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Back to that level 1 football coaching course that I did, which has taught me so much, and reminded me of so much that I’d previously knew, which I should know again. 

When you're planning sessions to teach boys or girls how to play football, the FA want you to do the plan, do, review model. Make sure you have a plan for a session, however weak the outline, deliver the session and then reflect on how it went and modify the plan to use it for another session either next time or later. I’ve known about reflection and the benefits of reflection for improving practice for a long time, but I never applied it to volunteer football coaching until now. It takes time and effort, and you need to be committed, but the same thing applies to your work, doesn’t it? 

How are you supposed to get better, without reflecting on what you’ve done? One of the best stories about this, is a story of how David Beckham learned how to take free-kicks, that’s a plan, do review model if ever I saw one. The more mistakes you make and the reflection on those mistakes and the better you get, that’s where expertise comes from and I suspect that’s where most of “talent” comes from. 

In the practice over the past 3 years I’ve tried to develop a multi-disciplinary team group, and a discussion of cases around this group, not just at the start of treatment but in the middle, and at the end. 

There’s a case of mine at the moment which is a really big case which is just not going as well as it should from my point of view, and I knew that would be the case almost from the outset (pattern recognition!) it goes to MDT next week where I can look back through the individual stages with a group of colleagues that I trust and say; why has it not gone the way it should? How can I rescue it now and how can I make sure this doesn’t happen again? 

It’s a long term game, plan, do, review, it doesn’t work for making things better right now, it doesn’t work for making more money right now. It works for making you better though, so in the long term it must tick all the boxes. 

Blog Post Number - 1988