British Canoeing Awarding Body is delighted to announce Ian Pitchford as our final keynote for the 2022 Paddlesport Coaching and Leadership Conference, taking place on the 19th and 20th November at Eastwood Hall, Nottinghamshire.
Keeping the ‘YOU’ in coaching fresh and safe:
Understanding how to care for yourself and keep you safe and at the top of your game
As an instructor, coach, leader or guide, you are your most valuable asset, physically, intellectually and emotionally. Whilst many coaches and leaders in the paddlesport arena have an intimate understanding about how to look after themselves physically, they often struggle to keep themselves safe and ensure their own emotional wellbeing. Wanting the best for those that they coach and lead, means they can often be found over committing and eroding their own wellbeing.
In this session, Ian will get you to take a moment and breath and explore what you believe to be true about you as a coach or leader and your relationship with those that you support. By exploring this and having a relationship with the beliefs that you hold true about your role as a coach can dramatically influence your long-term well-being as a coach or leader.
Ian will help you explore and understand the need for a restorative relationship with yourself and its role in great coaching and great coaches. He will introduce the concept of coaching supervision, reflective practice and communities of practices. These ideas are a staple part of professional coaching practices in many areas of coaching and are slowly being part of established practice in the sporting and adventure coaching arena.
Ian believes that this will be a stimulating and exciting session that will encourage all coaches and leaders to gain some insight into how to keep themselves emotionally safe and at the top of their game in all areas of their leading and coaching practice.
Ian Pitchford…
Ian is a passionate coaching profession operating in a variety of coaching arenas. In a corporate environment, Ian is an International Coaching Federation Coach, credentialled as a Professionally Certified Coach, providing organisational, team and individual coaching for 20 years. Ian works with individuals and teams to explore perceptions, behaviours and supports them to explore how to create incredibly powerful relationships with themselves and their teams.
In a sporting environment, he has worked with an array of professional and semi-professional athletes to help them explore how to develop their own performance and their relationship with achieving success.
As a paddlesport coach, he has been a keen advocate of Paddle UK and a coach and coach educator across a variety of disciplines, as well as a keen mountaineer, climber and mountain biker. He also ran an organisation for over 15 years (Adventure Education) working with some of Britain’s hardest to reach young people.
As a coach, his core values are focused on creating emergent environments for growth in every arena that he works in. Respect, empathy and integrity are key to successfully creating this environment. He approaches coaching with openness, positivity and with a growth mindset. What motivates him is helping individuals and teams grow and seeing them achieve their full potential. He explains that the seeds of this focus was sown in his time in the Royal Navy.
With a Master of Business Administration and currently completing a Post Graduate Certificate in Coaching Supervision he is committed to lifetime learning; he brings a variety of approaches to his work from the more technical elements of performance to the more holistic. Often described by his clients as calm, intuitive, motivated and enthusiastic. A well sought-after public speaker with a recent TEDx performance at TEDx Surrey University – Refresh. He coaches and consults with honesty and flexibility, enabling all involved to evolve and adapt to the themes and challenges that appear in any development or coaching journey.
As a former member of the Royal Navy Ian has experienced a variety of military environments and is passionate about supporting those who have suffered in service. As a qualified coaching and therapeutic supervisor Ian is will continue to be a champion of professional practice supervision.
Ian lives not far from the get out for the River Dart in Devon where he loves the life he lives with his wife Sara and his children Charlotte and Charlie.
We recently announced Doug Cooper, Emma Atikins and Liz Burkinshaw as our keynotes.
