Elite level coaches like Doc Rivers are questioning the role of sports in society while at the grassroots level coaches like Dougie Samuel and Audrey Taylor, are actively using sport as a tool for social change.
Meanwhile some coaches in sports like college football are struggling to justify putting people at risk in the name of winning.
Coaches across sports are splitting into two types:
- Those who put winning first
- Those who put people first
For those who place people first, coaching is a part of their identity. Despite all the time, energy and stress that goes into coaching, they coach season after season because they care about people.
Coaches who put people first make personal sacrifices, receive little thanks and sometimes get abuse from the very people they are trying to serve. And yet they come back for more.
Every off-season they consider whether it’s all worth the hassle but they always return.
These coaches want to make change. They want to be difference makers
Sport, with it’s ability to stir passions, provide an escape from our daily challenges and unite people behind a common goal, has the power to bring people together and contribute to solving the divisions that some seek to create.
It’s the emotions stirred by sport that make it such a powerful force and help explain why people get so fired up by winning and losing.
Sports creates joy.
But sport also creates pain.
Win-at-all costs Coaches are becoming increasingly isolated as people look for a deeper meaning behind sport and as a new generation of athletes like Simone Biles don’t accept a coach who causes them harm in the name of winning.
At every level of sport – from grassroots to elite – the ‘win at all costs’ mentality is doing harm to people and communities.
Competition is good. But not when the pursuit of success gets ugly.
Great coaching in the future will build on the core reasons why people take up sport in the first place.
But coaches often forget their ‘why’.
They operate in isolation. Left to their own devices, and low on time and energy, they plan in a hurry and rarely take the time to reflect. Because they rarely complete the plan-do-review loop, their growth slows and so does their ability to help people.
New tools and support are needed for the Difference Maker Coach – tools that close the learning loop to enable greater impact on people plus more time and energy for the coach.
That’s why we’re developing tools that enable coaches to:
- Understand themselves
- Understand who they coach
- Get clarity and purpose behind why they coach
- Plan what and how they coach
- Close the learning loop by making it easier to review their coaching
- Stop assuming they make a difference and start measuring their impact
MVMT is a mission-driven business for people who believe sport should be a movement for good (not bad).
We make the ‘tools of the trade’ for coaches who want to be difference makers.
If I can do anything to help you be a difference maker, please get in touch.
Simon Turner
Founder
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