How reflection can improve your coaching

Using reflection: what are we trying to achieve?For reflective practice to deliver the best return, it’s clearly important that coaches know what they can get out of it and, therefore, why they should do it. For most, if not all of those who take part in coach education, the goal is to become better – or more of an expert – at what they do. However, what does being an expert actually involve?

On one hand, some consider that expertise comes from having the ‘right’ behaviours (e.g.,
communication skills), the ‘right’ competencies (e.g., arrives before the start of each session to plan content), and the ‘right’ sessions.

In contrast, Nash, Martindale, Collins, and Martindale (2012) identified a set of cognitive (or thinking) based criteria to define coaching expertise more accurately.

While behaviours, competencies and sessions show us what expert coaches can do, being an expert involves doing the best thing at the best time for the best purpose; something that’s very difficult to do without thinking.

Specifically, Nash et al. argued that expertise is made up of a number of essential cognitive components:

• Use of a large ‘declarative’ knowledge base to solve problems and make decisions (i.e., knowing why and why not to use particular solutions to solve particular problems).
• Use of perceptual skills, mental models, and routines (e.g. running through scenarios that might occur in a training session in advance).
• Ability to work independently and develop innovative solutions.
• Experimenting with different options (i.e., not looking to copy what had worked before and trying out new, evidence-based approaches).
• Lifelong learning mindset (i.e., continually learning and broadening horizons on how things might be improved).
• Awareness of personal strengths and shortcomings.
• Management of complex planning processes.
• Use of effective reflection.

These criteria relate to expertise in all coaching contexts, covering the full participation-to-performance spectrum. They also reflect the view that coaching is not a simple activity with ‘black and white’ challenges and answers but rather, a complicated role with ‘shades of grey’ and an ‘it depends’ rule. We would bet that no coach at any level has ever delivered the same session, in the same way, with the same group and got the same outcomes. 

While having a base of competencies and sessions is necessary to coach well, it’s the thinking behind their use and how they’re reflected on that’s crucial for developing expertise.

Getting better at reflection: what can help?Beyond thinking about ‘what went well’ and ‘what could have gone better’, it’s the coach’s ability to reflect critically that leads to greatest return; in others words, their ability to ask why and consider the pros and cons of what they do. Importantly, this skill can help coaches to see the ‘shades of grey’ over the ‘black and white’ that’s often presented in formal coach education in sport and across the media.

Unfortunately, many formal coaching courses in sport still train ‘black and white’ competencies and thinking. While novice coaches may initially benefit from ‘do it like this’, using this approach in higher-level awards tends to generate coaches who are more rigid and less creative than required.

In short, the more that coaches believe that coaching knowledge is owned by higher authorities, never changes and is measured by isolated competencies, then the less chance they’ll reflect critically on the why of their actions, what alternatives were available and what would have made things different – everything they need to become an expert.

Alternatively, the more that a coach works with the idea that coaching knowledge is complex, not ‘owned’ by authorities, undergoes constant upgrading and is developed over a long period of time, the more chance that they’ll commit to the essential ‘shades of grey’ in their reflections.

Getting better at reflection: who can help?Trying to develop a more ‘it depends’ perspective isn’t a quick or easy process. It also might not be desired by some coaches. For those who do want to work toward being an expert however, many coach education programmes have turned to mentors as a vehicle for change.

Given that mentors should have a more advanced understanding of coaching – and an appreciation of expertise – this approach is logical; especially as most coaches prefer to learn through personal interaction.

However, this relationship will often fail if the mentor tries to get the mentee to reflect from day one. The ‘shades of grey’ mentor and the usually ‘black and white’ mentee will effectively be talking two different languages.

For reflection to work best for the mentee at this stage, mentors need to help their coach to start RP by seeing slightly less black and white. Usually, this will be done through lots of questioning and discussion, with the mentor teasing out ‘the why’ behind the mentee’s views, decisions and actions, as well as helping them to reflect on the ‘pros and cons’ of their decisions.

Of course, how mentors can help coaches to reflect and work towards expertise is much more complicated than this. In the meantime, we hope to have highlighted that being an expert coach with expert reflection relies on much more than lots of competencies and sessions .

Specifically, we encourage coaches to reflect on the whys and why nots of what they do and against the greyness of the coaching world. So remember – it depends.


This article was first published in The Boot Room magazine in April 2016.