Coaching or finding the ability to grow your brain, according to many, seems like two methods that only some need. When senior surgeon Atual Gawande finds he has hit a plateau and feels the need to receive coaching or uncovering the physical methods to grow your own brain, it can lead to very informative discussions. We will learn Dr. Gawande’s feelings about coaching, the ways in which you can truly grown your brain, and how those methods and Gawande discoveries relate to my own personal experiences.
In Dr. Atual Gawande’s article Personal Best, he's describes his account of being coached by senior surgeon and once mentor Robert Osteen in hopes of honing in on his surgical skills. At first Dr. Gawande views coaching as a slippery slope; naming them not quite teachers but as editors that help observe, judge, and guide you. Through his account of coaching, Dr Gawande is a bit skeptical in the beginning stating if he wondered if Osteen would “find anything useful to tell me.” Through this first procedure Gawande noticed that
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In both articles, they hone in on a particular concept which is exposure. The article You Can Grow Your Brain demonstrates this concept through the use of juggling. They took two groups of people who do not know how to perform this skill and taught one group to juggle and the other not. The group who were taught and practiced got better. This group was exposed to a new stimulus and therefore their brains grew and they discovered a new skill. In Dr. Atual Gawande’s article Personal Best his account of coaching is all about the concept of exposure. This was the only was he was going to learn and improve himself as a surgeon. He describes that the only way for him make smarter decisions in the operating room comes at a price stating“ I knew that he could drive me to make smarter decisions, but….the price:
Coaching: helping another person to improve awareness, to set and achieve goals in order to improve a particular behavioural performance.
The primary goal of any training program is to prepare trainees to perform effectively on a specific post-training task. The trainer usually determines the training agenda, and trainees must adapt themselves to the process and structure of the training. In coaching the client sets the agenda and determines the goals to be achieved (Druckman.D and Bjork.R, 1991). That having been said, many trainers have excellent coaching skills, and coaches can be
One definition of coaching is “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance.” (Coaching for performance, Sir John Whitmore 1992). Or to expand on this; Simply defined, coaching is one person guiding another through a process, leading to performance enhancement. The applications can vary, support to achieve a specific project, helping an individual to do better what they already do well, or developing a skill they don't yet possess.
According to Judy Willis, “When you are experiencing highly negative emotions or severe stress, incoming information is routed to a different part of your brain”. When the high-level thinking happens, the information routed is to the reactive lower brain. When that happens, the memory is affected, all active learning stops. A fourth way is recognized and valuing incremental progress boosts a person’s motivation and enables him or her to deal effectively with setbacks. According to Dweck, “people with growth mindsets, believe their abilities can be developed though dedication and hard work- brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have these qualities.” With a growth mindset, people realized by having a failure in the past don’t mean they will in the future.
I will inspire athletes to demonstrate good character. Sports do not have an influence on one’s character; however, coaches can strongly impact athletes’ character, both negatively and positively. For this reason, I will work to coach in ways that support the growth of athletes’ character and create learning opportunities and situations in which athletes can practice and learn from. As a coach, I will lead by example and demonstrate good character because actions speak louder than words. I will do this by embodying sportsmanship and respecting athletes, opponents, other coaches, and referees. I will also show this to athletes by respecting, caring, and being trustworthy. I will also lead by example by staying
There’s a saying that everyone’s said at least once in their lifetime, I’m sure. It’s so cliché, but now I know that there is so much truth behind it. “Believe in yourself.” Rather than giving up on yourself, use your failures to make you better. Learn how to bounce back from adversity and learn from those experiences. This is called using your growth mindset. According to Carol Dweck, research psychologist, in her book Mindset, “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” It wasn’t until the summer between my junior and senior year of high school that I learned this and of course I learned it the hard way. I had played club basketball for four summers in a row with the Longmont Rush basketball club. I loved the game of basketball and I had spent countless hours working on my skills on the court. I even wanted to play in college. I already had schools scouting me. Unfortunately, in my final season, just before my senior year, my biggest fear came true.
Reflecting daily upon these values will increase my ability to articulate a holistic coaching philosophy. A personal coaching philosophy can be used as a tool itself, enabling a coach to question their practices and develop their own understanding and knowledge (Nash, et al., 2008). Already being interested in Sports Psychology, the reflective learning practice was already something I was aware of and keen to know more about.
At first sight, Brain Surgeon might not seem like an appealing or worthwhile book. Afterall, the cover is plain, the title is far from original, and the size is quite shy from “sheer”. However, this book is anything but mediocre. Within 200 pages, the author manages to compress 7 patients stories, countless personal stories of his own, and innumerable amounts of medical terminology. While most certainly a daunting, task, Keith Black takes it on with relative ease. He does it through shockingly simple and yet elegant forms; repetition of concepts, style of narration, and overall credibility.While he does not excel in all of them individually, as a unit, the effect is astounding. So rarely is a source of this quality material found within bindings
One can improve their ability is by becoming more open; exposing themselves to different perspectives of reality.
There are a number of definitions to what coaching is; I feel that I can personally relate to the following definition:
The coach has the most responsibility to inspire players into deep practice and ignition through Master Coaching. It is the coach’s responsibility to build myelin circuits for each player based on their individual personalities. The coach must tell the player how to practice in order to develop the skill circuit to fire the right way. The coach must know how to coach and interpret each players learning style. Each player may require a different style of coaching in order to ignite them
Coaching is the art of facilitating another person’s learning, development and performance. Through coaching people are able to find their own solutions, develop their own skills and change their own behaviors and attitudes.
I really came into this session with an open mind especially considering a longtime friend and former colleague, who was also a social studies teacher, just started his first year as an elementary school principal and has enjoyed the transition greatly. The one collective point I got from her is how important leadership is and how intently she has tried to model leadership in her school systems. The simple issue of how to institute one’s identity into the principal or administrative setting seemed to loom over my decision to attend the IPLA. One lesson I learned from coaching, albeit a little late for my coaching career, was that doing things the way they had always been done is not necessarily the best or correct way. I assumed that as I took over the head coaching job with a group of coaches that I had coached with for years that the only way to continue was down the same path that had lead us to where we were. I learned after 4 years that I should have made my identity part of the position rather than co-exist with the previous head coach’s identity. I never really gave myself a chance to succeed my way. If I had a second chance, I would take a very different approach but this has led to a lot of apprehension for me about my administrative success.
My experiences with my professional coaching sessions were very challenging to say the least. When I decided to begin graduate school, I never imagined I would be coaching my peers and they would be coaching me during my first quarter. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the experience and I learned a lot while participating. In my circle of friends, I am the one always handing out advice whether it is solicited or not. Because of this, I assumed these sessions would come natural to me. However, I learned by me forcing my opinion and advise on others I was trying to control them. Whitmore (2009), states
In recent years brain training games have become a topic of interest among both researchers and common people alike. Researchers are interested in the healing properties of brain training while normal people are looking to brain training as a way to improve their performance and get a leg up on the competition in school, work, and life. Up until recently, it was believed that the brain was unchangeable in terms of memory capacity. Researchers were well aware of the fact that the brain can change and form new connections when brain damage occurs. However, the idea that humans can train their brains to be more efficient and stronger seemed like a far-fetched cry from reality up until the late 1990’s (Weicker, Villringer & Thöne-Otto, 2016). As time went on and more research was conducted in the field of brain training, it became clear that brain training is not an exact science but, it does have real cognitive benefits.