INVOLVED with sport and sporting clubs? Want to be a better coach? Well, we hope you enjoy our brand new columnist Terence McWilliams, the GAA’s Ulster Games Development Manager. Every Tuesday he will be passing on the latest ideas in coaching. Here’s his first column:
CREATING SUSTAINABLE CLUB COACHING AND GAMES DEVELOPMENT STRUCTURES
By Terence McWilliams
Ulster Games Development Manager
The successful clubs of the future will plan for the future rather than keep doing the same thing over and over again and just getting the same results.
This is what we call insanity. If we want things to happen, we must make them happen, success rarely happen on its’ own.
Planning good club structures is no different from planning any structures should that be business or any other enterprise.
The key ingredients in planning any structures are to get the right people to do the job. The following process may be used for the creation of effective and efficient club coaching structures.
The first step is to plan all the stages to take the club through the process. Target key personnel to publicise the event to the whole community and what you hope to do for the benefit of the club.
Unless the whole community is involved in the whole process from the start it will fail.
One or two of the same old stalwarts, doing the same thing year after year will change nothing.
Aim:
State your main aim for holding the meeting, i.e.
• To Review Club and County Coaching and Games Development and put a Plan in Place for the next few years. If there is no plan you will have to start from scratch.
Objective:
To help us achieve our aim we will have to do the following…
• Assess the current coaching & games situation in the club
• Create a shared vision for success in our club for the future. Here everyone must have their say in a non-threatening environment
• Identify and solve the critical challenges facing our club now and in the future
The following process should be followed in the order given.
Task 1:
A first task could be to get club delegates to jot down 2 or 3 key things that they would hope to get out of the process by using Post Its.
Ask them to stick them up on the wall and review.
The facilitator should read out a few to see if the process covers any of them and if they can be addressed.
Task 2:
The London Underground
Here is a great task which could be used to show the importance of planning and everyone working together.
• Break into 6 groups
• Give each group their task – The London Underground i.e. a photo of the London underground is cut into 6 parts and each group is given a part
• Explain Rules of Task
• Only allowed 1 Flip chart page and 2 markers per table
• Can borrow or add 2 more items to complete task
• Open Envelop and recreate this image i.e. a sixth of the complete underground exactly 5 times larger.
• Five minutes
• Bring all Groups together and ask them to put their Task sheets on the ground
• Then bring their version together – Groups put original 6 parts of map together and then their drawn map together
• Review the results
The aim of this task is to show the importance of the groups working together and the members within the groups helping each other.
When we did this task we found that groups failed to work as a team and here you can stress to club members the importance of having a plan in place.
Now is the time to explain what a plan is.
Explain the importance of producing a plan and its benefits. Here stress the point if you don’t know where you are going how you ever going to get there!
A Working Action Document Which:
• Provides a blueprint for the future direction and development of the club
• A framework containing goals and time scales
• Plan that is owed by the members not the two or three who have been controlling things this past number of years which is sadly the norm in many clubs.
• That is implementable and reviewed from time to time and tweaked when necessary.
Why do we need a plan?
Benefits…
Club members need to know what they will get out of this for their efforts. They want to know what has to be done to achieve success. If you can show them this you are half way there. That’s what makes us all tick.
• Allows Members to understand that there is a plan
• Allows input – creates ownership and identity
• Identifies goals and focus your activity
• Assist with the recruitment and training of new members
• Keep everyone informed of aims and objectives
• Allows the club/county to grow and strengthen
Producing the coaching and games development plan:
The 3 key stages in producing any plan are…
• Analyse the current situation – It’s a good idea to look at where you have come from, where you are now and where you hope to go
• Design a way forward
• Implement a plan
• Analyse the current situation
• What is the current situation in the club?
• What are the club values?
• What is the club’s mission statement? If you haven’t got one write one up now.
• What are its resources? A club audit i.e. number of teams, players, coaches etc. This might show you any weakness and issues that you need to take on board.
• Design a new way forward
• What is the vision of success? A good idea here is to get groups to actually draw what the feel a successful club would look like and again take feedback from the different groups.
• What are the key success factors that come out of this vision?
• What are the critical challenges from these key factors?
