Leading a Safe Sport Community of Practice for High Performance Coaches: A Role for Mental Performance Consultants

Abstract

In support of safe sport (SS) in Canada, a community of practice (CoP) for high performance coaches and NSO personnel was created and facilitated by two mental performance consultants (MPCs) to ensure SS concepts are well understood and applied by coaches and NSO staff. Fifteen people joined this 4-month CoP. The value creation framework was used to shape and assess the changes/learning that occurred in the monthly, online meetings. The learning activities (presentations, discussions, individual and shared reflections) were driven by the participants’ needs and resulted in shared and co-created practices. Three value creation stories about selection, second-guessing, and self-care illustrate participants’ learning. Through this paper, a new role for MPCs is proposed.

Keywords:

• Psychological safety
• social learning
• value creation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Much of the data for this article is contained on the project MURAL wall which is available upon request. Interview data is confidential as per the ethics certificate.

Notes

1 See this link for more information on this module: https://safesport.coach.ca/.

2 See this link for more information on the CoP Model: https://coach.ca/communities-practice-how-model.

3 See the following link for guidelines on such a policy; http://www.crdsc-sdrcc.ca/eng/documents/SDRCC_Policy_Checklist_web_EN_final_2019.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC; https://www.coach.ca).