If you have a chance to make your own decision, i. e. to decide on your own based on your thoughts and ideas, that is where personal development happens. You will get information about how your idea pains out, you will be able to make that idea more accurate and polished, and you will also be able to lean on your thoughts from then on – i. e. build self-trust.
What I like to see is leaders, in various roles, giving followers power to make decisions. In traditional situation, a leader decides. That means, a leader has to be smart, has to be educated and has to learn, has to develop, therefore has to be the one motivated or eager to grow. But empowering creates a situation in which a wide circle of people has to do all those things. They all need motivation, they all need learning, etc. This brings us to inclusion, to equal partnerships, to capitalising on a wider range of potentials inside our group; it brings good things to society.
Coaches as new paradigm leaders
I hope you don’t mind me going into area of sports again (there will be other cases in future as this site develops on). In some places or social circles, “sport is tough” and that, among others, means that there is “that rough hand of the coach always needed”. But, this is just an opinion and just one way to do your coaching role. I can see more and more coaches (or possibly, I am just more and more aware of it) that perform their role in the new paradigm sense. I can see them doing good job in two aspects: 1) taking care for a shared view of how a team wants to play a game, and 2) providing information so that players can be best possible decision-makers.
For example, in football, in FC Barcelona with coach Pep Guardiola, players would sit together for hours to discuss the decisions and the flow of the game, so that they would have an aligned view of how they want to play. In another example, Stefano Lavarini, a (women) volleyball coach, would often just lead his minute breaks providing information: “when you make this move, they respond with this move; when you make that move, they respond in that manner”. And he would end in: “just be careful to notice that and decide well”. Or maybe watch a match of Norwegen women national team in handball; see how coach Thorir Hergeirsson leads his one minute breaks.
It is not just that those principle bring personal progress or development of players, but this result can go very well and hand in hand with sport results. Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona was probably one of the strongest football teams. Lavarini-lead Polish national team made giant leaps in results; just in few years they went from playing in 3rd quality class national league to winning the 1st class VNL. Norwegean women handball team is currently the strongest in the competition as well.
Conclusion
Will the changes go on and spread wider? Will sport play its primal role and inspire significant and lasting changes even wider in other areas of our lives? Just … be new paradigm leaders. Learn about it to do it right and well. It pays of in so many aspects.
Paradim 