At the EGU Coaching Conference in January 2010 self-motivation “Expert” Mark Bennett talked about getting juniors to take responsibility (“ownership”) for developing their own golf and achieving goals set mutually with their coach. Ownership leads to self-motivation, and your development to full potential is accelerated. 

Believe it or not the following explanation is the abbreviated version.......

How a coach gets you into self-motivation is NOT rocket science. 

“Players are made in the training season but teams are made in the playing season”.

A great coach will have all of the abilities necessary in his bag of tricks to motivate you during your training season.  The fundamentals of great motivational coaching are:-

• He must be an excellent communicator to get you to see the value of what you are doing. 
• He must have the ability to question you in a way which gets you to think about how to teach yourself.   That is basically a “Questioning Framework” for development.
• He must be a problem solver, he will find out what works for you when he teaches.
• He must know how to put you under competitive pressure and stretching pressure.  He will use lots of skills tests and get you to perform under pressure. He will know when to stress you and when to lessen support in a positive way.
• He must be able to work out with you mutually agreed set goals for your performance and  he will make for you a structured development programme
• He will hand responsibility over to you in about 5 stages or levels of “Ownership” .
THE PROCESS TO ACHIEVE SELF-MOTIVATION
PUTTING YOU UNDER PRESSURE – WHY ?
“It is not the push from behind or the pull from up front, it is the drive from within that achieves your potential”
• A top coach knows exactly how and when to put you under pressure and he will get you to best performance by applying a level of Stretch and Challenge at every level of your progression. He must be good at understanding  where you are with this because:-
• If he doesn’t give you enough stress then your performance will be less and you will be bored and comfortable.  Being comfortable means you are under-learning.
• If he pushes you too much too often too fast then you will get panic and burnout and performance will not be to your potential. Deep solid learning is a series of small error based improvements of your fundamentals (under pressure), towards your mutually set goals
THE PROCESS OF APPLYING PRESSURE & WITHDRAWING SUPPORT.
• A good coach starts at ground zero with a comfort environment of learning and skills tests.
• He adds interference to the learning and skills tests in the form of controlled stresses and varied stresses. Adding in stress helps you self-motivate to get both peak performance and self-monitor (part of the questioning framework).
• Gradually he lessens the support he gives while increasing the stretch you feel.  
LEARNING AND CHANGE – KNOWLEDGE -SKILLS AND A POSITIVE ATTITUDE
“Great effort springs naturally from Great attitude”
By increasing stress and lessening support it changes the environment so that it is more about you controlling your learning and not the coach simply giving you knowledge.  
As you naturally take over your self-learning responsibility, you will have a more positive attitude. Your motivation will be stronger and you will be asking yourself about how best to learn at each part of the process. 
There are also three types of learning with your coach. You don’t have to understand them – just know they are there and the dangers. 
• When you are learning at the lowest basic level from a coach, you learn by “conscious learning”. At this level you given knowledge. You are learning fundamentals at this stage.
• Once in the middle stage “I’m Getting It Now” (I now Understand It) you learn further by “association” which means you are both given and ask for knowledge and can link one piece of gained knowledge with other knowledge.
• At the top of the triangle is the “Autonomous” Automatic level of learning and change. At this level you can choose how you learn and get more control of the process of learning.
Getting too fast to the top level “autonomous stage” results in failure, which is a negative experience. Put it this way the best coach will ensure that you “don’t try to run before you can walk” and get the fundamentals right and build a secure foundation to the triangle of What How Why.
THE TOP COACH’S PART IN THE PROCESS
Quite different from a sticking plaster coach, a top coach knows from his experience what are called “Soft Skill Tools”.  By any other name Soft Skills Tools means the teacher has great communication and problem solving skills plus the ability to read your mind, to empathise.
Soft skill tools involve loading the right questions to you every time he coaches and achieving three elements which are
• Raising your awareness –
•  generating you to take responsibility for your learning/development –
• and facilitating your best performance by problem solving.
When he achieves this he gets feedback from you in three ways which shows him you are listening and taking it in.
• He can see that you understand by “getting inside your brain” – empathic response
• He can see you are actively listening
• He gets further knowledge of your understanding by you asking him effective questions

NOW TO THE 5 LEVELS OF OWNERSHIP
“Ownership” challenges the junior to take responsibility for the weakest areas in their development from beginner through to accomplished player.  Ownership involves a development programme which includes self-motivation, and allows both coach and junior to evaluate performance and develop self reliance.  The programme has feedback as it’s backbone.
The advantages of such a program are that it focuses on the junior learning (because you want to) and not the coach teaching. This means that the junior will connect with set goals and ownership - it stimulates “Player thinking”. It also helps the coach focus on what he enjoys which should be coaching the junior.
Level 1.   Selling the End Goal
• The coach gives a program to the junior and “Sells” him a mutually desirable end goal.
• The junior is given the knowledge to achieve that goal – what he has to do to get there.
Level 2.   Fundamental skills learning
• The junior is shown the skills (fundamentals) to achieve the goal
• The junior practices these skills under supervision and direction
Level 3.  I’m Getting it level – competent level – Junior starts taking over ownership
• The junior is guided to select the correct knowledge and skills to get to the goal
• The coach applies varying stresses to adjust comfort and stress
Level 4.  Self Motivation Level – Junior takes over ownership
• Takes ownership using correct knowledge, skills and attitude to achieve the goals
• Junior acts on agreed goal with no supervision
• Coach offers advice and feedback before and after each short term goal to ensure correct application
Level 5.  This level is the target level for all skills required to reach the set goals.
• Junior sets his own goals and decides which system and direction to achieve set goals
• Junior uses effective knowledge, skills and attitude to achieve own set goals with no supervision
The 5 levels of ownership can be integrated within juniors coaching plans.

Hope you got all that !!!