ABSTRACT
There is very little in life that doesn’t need some sort of plan to facilitate the achievement of a goal, be it writing a shopping list, looking at a map to plan a route, or even putting a postcode into a satellite navigation system. In essence, planning is our attempt to predict the future so that when the future arrives we are prepared for it. At its simplest planning is waking up and deciding what to have for breakfast; at its most complex planning is preparing the allocation of resources to look after an aging population in 30 years time. Planning in coaching sits somewhere between these two time frames, but even in coaching time frames vary. The plan could be for a single coaching session, it could be for a 10-week programme or it could be a 4-to 8-year talent development programme. However, what is known is the planning becomes more complex based on two factors: the number of variables that have to be accounted for and how far into the future that planning is required to predict.
