Gardeners
How would you describe your coaching approach in one word?
I'm talking about a character trait, the kind of person you see yourself as. We often hear architect, dictator, guide, expert... or some variation of those words. Some mould people into the “best version of themselves”, but I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that I could somehow know more about a person than that person themselves.
I’ve always seen knowledge in that way too. How could one person hold more knowledge, or be deemed as having the only knowledge worth having, just because they have tenure? If anything, I have always firmly believed that time does not equal development. Somewhat ironically, remaining in the same place just to accumulate knowledge about the world means that you are probably not developing - to me, I wouldn’t be the same person, or in the same place, if I have truly developed.
This is a broad generalisation, so please do take it lightly. This line of thinking comes to mind because I realised that this year is my 10-year anniversary from graduating high school, and if you had told me then that I would be sitting on the west coast of Australia, working for a state sporting organisation, in cricket, after doing a PhD… I would have laughed in your face.
Now when I say that, people don’t quite believe me. And I never have enough time to explain why I know this to be true. You see, I, myself, have developed over time, but not because of it. I was (and largely still am) a headstrong, bullish, and curious young person who loved to be “right”. And that meant that somebody had to be wrong. I’ve mellowed out over the years, because I can’t really believe that each person experiences the world differently and simultaneously judge them against my own criteria for the world. Thank goodness research 101 taught me that.
I was so strong in my opinions that I closed myself off from truly connecting with the people and the phenomena in front of me. Instead of genuinely trying to understand why the coaching landscape looks the way it does, I jumped straight to criticising how impoverished and unrepresentative and frankly, boring it all is. Shockingly, people didn’t respond to that well.
And so I latched onto a quote from, you guessed it (Woods et al., 2020):
The gardener cannot actually “grow” tomatoes, squash, or beans – she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.
– Stanley McChrystal
I had the immense privilege of connecting with coaches from other sporting domains now that I am on the other side of Australia, and during a lovely 2 hour coffee chat, the question I asked at the start of this newsletter was posed to me.
I used the words from Woods and colleagues, because I try not to shy away from complicated language - instead, I love to explore why those words are meaningful. This means that as a coach, I am a sport ecology designer.
They described themselves as a gardener.
And that was the moment I knew that this serendipitous interaction was not coincidental, because these descriptions are incredibly similar. We are both shaping the environment that people interact with, which ultimately influences their experiences but not always in predictable, linear ways. That is why we cannot dictate what people will do, think, feel during our training sessions, because all we can hope to do is indirectly inter-act with them, and do our best to respond to their needs.
I split the word interact as inter-act there intentionally, because it reminds me that no action happens in isolation - just like gardening. There are so many factors at play, and we need to pay attention to the information that helps us know what/when/how to act next.
Similarly, I have been a fan of Building a Second Brain almost since its inception, and I rely on the systems I’ve built to allow me to ramble like this each month because the information that has captured my attention over time is stored safely in my own “librarian’s garden”.
For someone who is TERRIBLE at keeping actual plants alive, I sure reference gardens a lot. I once drove a mini cactus to the brink of death, and my father resurrected it (it’s still in our garden to this day, because I’m not there to touch it!).
I’m not the biggest fans of typologies, or grouping people based on certain sets of behaviours, but they do come in handy when you know you do something in a particular way and you’re searching for actions that align with that. For me, I watched this video on styles of note taking, and I realise that I was a combination of the Librarian and the Gardener.
I like to describe my second brain as walking down a garden path, but the garden is actually all the ideas and information that has captured my attention over the years. I can walk the path that is paved, or I can create new ones as I move through, following my curiosity. Those paths don’t have to exist before I start walking, and sometimes they are walked only once. But other times, the gap between the hedges and the orange tree is enticing enough that it becomes a path, because I’ve walked it so many times.
I have always believed that your brain is for having ideas, not storing them. It was so reassuring to hear someone else exploring how we can make that happen, especially in my post-phd world.
I have mentioned a few times in my new role already that I want to combine the best parts of me into the sporting world - the part that is captivated by research and knowledge, and the pragmatic part that is doubtful that we will ever create a sporting environment that genuinely nurtures the people within it. I called this keeping my finger on the pulse, to which my colleague laughed, because reading research papers isn’t what many would consider paying attention. But to me, I know that standing on the shoulders of giants is just as important as being response-able to the unique people in my community, so I try to learn from both.
In the coming months, I will be haunted by this phrase, which I picked up from the ineffable Cam Tradell at a workshop about the modern approach to coaching and officiating - something I’ve known in my bones as a sport ecology designer, but could never find the right phrase until now:
A participant has an experience.
A coach shapes the environment.
As a coach, you cannot dictate the experience someone has, but you can create an environment that hopefully promotes a safety, curiosity and hope.
In my recent podcast episode, a brilliant Brazilian Jiujitsu coach described this as “designing your room”. Being intentional in the way you design your room means paying attention to the actions, information and interactions you want your learners to adapt to. In Ricky’s words: “they got to do something they didn't think was possible, and they've never had someone crazy enough to encourage them to try.”
How do we get to this kind of coaching when it is so uncomfortable and uncommon and possibly against all expectations you, or others, have about coaching? You take that uncomfortable feeling, you sit with it, hold onto it, and take the smallest possible step forward. One step at a time. And a great first step is answering this question, one more time:
How would you describe your coaching approach in one word?
I am a gardener.