Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2015 - (Page 45)

tHrOwING MY lOOP Positive Coaching h BY MICHael jOHNSON How do we help those we love? How do we help people improve at a particular task? Did you ever coach a little league team? How about soccer? Teach someone how to ride or rope? How did you do it? Did you implement your coaching strategies after meticulous research on best practices? Probably not. You probably did it like all coaches since the days of Moses. All coaches coached the way they were coached - they say everything really loud and they always say it twice! (As in, "Let's go! Let's go! Hustle! Hustle!") Surely the coaches I had in life must have set some kind of record - none of them ever smiled a single time in four years! And almost all dads have one surefire method...yell at your kid more than you do the others. Of course, if any player (or horse) makes a mistake - you yell at them! That's just the way it's done, right? Could there be a better way? Maybe so...an organization called Positive Coaching Alliance surely does offer some food for thought. PCA was founded by Jim Thompson, a man who worked at the Stanford Business School. Before that, Thompson taught emotionally disturbed students where he became skilled with managing and motivating those children. When his son turned six and started in sports, Thompson discovered parents and coaches violating all the methods he knew to be effective - putting intense pressure on children, giving technical advice when the child was anxious or frustrated, and coaches yelling at children when they made a mistake. Thompson would eventually collect his ideas in a book called "Positive Coaching, Building Self-Esteem Through Sports." With the support of the Stanford Athletic Department, he launched PCA in 1998. The core of PCA is to train "doublegoal" coaches. Coaches are encouraged to win - indeed to be relentlessly positive, and to teach life-lessons as well. Parents are encouraged not to coach, but rather to focus on guiding their child's character continued on page 48 rural water 45

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2015

From the President
Who’s Telling Your Story?
Communications 101
Quality on Tap!
New Affinity Partner Takes the Pain Out of Having a Website for your Town or Water System
You Own Your Dreams
Another Successful WaterPro Conference
Regulatory Update
Throwing My Loop
Index to Advertisers/ Advertisers.com
From the CEO

Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2015