{"id":817,"date":"2020-05-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/teaching-generation-z-your-questions-answered-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:18","slug":"teaching-generation-z-your-questions-answered-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/teaching-generation-z-your-questions-answered-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Generation Z – Your Questions Answered: Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n May 19, 2020 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Teaching Generation Z – Your Questions Answered: Part II<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Coaching & Development<\/a> <\/div>\n
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Is it important to provide them with a menu of developmental pathway options? And does Gen Z really have an a problem with collaboration? Jonnie Noakes, the Director of Teaching and Learning at Eton College, answers your questions.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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Jonnie Noakes is one of the most popular speakers we\u2019ve ever welcomed to the stage at Leaders.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

The Director of Teaching and Learning at Eton College first spoke at the 2018 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London<\/u><\/a> about sustaining the independent boarding school\u2019s global reputation for excellence.<\/p>\n

Noakes returned in March for our Virtual Leaders Meet: Coach Development<\/u><\/a> event, where he gave a presentation on the rise of Generation Z, their characteristics, and the steps coaches might consider in their approach to instructing Gen Z athletes.<\/p>\n

The virtual attendees, all members of the Leaders Performance Institute, were encouraged by our host Michael Caulfield to submit questions to be answered by Noakes at the end.<\/p>\n

Caulfield endeavoured to ask as many as he could in the allotted time, but there were simply too many to run through. The Leaders Performance Institute was taking notes in the background and we later approached Noakes with the idea of responding to a selection of those unasked questions.<\/p>\n

He readily agreed and generously gave of his time for this reprise. \u201cI should say before I go any further that I am not an elite sports coach – I am a teacher,\u201d he reminds the Leaders Performance Institute at the outset. \u201cThere may be some aspects of working with elite sportspeople and teams that I\u2019m just not expert to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is, however, his experience of teaching Generation Z at one of the world\u2019s foremost schools, as well as his work as the Director of Eton\u2019s Tony Little Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning, that inspired his inquisitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m trying to do here,\u201d he continues, \u201cis give you my own impressions based partly on my own experience and partly on the evidence and research about Generation Z; and I hope that some of it is relevant to elite sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such was the detail and consideration that went into each of Noakes\u2019 responses that we divided this Q&A into two parts. The first instalment<\/a> focuses on how Gen Zs respond to challenge and adversity, their mental health, and the value or otherwise of consistent approaches to education.<\/p>\n

This second instalment shines a light on Generation Z’s ability to collaborate, the value of providing them with a menu of options on their development pathway, and their ability to interact with social groups outside of their own.<\/p>\n

If Generation Z struggle to collaborate, how do you deal with the behavioural and cultural conflicts that impact upon their collaborations and ability to achieve shared goals? What advice do you have for coaches in elite team sports?<\/strong><\/p>\n

William Murray, Hymers College \/ Stephen Kirby, Leicester City<\/b><\/strong><\/h6>\n

Here I\u2019m very conscious in trying to give advice to any expert coaches in elite sports because I\u2019m stepping way outside my area of competence. As a general point about their struggles to collaborate, it\u2019s not that Generation Zs cannot collaborate, it\u2019s just that they tend to go it alone. Therefore, when you ask about how you deal with the behavioural, cultural conflicts that impact upon the collaboration, I suppose you have to say, \u2018OK, this is a generation who feel they have to achieve things themselves; they have to be self-motivated, they have to be self-driven to develop their own aims; that is where they\u2019re coming from.\u2019<\/p>\n

Tap into those, find out what it is they\u2019re trying to achieve, make sure in a training situation that their aims are aligned with the aims of the team or the aims of the academy; it\u2019s all very well them having individual aims but they\u2019ve got to be aligned with the group aims if it\u2019s going to work. Make sure they\u2019re conscious of how to bring their own aims into alignment with the group aims; and then show them how much can be gained by working together on this.<\/p>\n

One of the drawbacks of doing things on your own is that you lose the benefit of the group effect; and they need to be shown that. They need to be shown that working collaboratively and in alignment with others is hugely more powerful than doing this on your own.<\/p>\n

Firstly, aligning aims, then showing them the value of collaboration – those are the two things I would do. Whether those make sense to elite sports coaches, I don\u2019t know; but I offer that up as a general approximation.<\/p>\n

Whilst in isolation, young professional footballers are training alone. As coaches, how often should we contact them and do they prefer task-related work or general open conversation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toby Loveland, Southampton FC<\/b><\/strong><\/h6>\n

This is very topical at the moment. Again, Toby’s asking about young, professional footballers and I\u2019m not an expert in young, professional footballers, but what I can say again as a general observation is that when young people are working isolation, even if they enjoy the freedom that gives them to get on with things individually, they need to feel connected; not just to their trainers and their coaches, they need to feel connected to the group. They need to feel they still belong to a team or they still belong to an academy. It\u2019s very clear that when that sense of social connection falls away, so does motivation.<\/p>\n

That sense of isolation that comes can actually be quite damaging to people\u2019s morale. The gist of my answer would be you should keep in regular contact with them and they should know it\u2019s going to be regular; even to say to them \u2018we will have a daily call\u2019 or \u2018we will have a weekly call\u2019 or whenever it is so that they know it\u2019s coming; and it should take place even if there\u2019s no specific issue to check in and address. It\u2019s a kind of checking-in call; finding out how they are doing and keeping them focused on their goals because that kind of social contact really matters.<\/p>\n

