Leading others revolves around finding ways to engage and create connections with staff, athletes, clients, and others around you. Engaging relies on us developing relationships with different people. This means identifying how we communicate and build relationships with those on our teams including those who are potentially quite different to yourself.

The first workshop focused on the DISC model to lead yourself and building a thorough understanding of how you prefer to behave. This also gives you a foundation to understand how others behave. Using this understanding, effective leaders find a way to communicate with those they lead, in a way that resonates with them, motivates them, and inspires them. All incredibly valuable skills as a strength and conditioning coach. If you can do this as a leader, it enables you to be more effective in engaging with people, in many different settings. It goes further than this as well. It’s not just about understanding others. If you’re a leader of a team, you have to find ways to value people who are also part of your team. To truly engage with someone means that you don’t just understand and respect, but you value the contribution they make. This means recognizing their strengths and allowing them to play and carry out a team role based on those strengths. Just as critically, when we value someone, we notice how their differences help us be more effective as a team. Leaders need to foster and engage in this and help their team members (followers) to also value others.

Learning outcomes

• Utilize the DISC model to identify behaviors in others to develop effective ways to connect, engage, and communicate with them.
• Understand the importance and develop strategies around what leaders do to build a balanced coaching staff and value others within your teams.
• Further develop your understanding of your own leadership style and how to develop flexibility to maximize strength and conditioning outcomes.
• Learn and utilize a proven method for dealing positively with conflicts that can arise within coach-athlete interactions.
• Discover strategies for building rapport with athletes and clients while evaluating athlete/client-fit.