Focusing too much on knowing about coaching can limit your knowledge of coaching. Learning to pay attention to what is emerging in front of you, and not overplanning your session, might seem unnatural, but it is critical in terms of creating great learning environments. Adapting and changing the environment, or keeping it the same based on direct perception, is an active process in the moment. The term, Direct Perception, refers to what is happening in front of you in real time, do not let direct perception be influenced by pre-planned coaching points or some lesson plan that you feel you must stick to. This is where “knowledge about coaching” can hold back your effectiveness. If you are trying to carry a formal coaching method from a course, it can often lead you away from creating optimal environments and effective coaching. Direct perception in your current environment, responding to what emerges in front of you, leads to “knowledge of coaching”, not “knowledge about coaching”. Try your best to not let a text book or courses “knowledge-about”, influence your direct perception.
I have watched many sessions from a popular paid subscription professional coaching website, and 99% of the content is highly scripted, and meticulously planned, with every coaching point pre-set, as the coach is the center of knowledge, attention, and learning. I feel like I am watching a lecture that has been fit to coincide with a progression of drills, leading up to one grand exercise at the end. The image projected from these professional academy sessions screams “formal top-down classroom-like education”, it lacks any sort of creativity, freedom, fluidity, joy, or personality. If I were a player in these environments, I would feel like I was being judged all the time, by a coach who was brought up in a system that creates robots. Maybe it doesn’t make for good TV to see a coach sitting back, perceiving the environment, watching for behaviors to emerge, adjusting the environment based upon direct unbiased perception, or pulling one player aside to share some input for a couple of seconds. I do realize that might not sell as many memberships or coaching courses.
Developing The Soccer Brain
