'A conversation with Zak Jones' - Coaching your own children

Parents in Sport Podcast

In this episode Zak Jones (GB and England Hockey Men's Assistant Coach) and Gordon MacLelland discuss coaching your own children. Zak shares many of his personal experiences from his own career, his life in coaching and education and his early experiences of coaching his own young children.
He shares a fascinating insight into the world of being a parent and as a high performance coach himself offers some really sound advice for those involved in the role or thinking of coaching their own children.
During the conversation they discuss amongst other things:

• The challenge of being a parent coach and the fear of some volunteers
• How amazing it is to see up close our children develop both on and off the field
• Being prepared to learn from our own mistakes
• The difficulty of managing the emotion of the experience despite knowing what we should be trying to do
• Having a different approach for son's and daughter's
• Allowing frustration to pass over us and take a step back (not an easy thing to do!)
• The importance of being consistent in our messaging to parents and the behaviours we display
• The value of role models and experiencing different learning environments

You can hear more from Zak in our book ‘Two Hats’ featuring advice, support and encouragement for all parent coaches including 23 interviews across 14 sports from leading figures in the sporting world.

“It is a great privilege to be part of this project alongside so many leading figures from across the sporting world covering such a wide range of sports. It is certainly enlightening seeing so many similarities across sports in terms of coaching your own child as well as some of the uniqueness that each sporting environment can provide.” Harry Redknapp