What kind of coach do you want to be?

What type of instructor suits you, or what type of instructor do you strive to be?

We have a programme in our club that works with potential future leaders in our club, and hopefully beyond. They are heading towards or recently attained their black belt, be that in karate, kickboxing or our weapons system. One of the discussions had, is, around what type of instructor approach works in the dojo. Many years ago, I trained under someone who would be classed as extremely ‘lassaiz faire’ in his approach, being approachable friendly and extremely good at what he did. There have been others who where very dictatorial and domineering in their approach. I found the former worked well with me, the conversations and attitude of the more relaxed approach worked for me and got the best out of me. I have adopted that more relaxed approach and it appears to work for many of my students, I can work in other ways when it doesn’t but generally, I find people gravitate to the instruction that works for them. That does not mean that other instructors become mini me. They develop their own approach, and this is why I find it a good discussion, because often I find the students doing the leadership have views on my style, others they have been instructed under, and their own focus for an approach.

Being an instructor strays into a discussion I developed for a paper. Instructor, mentor or coach as martial arts may stray into all these areas, dependent on the art. This I find is another good discussion. For a read around that either go to the IMAS IQ journal, this is in their members area:
https://www.imas-online.org/

Or a shorter and updated version here: https://guestwriters.weebly.com/guests-articles/category/c-spring

So, what would you like to be?