{"id":4871,"date":"2011-01-29T15:34:15","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T15:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=4871"},"modified":"2011-01-29T15:34:15","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T15:34:15","slug":"the-coaching-saga-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=4871","title":{"rendered":"The Coaching Saga Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past I’ve written specifically about the GDE Matrix<\/a>, Coaching and instructors<\/a>, the DL25 and how to use it for coaching purposes<\/a>, and most recently about how you can use coaching in a variety of ways<\/a> (which most ADIs can’t even begin to understand).<\/p>\n

\"Coaching\"The last two attracted some smart aleck comments from one of the webforums. It made me laugh hard when one of the self-proclaimed experts said that the examples I had given weren’t coaching, and that they were “just Q&A” and “leading the pupil”.<\/p>\n

The same forum has recently held an online session with a guest “coaching expert” speaker who was actually on the HERMES project, and it has made the transcript available. If you can sift through the 90% of the transcript which contains the usual “how r u” type comments, and ADIs trying to get one over on everyone and everything (“I already do that”, “I was using that 20 years ago”, and so on), there is one absolutely telling comment from the speaker:<\/p>\n

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An example of a coaching technique. Coaching techniques focus on questions and problem solving exercise. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, well, well. The HERMES expert says Q&A is part of coaching. As for the other guy – the “expert” in his own living room – I’ll just repeat that phrase I used at the beginning…<\/p>\n

Most ADIs can’t even begin to understand what coaching really is.<\/em> <\/p>\n

These are the ones who need to spend some money on the right sort of CPD. The DSA is unlikely (well, it won’t. Period) to assume that no one <\/em>is coaching – but just as there are some people who barely scrape a Grade 4 (and are happy with it). The reason they never achieve better is probably already due to them not using any coaching techniques anyway, and it is these who will be seen not to be training pupils properly once the new DSA syllabus comes in and Check Tests start (well, after the trials are completed, anyway).<\/p>\n

I still don’t think that that last paragraph will get the point across, so I’ll say it differently:<\/p>\n

Coaching is a skill that any good ADI should be using already anyway. The reason for the present focus on the subject is twofold: <\/p>\n