• Implementation of plan
• Develop new club plan from the critical factors suggested
• Implement the plan. Draw up a plan template for this i.e. who does what when and how etc.
Task 3:
What does the club value (task 5mins/review 5 mins)
In groups, discuss what your club values and their importance to the club. An example of a value might be… player welfare and this means our club would aim to…’
Provide the best playing experience for all our players.’
‘Structure our games to allow players of all abilities to reach their potential’ etc.
This will have a big bearing on the direction your club will take i.e. winning v community involvement. Remember only one team can win. Does that mean everyone else fails?
• In Groups Complete the Value Sheet i.e. what you feel are the key values for your club
• Feedback to Group
• Take the top 2 answers from each group
• List all top answers and Vote on the Top 10 by allowing each member to highlight which one is their top answer.
Task 4:
Create a mission statement for the club
• Working in groups
• Take a flip chart page and split it into 3 areas.
• Describe what your club does?
• Describe how you do it?
• Add why you do it?
• Feedback answers to all
• Write a mission statement for your club based on these values.
An example of a mission statement for a club might be…
‘Our vision is that everybody has the opportunity to be welcomed to take part in our games and culture, to participate fully, to grow and develop and to be inspired to keep a lifelong engagement within our Association.’
Task 5:
Analyse the current situation under a number of headings e.g.
• Games, coaching, refereeing, volunteering, school/club links etc.
• Split group up into the specific number of groups you have topics for.
• Give each group the task of planning a specific topic each and how they might develop them. Be specific here i.e. who does what, when, how etc.
COACHING
GAMES
VOLUNTEERING
As a starting point you could ask members to consider the positive things that their club is doing with in each specific topic.
Then look at the negatives and finally the things their club does well occasionally but would like to do more off i.e. run more coaching clinics etc.
Planning:
The following process can be used in planning…
Task 6
Create a vision (task 5 mins/review 10mins)
• Working in groups
• Take a flip chart sheet
• Draw a vision of your club – keep as visual as possible as pictures are more powerful than words.
• Feedback answers to all
Task 7
Key success factors (task 5 mins)
• What are the key things we need to achieve this vision just completed?
• Use a new flip chart sheet
• Write down the key points from each vision drawn from the various groups. These become the key Success Factors for the club.
• No wrong answers list everything
Task 8
Critical challenges (task 5 mins)
• What are the key things we need to achieve this vision
• Everyone takes a marker and highlights which Key Success Factor is most important to them
• Select the top voted answers and place these on another flip chart sheet, i.e. place the number one beside the one you feel is most important to you etc.
These must be SMART (no wishy washy answers) A SWOT analysis i.e. Discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that your club might meet over the next few years.
The facilitator then adds up all the number 1’s etc. and the top 4 or 5 are selected as the key areas to work on for the plan
Task 9
Create a plan (task 5 mins/review 10mins)
• From the critical challenge sheet everyone has to select 1 area which they could support or work in e.g. coaching etc.?
• Split into groups
• Ask each group to complete the planning sheet
• Feedback planning sheet to everyone
Critical Success Factors
Current Score
Target Score
Action Required
When – by Whom
1 COACHING
2 GAMES
3 VOLUNTEERING
Task 10:
Implementation of the plan – Process is as follows…
• Select a steering committee – usually made up off…
• Project Manager + club chairperson + 1 other. It could be advantageous to have a coordinator from each code in the club i.e. ladies football, camogie, handball etc.
• Appoint internal project manager
• Eyes and ears facilitator. The doer – knows who is doing what and when. This is the key person and is responsible for the plan working or not.
• Appoint a facilitator
• Neutral – Keeps project on track, answerable to project manager
• Select project team
• Made up a person from each project selected from the critical challenges which become the key planning topics. This person can call on any other expertise in the club who might not have attended the meeting but could be a useful source of knowledge and help.
• Responsible for tasks set for their project and reports to project manager
• Arrange next meeting
• Should be quiet close to review what has been done and not let anything slip. Here those that attended
The key from here on is to report monthly otherwise tasks lag and fail to be completed. Any projects not been implemented must be addressed as soon as possible by the project leader and addresses by the project manager and not allowed to fester.
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