What is Coaching?
What is Coaching and Why is it Important?
Do you remember how you learned to ride a bike? Few of us, if any, started with a class entitled “Basics of Bike Riding”. While it may be helpful to know the history of bicycles, how one is constructed, and read instructions on how to pedal, steer, and brake, such instruction will not qualify us to ride one. Similarly, learning to ride a bike by trial and error alone would produce so much anxiety, pain, and injury that we lose all desire to learn beyond that first experience! Most of us learned gradually, and if we were lucky, we had a coach or two who gave us instruction, observed us, and provided feedback.
A coach is someone who partners with a student to help them work towards specific goals by unlocking their potential. While not always the case, a coach often has experience or expertise in the areas that the student is striving to develop.
If we were lucky, it is possible that our bicycle coach trained us in some of the basic bicycle skills required to ride a bike such as steering, braking, shifting gears, etc. If we were very lucky, perhaps the coach even demonstrated these skills for us or provided us with tools (e.g., training wheels) to help us master some of the more challenging skills (e.g., balancing). Once we had mastered the basics, our coach probably became less hands-on and more of an encourager, doing whatever they deemed necessary to help continually improve or even to bounce back after a discouraging experience such as a painful fall or frightening accident. In essence, the coach helped us develop our full potential.
After significant time under the attentive eye of our coach, most of us overcame our often disastrous beginnings and emerged as successful bike riders - without any permanent damage or becoming so discouraged that we vowed to never try it again! In essence, this is what the Coaching Component of CSOL is designed to do - provide students with enough guidance, instruction, and feedback to get the most out of their CSOL experience and develop their full potential. CSOL’s coaching component aims to ensure students get the most out of their classroom instruction as they draw nearer to God and one another.