Creativity And Innovation In Coaching

By Wayne Goldsmith

Ideas are easy to find.

Information is everywhere.

Anyone, can get anything, anytime, anywhere and usually for free.

You have access to more ideas and information than any coach in your sport at any time in history.

Everyone knows what you know! Everyone knows what everyone else knows! There are no secrets!

It’s not ideas or information that determine success in sport. 

It’s creativity and innovation!

Creativity and Innovation In Coaching – What Does it Look Like?

Creativity is all about the idea. It’s about dreaming, thinking, experimenting, pondering and coming up with something new.

It’s about watching, listening, reading and discovering new ideas, studying research breakthroughs and connecting with left-field thought leaders to find a “nugget”: a new idea that might revolutionize your coaching program.

Innovation is doing. It’s taking the idea and making it work in your coaching.

There’s a wonderful equation to describe the relationship between creativity and innovation:

INNOVATION = CREATIVITY X EXECUTION.

In other words, when coaches act on the idea – when they figure out how to turn the idea into action – that’s innovative coaching.

Many coaches are watching videos online, listening to podcasts and audio-books, reading books and articles and taking time to find new ideas to help improve their coaching and to enhance the preparation, practice and performance of their athletes.

There are literally millions of ideas floating around the Internet and written on the pages of books that could potentially offer a coach a genuine advantage.

The challenge however, is not in finding the idea…it’s being able to grab the idea and through the art of coaching, inspire athletes to change as a result of embracing and adopting the idea.

It is this skill – the art of inspiring change through emotional coaching – that is the very essence of effective coaching.

In this podcast I will explore both creativity and innovation in coaching.

I will talk about the limitations and barriers to creativity and innovation and present simple and practical ways coaches can enhance their creative skills and learn to be more innovative in their coaching.

 

Wayne Goldsmith