Working in partnership with MiMentor our amazing digital partners, e.t.c coaching consultants (Sarah McQuade and Linda Low) have been proud to design and facilitate the PTR's (Professional Tennis Registry) Tennis Coach Mentor Certificate. This certificate is the first badged program to be awarded by the PTR.
Adopting a blended approach mixing online learning with a series of webinars the course is designed to help Coach Mentors:
Explore the concept and practice of mentoring
Apply mentoring concepts and tools with coaches in their own coaching environment
Reflect on and develop their mentoring effectiveness.
A group of over 20 industry-leading tennis experts, Tennis Coach Developers, and Head Coaches were among the first cohort to experience this game-changing program for tennis coaches and tennis coaching.
Why game-changing? Because quality coaching matters and mentors matter. Adopting a relatively simple cascade philosophy we believe better mentors mean better coaches and better coaching. Better coaching means better player recruitment, development, and critically, better retention.
Huge thanks to MiMentor for providing the digital platform that allowed mentors to explore much of the need-to-know content underpinning the art and application of mentoring.
The series of three webinars offered perhaps the best opportunity for mentors to make sense of their learning and do a deep dive into the application of mentoring.
Perhaps the most exciting concept explored during Webinar 1 was how we as mentors, create a psychologically safe space that empowers coaches to lean into what might feel uncomfortable so that they can stretch and challenge themselves to grow as people and as coaches.
The topic that generated the most conversation in Webinar 2 was how to raise coach awareness about specific elements of their coaching practice. Acknowledging the fact that professional knowledge of the game is critical, the conversation focused initially on which wider reference points we can use as mentors to focus reflection on practice. Leveraging current research and anecdotal evidence mentors were able to recognize that interpersonal and intrapersonal coaching knowledge and skills are equally as important as the X's and O's.
The conversation in this session then moved on to explore how we as mentors can structure the conversation to support and enable coach reflection. We introduced, modeled, and unpacked the GROW process as a conversational scaffold to help mentors help their coaches reflect on and develop their coaching practice.
The third and final webinar in the month-long program focused on the skills required to be an effective mentor that can help unlock a person's potential to maximize their own performance while resisting the temptation to clone, in this case, the coach, in the mentor's own likeness.
The challenge now is for mentors to apply this learning in their own context and show how they are supporting and developing coaches within their own environment:
Mentors who successfully complete the program will earn the PTR Tennis Coach Mentor Certificate which is part of the #PTRBadge initiative.
Good luck to all of our mentors as they apply #gamechanging concepts and tools to enhance coach effectiveness.