Session 4: Becoming self-aware of power in your role

Introduction

Have you ever experienced an uneasy relationship with a coach you are supporting – perhaps a feeling of coldness or scepticism being expressed towards you? Are you aware of the potential power you have over coaches and how you might, unwittingly, project your ideas onto them?

In this session you’ll develop your self-awareness of how relationships are structured by different forms of power, and how they are infused with opinions, beliefs and perceptions that impact your ability to build rapport and influence change.

Figure 1 How self-aware are you as a coach developer? What is the image you see of yourself in this role?

Show description|Hide description

A drawing of two people looking into a mirror. The faces that look back at them have no facial features, just question marks.

Figure 1 How self-aware are you as a coach developer? What is the image you see of yourself in this role?

You will explore these insights using three examples from research:

1. a coach being assessed for a coaching qualification
2. coaches participating in coaching qualification courses
3. coach developers entering a professional football club.

By becoming more knowledgeable about your status, identity and power you will develop your ability to manage the influence you have on other people.

To start this session, watch this short video where Lucy Moore and Alex Twitchen briefly discuss their understanding of power and it how influences their work as coach developers.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript: Video 1

LUCY MOORE:

This session is all about self-awareness and understanding the power that you might have over a coach during a coach development intervention. So, for me, power is all about how you might influence that coach's behaviour during an interaction.

ALEX TWITCHEN:

Yeah, and I think those two key points, one that power is always relational. So what I mean by that is that in any relationship it's not a case that nobody is powerless. It's about the distribution of power. Who has relatively more power over the other person? And the second point I would make is that that changes from situation to situation and context to context, so power is always in flux. It's always dynamic. I could have a set amount of power over you in one situation, but in another situation, that relationship of power is completely different.

LUCY MOORE:

Yeah, that makes sense. As you talk, Alex, it makes me think of when I was being assessed for my coaching qualification and just thinking about how knowing that there was a coach developer there made me behave in a certain way because I wanted to show them what they wanted to see. Because, ultimately, they were in charge of whether I passed or failed.

ALEX TWITCHEN:

I think that's a really good example of a situation where there is a power relationship between you and the person who's assessing you. And I wonder if the person that's assessing you really consciously reflects or understands the amount of power that they have in that particular situation and how they use that power and the influence they have over whether you pass or fail the particular course, and what that might mean.

LUCY MOORE:

Yes, so genuinely, I think it's a really fascinating area for us to explore and to start to think about how our power over coaches might manifest in a coach development intervention.

ALEX TWITCHEN:

That's right. And in this session, you're going to explore three different examples of the way that power has been used in coach learning and development, and they're all kind of different in a way.

End transcript: Video 1

Download

Video 1

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

• describe the meaning of power in a coach–coach developer relationship
• reflect on case studies illustrating the use of power in coach learning and development relationships
• become more self-aware of your power and identity as a coach developer and where this power stems from.

Throughout this session you will come back to the ideas expressed in Video 1. You’ll start, however, by exploring what is meant by power in social relationships.