As to whether they prefer task-related work or general conversation, I think it\u2019s probably both in my experience. I\u2019m now teaching all of my groups at Eton online; we always start with a few minutes of general open conversation because often that throws up some things I hadn\u2019t planned, which need address. Also, of course, it\u2019s making them feel part of the group; of being involved; but you can\u2019t just have general conversation – they need to have focus and direction – and that\u2019s where the task-related work is valuable.<\/p>\n

Can you give examples of how you actively involve learners when planning their education?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Cheverton, Leicester City<\/b><\/strong><\/h6>\n

This is another area in which there has to be a balance. We, as the adults in the school, have a job to decide what we\u2019re going to achieve and how we\u2019re going to achieve it; that is part of our role as teachers.<\/p>\n

In the simplest example, if I\u2019m teaching an academic course in preparation for a public exam, I know where we\u2019re heading and it\u2019s my job to put in place the structures so that the students will get there. To that extent, the student\u2019s aren\u2019t being asked to plan, they\u2019re being asked to fit in with what we decided. Having said that, it\u2019s very important that young people feel they have a say in how things are done.<\/p>\n

Allowing for the fact that we\u2019ve set the overall educational aims, we have decided on those and have a sense of how we\u2019re going to get there because we\u2019re professionals and we\u2019ve got experience, what we then do is that we share those with the boys; we say \u2018this is what we\u2019re doing, this is what we\u2019re aiming to achieve, and this is how we\u2019re planning to get there. What I\u2019d like to know from you is how you\u2019d like to go about it in specific areas.\u2019<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t throw them a big question like \u2018what are we going to do with our time over the next three months\u2019, we give them a specific question like, \u2018given what we\u2019re trying to achieve this week, would you rather do it this way or would you rather do it that way?\u2019 We give them choices that way and it\u2019s really tightly controlled choice. Now that might appear that we\u2019re giving them the appearance of choice without the reality but it\u2019s not a trick; it\u2019s more that they can\u2019t be expected to put in place the big planning, the strategic planning, the overall structure – that\u2019s our job – but when it comes to setting about fulfilling what we\u2019ve put in place, they do have an opinion and they should be allowed it.<\/p>\n

Given the various preferences across different generational groupings, should organisations try to offer a ‘menu’ of developmental pathways rather than a ‘fixed\u2019 path?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Colin Moran, Irish Rugby Football Union<\/b><\/strong><\/h6>\n

There can be value in offering a menu of pathways but there\u2019s always a danger, of course, that it can be confusing. Choice is good but too much choice is rarely very good. Going back to the mental health problems of Generation Z, there\u2019s evidence that too much choice is part of the problem; but they have more choice than previous generations and this can be confusing. So while a menu is good, you don\u2019t want too broad a menu.<\/p>\n

Having said that, I would state the obvious, which is if a coach is dealing with a group of athletes within a few years of each other, they all belong to the same generation, so it\u2019s not as if you\u2019re trying to cater for multiple generations at the same time; but they will have different preferences between themselves and that\u2019s where the menu element comes in.<\/p>\n

I suppose another way of looking at this is that the menu may not be for the athletes but the coaches, that different coaches and different trainers will feel more at ease with different approaches and, therefore, they may well appreciate a menu so that they can have a sense of choice over how they are going to set about their training.<\/p>\n

How do we adapt our learning to include social interaction with networks outside of our networks?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gareth Jennings, FIFA<\/b><\/strong><\/h6>\n

This is something we seek to do all the time at Eton College. We\u2019re very aware that among our 1,300 students, their experience of different social groups can be quite limited. There is a caveat to that, which is that nearly 100 of our students pay no fees at all, means tested; so in fact there is some variety even amongst our 1,300, but I wouldn\u2019t want to over-claim that, as most of them come from a typical socio-economic group.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re very conscious that as part of their education they need to be in touch with young people from different groups; they need to understand that people not only have different ways of seeing the world but they have different circumstances in their lives, different imperatives and so on. They need to know that this is a reality of our lives.<\/p>\n

How do we do it? The key point is that there\u2019s no point in just setting up connections unless they have a purpose. There\u2019s no point in just getting a group of our boys and a group of students from a very different background and putting them in the same room, there has to be something they\u2019re working on together to make in meaningful.<\/p>\n

In other words, the connecting with other people from another group is something that happens while they\u2019re doing something else and the focus they are both on, if you like, is the enabler. It could be a project they\u2019re working on, something they\u2019re debating together, it could be a form of collaborative learning.<\/p>\n

I had an email this morning from a school in the East End of London, which is very socially-deprived, and this school is putting together its online learning courses and asked \u2018can we collaborate with Eton students on this?\u2019 That\u2019s the kind of project that seems to me to be really worthwhile and something that the students will find relevant. You bring them together, give them something to focus on, and that is the enabler for the social interaction. What I\u2019m driving at here is that these types of social interaction are very important, but it becomes embarrassing if the social interaction seems to be the main point – it needs to be something that happens coincidentally.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also crucial whenever you\u2019re bringing together different social groups that there is an understanding of equality, that there is no assumption that one group knows more, or can help the other group or is in any way superior; they are coming together in an equal, reciprocal process.<\/p>\n

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Could you and your team be making better use of your performance metrics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If so, then the latest Leaders Performance Institute Special Report, Analyse This: Managing Your Metrics<\/em>, will be right up your street. It features a variety of sports organisations, from the San Antonio Spurs<\/strong> and England Netball<\/strong>, to the Wests Tigers<\/strong> and Tennis Australia<\/strong>, via British Skeleton<\/strong>. Download it now.<\/p>\n