You know you have a great team when you can spend almost an entire day together, collaborating and learning from one another and improving your approach to work – all while having a good time. That happened in late January when the team came together to participate in an hours-long professional development workshop at the Inclusive Fitness center.
The Three Aspects of Professional Development at Inclusive Fitness
Our overall approach to professional development at Inclusive Fitness focuses on three aspects of what we do. First are the Academic aspects of neurodiversity. What are the neurological underpinnings of Down syndrome, autism, acquired brain injury, and other types of intellectual disability or delay? How does each present across individuals? What are common therapies and pharmacological interventions? Understanding these concepts from a technical standpoint helps us more intelligently approach our practice as coaches and, perhaps even more importantly, lays the foundation for us to connect and build trust as we collaborate with our athletes, their families, and support teams.
Second, are the Technical aspects of what we do. What we mean by this is identifying the foundational exercises we use, how we program them, and how we coach our athletes on the floor so that they are best able to learn, grow, and succeed. This is all about ensuring that we give each athlete an optimal training and programming experience so they can receive the maximum benefits from each session at IF.
The third part of our professional development approach focuses on Empathy. While we talk about developing empathy daily at IF, it is also a distinct – and crucial – aspect of our formal professional development strategy. We strive to advance our understanding – to the extent that we’re able – of what our athletes experience, what their families experience, and how we can develop trust and rapport to create a rewarding and worthwhile experience for all involved.
We apply this three-part approach to professional development in our workshops, our weekly team training meetings, and our daily interactions with one another. It helps us stay focused on what’s important.
Individual Aspect Development: Understanding Neurodiversity
When we met for our workshop a few weeks ago, we spent several hours exploring and developing our skills around the technical aspects of our work as coaches. First, we focused on the exercises we use at Inclusive Fitness, with coaches taking turns instructing each other on how to perform movements effectively so that our athletes experience a training effect from each exercise. Second, we worked through how we combine these exercises into effective programs designed for each athlete, given their unique profiles, ensuring that we always focus on the fundamentals while tailoring goals and sessions as needed.
After covering exercises and programming, we turned our attention to the importance of developing our empathetic skills. For example, how do we use our voices – including our verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal communication – to help athletes learn from us? How does our body language and position relative to our athletes impact how they feel and connect with us? What forms of motivation can we use with different athletes to encourage their engagement during sessions? What actions can we take before, during, and after sessions to create a supportive and positive learning experience that encourages the development of lifelong healthy habits? Talking about and practicing these subtle but essential skills keeps them top-of-mind from the minute you walk through the door to when we say goodbye and every moment in-between… and even between sessions.
A few days after our workshop, we ran a team debrief to talk about what we learned during our workshop, commit ourselves to the kinds of things that we want to do more effectively, and hold each other in a positive way accountable. During that conversation, one of our coaches brought up a crucial point that we wanted to share. While we have our three circles that interconnect the Academic, the Technical, and the Empathetic components of our approach, what she pointed out is that in the middle of all this is something seemingly elusive but fundamental, and that is our Mindset.
Mindset: The Foundation of a Great Coach
When it comes to building our team, we consider what a person brings to the table during our very first interactions with them. How do they think about neurodiversity? Do they naturally want to understand and support neurodivergent people and their families simply by the nature of who they are as a person? Do they readily understand the concept of presuming competence? Do they know and acknowledge the importance of making a concerted effort to meet athletes where they are rather than forcing their agenda and training style on them? Is the concept of respect for everyone so deeply embedded in their psyche that we can be confident that the other parts of being an outstanding coach – the Academic and Technical aspects – will be built on a solid foundation?
What makes a good IF coach is determined first and foremost by who they are as a person, not their academic background or technical expertise. We can and do provide coaches with endless professional development opportunities to build the basic skills they need to be effective. At the end of the day, though, their innate ability to approach an IF athlete with an open mind and a supportive heart is what will make them most successful and create a truly effective and rewarding relationship built on trust, respect, and cooperation.
Building an Effective Team
As we hire new coaches and other team members, one of the things that we’ll be doing is looking for people who bring that mindset, even developing ways to screen for it so that we know that the people who are joining us have that foundation built in so that we can enhance it, help it develop further and create an always-improving team over time.
We are deeply grateful and humbled by the commitment, hard work, and empathy demonstrated by our coaches and, yes, the mindset each brings to bear every single day. We hope you see it as well and will help us grow with your feedback and guidance. Your support and ideas for how we can improve are crucial to our ongoing improvement. Please share with us your thoughts on how we can get better in any way that you think will help you and our athletes.
Inclusive Fitness doesn’t exist for its own sake. Yes, we’re excited about the future of our growth and where we’re going as a company. Ultimately, however, we are here for the amazing community of Inclusive Fitness athletes, families, and caregivers we have the honor and pleasure of working with every day.