Coaching is challenging.  Coaching is a mountain that is moved, climbed, stumbled up, conquered, and defeated.  Each season is a new season with new girls, returning girls, veteran girls, new coaches, returning coaches, and veteran coaches.  Coaching is challenging.  We have a group of five to thirty humans with varying personality styles, behavior styles, and learning styles.  That sentence alone, states innumerable challenges.  We have to read moods and the environment.  We have to interpret tone and language.  We have to adjust performance and plans.  Without assessment, customization, balancing, and flexibility our seasons are more challenging.  In this episode, we will discuss the ways to ignite our Champion Adaptability to meet the needs of all on the team, including ourselves.

One of the beautiful concepts I learned about in teacher training was the “project approach.”  This is beautiful because it includes all learning styles.  In the project approach, we learn a concept through movement, science, art, music, reading, writing, history and other areas of life.  The project approach understands that we learn and understand new ideas through various methods of processing and not a one-size-fits-all approach.  Consider your team a project that you are approaching with watchful and observant eyes and ears.  Everyone listens, speaks, learns, and moves in the ways that feel most comfortable to them.  Everyone also does these differently than the person next to them.  So, the way that we speak may not correlate to the way someone listens.  The way that we learn may not match the way someone speaks.  As coaches we adapt, alter, and modify practices to reach every learner, listener, speaker, and mover.  On most days, our practices do not fit into a one-size-fits-all approach.  To meet the needs of every girl, we are flexible with how we approach each practice.  We are flexible with how we speak to each girl.  We are flexible in the way we approach each relationship.  Our Champion Adaptability attunes to every girl’s behavior and need.  Every girl’s behavior is the way they communicate their wants and needs.  Every girl’s behavior and communication style is uniquely theirs.  Assessing the different behavior and communication styles within our team encourages empathy and flexibility with how we approach each unique girl.  Our Champion Adaptability empowers each unique learning, behavior, and communication style to flourish and see the team move big mountains by relying on each other’s strengths.

Customizing how we communicate to our team requires us to watch and observe our practices with an open lens to everyone’s strengths.  Assessing each individual on your team to determine their own unique communication style, assists with balancing the practices, motivating the practices, and customizing the practices that are most challenging.  We have all had the moment or moments when we are saying to ourselves, “What in the world is going on here?  Why are they not listening or are so distracted?  Why is there tension with this group and not with this other group?  Why does this clique form?  What am I supposed to do here?  How do I handle this?  Does it say something in the curriculum book about this?....” The questioning goes on and on when we are in a practice that feels more chaotic for our comfort level because it is causing friction with our own communication style.  The questioning pushes our brains and emotions to try a new tactic, to try a different approach, to modify and adjust to the environment in front of us.  According to Integrity Solutions, there are four behavior/communication styles.  As we watch, we notice the different behavior and communication styles happening simultaneously throughout the five to thirty girls and coaches on our team.  We notice the “talkers,” “supporters,” “doers,” and “controllers.”  These are the team’s strengths when used cooperatively.  When these strengths are empowered and allowed to flourish through our practices, we can balance, adjust, and customize our practice plans in alignment with all the communication styles.  

The “talkers” are expressive.  She is the socializer who will promote big-picture ideas and visions.  She is intuitive and quick at making decisions.  We keep it high-energy with plenty acknowledgement of her creativeness and contributions to the team.  We empower her talker’s voice by allowing her to be the high levels of enthusiasm our team needs to balance the “supporters.”  The supporter requires cooperation, fellowship, and union to drive her communication successfully.  She will respond with dedication, predictability, and mediation.  She will respond after thoughtful processing and will build the trust and dependability our team needs to achieving it’s goals by being the mediator and loyalist.  With our Champion Adaptability we understand these two dynamic and crucial styles our team needs to move mountains.  We recognize the strengths in these personalities will set our goals on fire when given the space to ignite it.

Much like the talkers, the “doers” are action-oriented, decisive, and focused on the end result before the practices even begin.  She knows her lap goal, team goal, and 5K goal.  She can roll with the punches in the midst of a crisis, quickly problem-solve, and hit the targeted team goal all in a single practice.  She will also seem impatient and resist changes as she accepts responsibility for any outcome.  The doer needs the next steps stated clearly and in list form which she obtains from the “controllers.”  The controllers are detail-oriented, analytical, and require structure to feel comfortable in the team.  She thrives with facts, directness, and rules.  She will empower the team with her reliable, problem-solving brain and clear, concise directives.  She will forecast problems and quickly resolve them to keep the team moving forward.  Our Champion Adaptability allows the doer and controller to shine in her team role when we keep discussions brief and provide leadership space for her to thrive.  

Coaching is challenging when we have various levels and degrees of behavior and communication styles to accommodate, calibrate, and facilitate.  We acknowledge our own personal communication style may create tension and frustration when communicating with a talker, supporter, doer, or controller.  When our communication style is not adjusted or adapted to other’s communication style, challenges feel harder, more difficult, and uncomfortable.  In teaching, I often times told my students, “Find a friend to explain it better than I am.”  We understand our communication style does not speak to everyone in the same way it speaks to us.  We understand our communication style needs to adapt to other’s communication style.  Our Champion Adaptability transforms uncomfortable chaos into beautiful collaboration.  Allow our girls to be the talker, the supporter, the doer, and the controller.  All four styles balance and harmonize our inner beings which empowers ourselves and those around us in our strengths.  Ignite your Champion Adaptability and watch each girl be a mountain mover and world changer!

Click here to watch Episode 53 Ignite Your Chamption Adaptability

Shayla A is the Coach Mentor for Girls on the Run Greater Kansas City.  Her background comes from the classroom, coaching, day treatment schools, wellness, and advocating for children with special needs.  She enjoys empowering and advocating for girls and coaches in every challenge and celebration.  Connect with her for support and assistance this season via call, text, or email.  shaylaaranda@gmail.com | 816-284-9770  

RESOURCE LIST TO IGNITE YOUR CHAMPION ADAPTABILITY:

• You’ve Got This! by Lindsay Bonilla
• Just Ask! by Sonia Sotomayor
• The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
• Joy! by Timothy D. Kanold