Nurturing Young Athletes' Self-Understanding

I’m delighted to be speaking with Richard Shorter in this episode. Richard goes into schools and sporting institutions to help them with a parent engagement strategy. He also delivers parent engagement sessions to sporting organisations such as England Rugby, England Hockey and England Cricket helping parents to be reflective of their parenting approach. These engagement sessions are also fantastic for coaches to think about the way in which they engage with their players. Richard has also written the brilliant book ‘Conversations for the Journey - 40 Ways for you to Build Sporting Character’ that offers parents and coaches 40 ways to have conversations around mental skills that move away from “Did you win?”, “Did you score?”, “Were you player of the match?”.

And it's this book we mainly focus on, specifically we speak about child development; asking players questions; getting the best out of character traits; enhancing sideline support and managing behaviours.