(Page Update 8/1/21)
Traditionally, historically, and currently, right now, as educators, coaches are great pretenders. My lifelong quest has always been to resolve this issue of educators pretending they have the answers students want. That’s the main reason I opened the doors to this bowling coach business research and development site. To build a bowling coach business that goes beyond ordinary coaching. And solve education’s “central problem” of “pedagogical relation,” the misunderstood dynamic teacher-student relationship.
We (coaches) have some great answers for sure. However, we are all limited to what we have learned and the knowledge we still remember from those lessons. We want to be paid, if not already. And we would love to make this our full-time job, if not already. And make a good living.
The Free Dictionary has a synonym for pretending; Affectation: Mannerism or habit that is assumed rather than natural, especially to impress others.
What will lead those interested in the answer is found within the question, want to do the actual work of coaching?
Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to trust most educator’s leadership?
How can we, as coaches, move beyond conventional, traditional, and questionable approaches to teaching and learning?
We need to transition from “what is.” That which is popular and stop pretending that performance is the control of behaviors. Via research and development of the solution, a radically new bowling coach business culture will materialize utilizing the little-known mechanism, based on the Perceptual Control Theory principle of variable actions, lead to consistent results.
Perceptual control theory (PCT) from Wikipedia:
Results of PCT experiments have demonstrated that an organism controls neither its own behavior, nor external environmental variables, but rather its own perceptions of those variables. Actions are not controlled; they are varied so as to cancel the effects that unpredictable environmental disturbances would otherwise have on controlled perceptions. As a catch-phrase of the field puts it, “behavior is the control of perception.” PCT demonstrates circular causation in a negative feedback loop closed through the environment. This fundamentally contradicts the classical notion of linear causation of behavior by stimuli, in which environmental stimuli are thought to cause behavioral responses, mediated (according to cognitive psychology) by intervening cognitive processes.
See More: What is PCT?
If one is uncertain, a few related questions sometimes come to mind when we ask ourselves, “am I absolutely clear on my goals?"
Before I get carried away with this “think on these things” discussion. A conversation I assume people have with themselves. I want to share my thoughts based on my professional corporate America experiences regarding the performance management environment of the external-authority, carrot, and stick culture.
First, let us discuss a couple of concerns to perk your interest in learning how to initiate movement beyond ordinary performance management coaching.
Concern #1, we are in the 21st Century, but, most leaders in business and sport, continue their ways of jumping on quick-fix solutions to problems. They play lip-service interest in allowing the individual performer’s input. Then pull their “best answer” out of a hat, with minimal collaboration or compassion. Then, stuck with another crappy enforced process, attitude sours, and everyone, followers and leaders, grumble about it for days, months, and sometimes years. And on it goes.
Concern #2, related to the first, is the popular business technique, “brainstorming” to “solve” shared issues. Sounds good, but in practice, solutions or new approaches are generally an agreement upon mere beliefs, an opinion consensus if you will. This route shortcuts the vision, and the “just cause” is ignored and remains unfulfilled. The design is half-ass, so not often followed through to implementation. What we get is an “I need it now” fix that does not fully resolve the issue, worst yet, creates brand new problems that then need workarounds. It is a horrible and rampant situation we have historically allowed our business leaders to put us in. It is no different in the sports industry. Results fall short, and rarely is there any real consideration for self-optimization or even societal-optimization.
The favored phrase muttered out loud about our long-established culture is, “it is what it is.” The favored phrase for the newly envisioned culture of the Optima Bowling Coach is “alignment beyond agreement” (Yasuhiko Genku Kimura, 2005)
I know, I stole it from Apple.
I am thinking differently. We must think and act differently.
When working with leaders and coaches, students need to add questions to this “think on these things” list (above). First, “what are the performance expectations of the individual leader or coach?” Besides muttering that question to themselves, they must ask out loud, “coach, what are your intentions? And what is your coaching performance purpose?
Only a dynamic, respectful teacher-student relationship will enable the proposed bowling coach business transformation.
Once the existent and massive conflict between leaders (coaches) and workers (athletes) becomes evident through synergistic personal connections, experiences of life as a whole happen naturally, and the coach-athlete conflict resolves itself.
After all that is said, these are precisely the issues Optima Bowing Coach business was designed to address, document, and solve. So, instead of a teacher and student dichotomy. And instead of asking the so-called “student” to trust external-authority, we all learn to trust internal-authority. We begin to find harmony.
See Next: Performance Management
See Uograde: Coaching Evolution
Back to: Bowling Academy