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This is the final episode of series two, and it's a fitting way to close things out. Rather than a single coaching idea or a piece of research, this conversation zooms out to look at the systems and structures that sit behind coach learning and development.
Tom Causer is National Coach Education Manager at Badminton Ireland, originally from High Wycombe and now based in Moira in Northern Ireland. He works across an all-island governing body covering everyone from volunteer grassroots coaches through to coaches working with Olympic players. He is currently leading a number of ambitious projects to transform how coaches in badminton learn, grow and feel supported, and the thinking behind it is well worth borrowing whatever sport you work in.
Three Key Messages
1. Formal coach education lays the foundation, but the magic happens elsewhere Tom is clear that coaching qualifications still have real value and a genuine place in any coach development system. But the research is equally clear that meaningful learning happens in the non-formal and informal spaces - communities of practice, reflective conversations, contextual CPD, peer learning. What Badminton Ireland are building is a suite of micro-learning modules, in-situ coach developer support, and technology-enabled reflection that sits alongside the formal pathway rather than replacing it. The goal is to make all of it contextual - learning that happens in the environment where the coach actually works.
2. Coaches need to feel part of something Coaching can be a lonely business. You turn up, you deliver, you go home. Tom talks about the ambition to flip that - to use technology to connect coaches with coach developers for regular reflective conversations, starting with just two hours a year and building from there. Not a heavy investment, not another thing to squeeze into an already full week, but a consistent check-in. He uses the analogy of an MOT - coaches have traditionally just done the big formal thing when they had to. What he is building is something closer to a regular service. Little and often. Someone there who sees what you're doing and helps you get better.
3. Get out of your lane Tom's game-changing advice and something that has shaped my own journey too. The worst thing a coach can do is stay entirely within their own sport, their own environment, their own network. Go and watch a coach developer from a different sport work. Shadow someone doing something completely different. Talk to people you would never normally talk to - a sleep coach, a drama teacher, a musician. The ideas are everywhere once you start looking.
The Coaching Expertise Model
Developed primarily by Dr Vinny Webb alongside Tom, this model provides a framework for thinking about coach learning and development across the full pathway - from entry-level volunteers through to coaches working in high performance environments. It maps the emphasis of different curriculum areas - health and safety, technical and tactical, self-awareness, pedagogy, coach-athlete relationship - against the context the coach is working in and the level of the pathway they're operating at. Crucially it is non-linear, reflecting the reality that neither athlete nor coach journeys happen in neat, predictable steps. It's a useful tool whether you're starting from a blank piece of paper or checking and challenging a system that's already well established.
View the model here: https://www.badmintonireland.com/page/get-involved/coaching/coaching-expertise-model
Series 3 coming soon...
Series two is done. Series three is on its way - with practical coaching challenges to try between episodes and conversations with coaches who have been paying attention to how they coach and what they've found when they do. More details coming soon.
Get in Touch
Tom Hartley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/
Tom Causer's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-causer-msc-61a553a1/
Badminton Ireland Coaching Expertise Model: https://www.badmintonireland.com/page/get-involved/coaching/coaching-expertise-model
Coach Logic: https://www.coach-logic.com
