Coach development: Improving the delivery of workshops

Workshops are a prevalent means of delivering coach education and development, both in more-formal programmes and as stand-alone events. This paper acknowledges the significant range of purposes, formals and intended outcomes, and explores their strengths and weaknesses as vehicles for facilitating coaches’ learning. Some practical guidelines are offered for their more-effective design and delivery. These guidelines are presented in three stages: pre-workshop, the workshop itself, and post-workshop. It is suggested that key to an effective workshop is permitting the ’voice’ of the participants to be heard, making direct links to individuals’ practice, and ensuring some form of follow up to the workshop experience. The distinction between workshop outputs and outcomes is a valuable one for informing more critical evaluation studies.