we can often see how things are connected long before others do. And it doesn’t just have to be a constraint that you manipulate and immediately a new, more functional behaviour emerges, because that’s rare. Sometimes, it’s just as simple as asking “how did that feel?” and/or “was that closer to/further away from what you were trying to achieve?”. The simplicity of this approach always baffles me, and not because it is so simple, but because more people don’t use it!?
Before I undertook any formal education for my coaching, and I had nothing but buckets of humility because I genuinely didn’t know anything (yet), this was where I would start. I have had “what are you trying to achieve” written on everything I own since someone (foolishly!) let me use one of those Dymo label-makers and I printed off sooo many stickers. But even if I may know more now, and hopefully know better too, I don’t think I’ll ever leave that question behind. Who better to tell you about what is happening than the person exploring it for themselves?
And I’m not talking about where they think their leg is or if they're making the right “shapes” or if their elbow flexion is just right, but did it help you get to your goal? Do you think you could find another way to do so, perhaps a more efficient or effective way? Maybe even a way that has a greater competitive advantage? Personally, I’ve been using this definition of skill since I first heard it in conversation, and I know that guides my attention towards different places and moments. I really love hearing what this looks like for different coaches and in diverse sporting contexts, so I thoroughly enjoyed recording this podcast episode with a futsal coach in New Zealand, where we chatted along the lines of transparency and trust in our coaching.
None of this is magic. But I can see how it might feel like that sometimes. I know it feels like magic when I notice someone isn’t quite engaged with a task, and I am response-able enough to go over there, curiously ask why, and try to design in that desire to the existing activity so they feel welcome, and seen, and belong. I know to do this because I am biased towards the experience people have in my care. I am acutely aware of how unwelcoming sport can be, so I take extra precautions to engage the people who want to occupy the space.
I recently introduced some coaches to the “giggle meter” I’ve used in the past, to gauge the positive vibes of the session. There’s this particular kind of laugh, like when you know you’re about to take a risk or try something mildly dangerous (like climbing too high in a tree - yes that’s personal experience). I try to elicit this laugh in people, and often they don’t even know they’re doing it. To me, that’s when I know I’ve set the challenge just right. It’s not magic, it’s curiosity, care and hope.
How much “theory” do coaches really need?
I was not expecting this question, but I am so glad it was asked of me while sitting in Melbourne with the person kept me on my PhD path, and another person who inspired me to grow beyond it.
I surprised myself with my response. I actually think when this debate inevitably rears its head online, we are rarely talking about the same thing, or on the same level. To me, this question really speaks to whether or not we hold any assumptions about how learning works, how people work, how the world works, and how we coach accordingly. Now, having an awareness of these assumptions, of how we embody them in our interactions with others, is a big question because I don’t think many people have the self-awareness to really dig into “theory” per se. So much of coaching is performative, perceived or otherwise, and it’s much easier to get started by projecting what you know best: the experiences you, yourself had as someone being coached.
More recently, I’ve been asking the people I meet the same question: what is your favourite memory of being coached?
Too many times, the room or the person is silent. They start to realise that those positive memories are few and far between. So when they rely on such memory to “perform” their coaching, it is often built upon foundations of previous harm. Now, some people will flip and go above and beyond to design environments that hopefully do not repeat these mistakes, or more often than not, we (unintentionally) recreate them. I think that’s why intentionality plays such a big role in my perspective of what good coaching is - most people do not intend to cause harm. But that lack of intentionality is causing harm, there is no avoiding that fact.
I heard someone start a coaching workshop with this 🔥 line recently:
You are the problem. But you are also the solution.
So to eventually answer the question, I don’t think coaches need to be able to say they are using a theory, or to articulate the theoretical framework that underpins what they do, but I do think they need to know what their assumptions are. Because in doing so, that means that certain “tools in the toolbox” become (no longer) fit for purpose. I was lucky enough to find a theoretical framework that helped me understand the world as I had always perceived it but could never explain it to others. In doing so, I could align my actions and the environments I try to create with a broader understanding of what it means to learn, to know, to experience, and to grow.
I am not here to say that you should have a theory, but at the very least take this moment to consider what your assumptions are. Are they actually yours or were they inherited? Did you choose them for yourself, based on what you believe in? Or are you just another reincarnation of the coaches that came before you, for better or for worse, just another link in the chainmail of their ego armour.
We’ve come to the end of another thread, but lucky for you, this is not a line in a network that ends here but rather a knot in the meshwork that will continue in ways that I cannot anticipate. I would love to hear if this resonates with you, and I can’t wait to see where this thread takes you.