Coaching Emulation - Part "A" of the equation

In the past few articles, I've been focusing on emulating coaches that you like to help you become a good coach. That's all good, but the one person you should really breakdown and emulate is - no not yourself - your best teachers. The teacher that inspired you and taught you how to do something so you understood it after working at it for a while uses key skills that you'll need to be a good coach.
The reason that teaching is so important is a huge portion of coaching, at the level we will likely coach, will be teaching. This means, that you need to learn teaching skills to the range of learners out there. You have to motivate them to learn. You have to push them through the tough times. Probably hardest of all, you have to break down skills into teachable parts. It's not easy.

I've had a number of teachers throughout my life. No one in particular comes out as the best teacher to emulate, but collectively I've observed their approaches to teaching ad evaluated how successful they are.

If coaching is your goal, then start observing both the taught and teaching. These free observations can potentially show you how to approach the teaching side to coaching. Talk to teachers and ask them about common problems. How do you motivate? How do you convey difficult subjects? How much preparation do you need to do?

PJ