4/52 Coach Practitioner Utopia
This is pure purple unicorn territory, but lets have some fun.
1. What support would the ideal working environment provide for you to thrive as a person and professional?
2. What would your ideal work: life harmony look like?
Let’s dream big here and consider what our ideal scenarios could look like.
Let’s start with question 1
What support would the ideal working environment provide for you to thrive as a person and professional?
This looks like a bespoke approach to practitioner well-being, where each practitioner is asked ‘ what does well-being mean to you?’. It is a culture and philosophy based on nurturing high performance through a ‘take care of yourself first’ mentality
Practitioner time should be protected. This could be time off for key life events like birthdays or weddings, rotating evening and weekend work to allow things like dropping kids to school or playing football at the weekend. Mini blocks of time should be built into the day to take micro-breaks, with a ‘no talk about work’ window for de-compressing.
Practitioner energy should be protected. Boundaries are protected and enforced around when staff and players can contact colleagues. Senior staff and managers are upskilled and educated on mental health and well-being, with affiliations to external professional bodies put in place.
Essentially staff well-being should be prioritised and spoken about in the same breath as athlete well-being.
Funding and time will always constrain organisations, but there is a huge amount which employers can do to support their practitioners. The key is education and understanding how to implement strategies.
Moving onto question 2
What would your ideal work: life harmony look like?
Wouldn’t it be great if we were armed with the skills to manage the stresses and pressures of the job and not bring them home with us? To be free (time off and mental energy wise) when our loved ones are free and have no requirements to take our work home with us.
We should have our personal boundaries protected by our employers and be guided by our senior leaders on how to create professional boundaries so that we can align our personal and professional values with those of the organisation.
We should demand professional stability with fair remuneration and a clear and appropriate package based on our experience and qualifications, the same as all other industries. And, last but not least we should be doing fulfilling work which brings energy into our personal lives so we can be present and engaged with them, not take it away.
Wouldn’t this be a wonderful world?
What have I missed from the utopian coaching world?
Drop a reply in the comment box, I’d love to hear.
