Reference no: EM133392087

Case study: Adriana

Adriana runs a very busy multi-sports coaching company that provides after-school classes and summer holiday sports camps in her local area. Adriana has been coaching for 10 years and she is very passionate about coaching young people. She believes that helping kids through sports coaching can not only enhance their physical skills but can also help them develop social skills such as communication and teamwork. She believes that sport can encourage kids to become not only better players within each sport but also better people.

Adriana has a range of coaches working for her, from sports coach assistants who are just beginning their coaching career to fully qualified coaches who have been coaching for years. As the manager of the coaching company, Adriana ensures that all the coaches are told about their responsibilities and timetables to enable her business to run successfully. Instead of trying to motivate her team by sharing her inspirational coaching philosophy, she focuses on all necessary processes and systems to ensure that every part of the business is well organised. She makes sure that each coach undergoes an induction process where they shadow other coaches and are given a mentor. The coaches' roles are made clear to them, and they have clear performance objectives that are evaluated regularly.

For new and inexperienced coaches, Adriana provides specific lesson plans to follow and she monitors their progression closely. She has had little time to join in the coaching which has led to the more experienced coaches helping to train any inexperienced coaches. Adriana still ensures that she evaluates inexperienced coaches before allowing them to coach on their own. Following the evaluation, Adriana discusses the session with the coach to provide instructions on how to improve. Adriana provides the more experienced coaches with more responsibility and allows them to organise their sessions and provides little management or leadership.

Adriana finds that while feedback from parents is positive, and the business is doing well, there is a very high turnover of the coaching staff, with most coaches staying for less than a year before moving to other coaching providers. One former experienced coach, Luis, said that Adriana was a good manager and that she ran a very organised and successful coaching business. However, he moved to another coaching team because he was looking for a more motivational and inspirational leader that would help develop his coaching skills and values rather than just check he was meeting the requirements of his role. Luis also explained that when working with Adriana he did not feel that he was a valued member of a team and he would have liked to have more input into the team and management as well as his practice.

Task

Analyse the effectiveness of the leadership and team development approaches that Adriana adopts, and make recommendations about how she could ensure that the team operates more effectively.

For your analysis, essay-style answer.