What do you look for in a Mentor?

Continue the story below with Programs Director Nick Ward

How did it feel when you got your first proper role in Sports Performance?

I was super-excited to secure a part-time S&C role with Calgary Dinos Women’s Soccer.  Fast forward a few years and I had accumulated a few more small gigs, building my experience, all while trying to make a living with a ‘real job’. 

I wanted to get to the next level in Sports Performance, but I wasn’t confident that my limited success alone would get me there.

Yet taking more courses was not addressing the increasing complexity and context of the problems I was starting to recognize. I feared what I didn’t know and I wasn’t sure to who or where I could turn.

Does this sound familiar?

Many of us start our coaching careers full of confidence, believing our knowledge will consistently further an athlete's or team’s success, only to discover that the world of human performance is complex and littered with unforeseen obstacles.  

Wouldn’t it be great if you could gain insights into these potential obstacles in advance - the icebergs that you may not be aware of - to avoid hitting them in the first place? 

With nearly 100 years of coaching experience Dan Pfaff, Stuart McMillan and I understand that much of our coaching success can be attributed to our mentors. And while we each took a different path into coaching, we are all grateful for the role mentors played in accelerating our development and our careers. 

In this 10 minute video listen to how 3 coaches benefitted from mentorship and importantly how they found the right mentor at the right time. You will hear about early career mentors, expert mentors, and peer mentors.  You will come to appreciate why mentorship has been highly impactful in the careers of many successful coaches.

After you watch this video we hope you will be more intrigued to discover how mentoring can help accelerate your development!

- Nick Ward