Questions
and answers from Craig Joubert
Powerade launched its first leg of Performance Academies taking place
across major cities in the country. The Academy, hosted at the Kingsmead
Cricket Ground, saw several performance experts running an interactive one-day
seminar. Among these experts was Craig
Joubert, South African Professional Rugby Union Referee and a Referee Talent
Development Coach at World Rugby, who challenged and empowered the Durban-based
coaches with critical knowledge to optimise their players’ performances.
For the 2018 campaign, Powerade has drawn attention to coaches by Celebrating Everyday Coaches. This
campaign will see the everyday ‘ordinary’ coaches who do extraordinary things by
refining young talent that goes on to do exploits on world stages. This is
because coaches contribute greatly to the success of their teams/athletes and
act as mentors and influencers for many sportsmen and women.
Craig Joubert – World Rugby
Referee Coach
(Question) What was the
objective of your session with the coaches?
(Answer) I wanted
to teach the coaches about how we managed to produce a high-performance
environment. We have a team of rugby 7s referees that we are taking to the
Olympics in 2020 and we want to create
the best high-performance environment for them to operate in. Individually and
as a group we want them to be the best that they can be.
I wanted to share
with this group of coaches at the Powerade Performance Academy some of the
learnings that we have taken out of how to create a high-performance team.
Our first
objective was to create an optimal performance team. I wanted to share ideas as
to why culture is important to an effective team and some of the key values
that they live by that contributes to success in their environments.
There are a lot of
similarities between the team that we are sending to the Olympics and what the
coaches find at their schools.
Hopefully the
coaches learned something from my presentation and they take it back to the
schools to create effective and high-performance teams.
(Question) What feedback did you
get from the coaches?
(Answer) In my
environment we use the teams “Trust” and “Honesty”. I was pleased to see that a
lot of the feedback and questions that I got were around “Trust” and “Honesty”.
In a team “Trust”
and “Honesty” needs to start with the management team and coaches. When athletes
see you embody “Trust” and “Honesty” and they start to emulate you.
“Honesty” does not
only mean that you don’t lie to a player, it also deals with information that
you give to a team. This includes good and bad news. You earn respect when you
are honest and transparent in difficult decisions that you have to make. An
example of a difficult decision is where you look a player in the eye and tell
them about a selections decision that you have made as to why they did not make
the team.
We have found that
through “Honesty” players respond well, and they trust you more and are more
honest with you.
Even when someone
gets bad news, if you do it in an honest and transparent way, it will inspire
them to improve.
(Question) One of the things
that you talk about is getting the players to learn from themselves, how do you
get the coaches to enable the kids to learn from themselves?
(Answer) All the
values and behaviours that we have as a referee team were not dictated to by
the management instead we allowed the team to come up with them themselves and
because they came up with the values themselves they can hold themselves
accountable to their own values.
The job of
management is make sure that they continuously commit to the values that they
came up with.
School children
respond well if given the responsibility to review their own performance. If
they do well then, they must look at why they did well, if they do something
less well then, they should look at what did not work out, learn from it and do
it differently. This responsibility makes them far more committed to changing
what they do and improve.
For very young
kids you can ask them to tell you “what the team is all about” once they have
done that you will see them work towards that goal.
We often
underestimate young people but by giving them the responsibility to create
their own team goals you will be astounded as to how they react, and you will
benefit from it.
(Question) How do you deal with
pressure and how do you learn from criticism?
(Answer) Criticism
is a big challenge for school sport coaches.
Coaches give their
time freely and willingly. Parents should be appreciative for what a coach does
to further a kid’s development. Some criticism from parents and school sport
players can be quite vicious which is similar to what referees can get. I
encourage the coaches to try to put the criticism into perspective. The
fiercest criticism for a referee comes from the guy that is on his couch at
home. They have access to all the replays and all the technology that they need
to complain.
For school coaches
you will find that most parents will only come through on weekends and not
during the week. Some of them think that their kids are better than what they
actually are. The reality is that their kids are most probably not as good as
what they think they are. What they don’t know is that coaches are trying to do
their best to help these kids and these are not the people that you should
worry about.
I tell coaches to
surround themselves with the people whose criticisms they respect. You never
stop learning and constructive criticism will help you become a better coach.
Be selective about who you listen to. A lot of people out there with opinions
and they are not knowledgeable in the sport that you coach, and they also are
very emotional because you are coaching someone close to them. Respect these
peoples emotions but do not listen to them.
The next leg of Powerade Performance Academies will take place in Port
Elizabeth(July), Cape Town (September) and Johannesburg (November).
For more information, visit Powerade Facebook page (@PoweradeZA) and #AlwaysForward.
ENDS
Notes to Editor
Speakers for Performance Academy in Durban
Craig Joubert: South African professional Rugby
Union Referee and a Referee Talent Development Coach at World Rugby
Topic discussed: Creating a high-performance environment
About Craig
Joubert
officiated in domestic first class matches in South Africa since 2003, in
matches in the Vodacom Cup and Currie Cup competitions. He refereed on the
World Rugby Sevens circuit in 2003–04. He has been included in the Super Rugby
refereeing panel since 2005 and has also refereed international test matches
since 2005, making his debut in a match between the United States and Wales.
Joubert took
charge of Super Rugby finals in 2009, 2013 and 2014 and has officiated in
Tri-Nations / Rugby Championship matches since 2009, refereeing matches between
Australia and New Zealand in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. In the 2011 Rugby World
Cup, Joubert refereed four pool games, a quarter final, a semi-final and the
final. He refereed the deciding Six Nations match in 2012 and one of the
British and Irish Lions games on their tour to Australia in 2013.
He retired from
refereeing 15-a-side matches at the end of 2016 to take up a role as a Referee
Talent Development Coach at World Rugby
Dale Bekenstein: Former Dolphins and Protea’s player and now
Protea’s Batting Coach.
Topic discussed: Adapting professional coaching techniques at school level
Topic discussed: Adapting professional coaching techniques at school level
About Dale
Dale
Benkenstein is a former South African cricketer. He was named coach of
Hampshire County Cricket Club, England, in 2014 and previously also worked as a
batting coach for the Sunfoil Dolphins in South Africa. He is currently head
coach of Hilton College First XI in the Kwazulu Natal Midlands, South Africa.
He coaches
aspiring professional cricketers from around the world and offers coaching and
cricket camps for young cricketers.
Zipho Sikhakhane: Global Speaker, Writer & Business
Strategist
Topic discussed: Leading from within
About Zipho
Zipho
Sikhakhane is an international speaker and business strategist. She has held
management positions in industry leading corporations worldwide and is the
first black South African to complete an MBA at the top-ranked Stanford
University in the USA. In 2016, she received the Outstanding Young Achiever
Award from the UNESCO Center for Global Education. In the last 15 years, she
has presented in four continents, including a TEDx Talk in the USA on Africa’s
potential. She delivers inspiring keynotes, workshops and poetry on Africa’s
potential, leadership, entrepreneurship, youth and women in business. She has
been featured in numerous publications worldwide and is published as a
contributing author in Singapore in a book on inspirational women. She is also
a weekly Business Columnist for the Sunday Times in South Africa.
