MAGIC

Last Saturday I went on a Coaching Academy course called Magic.
I thought it was going to be a day teaching me how to use coaching skills to help young people.
To an extent it was, but it was a lot more.

It was a day teaching us how to run a course certified by the OCN called Magic.

It's a very simple course for young people, teaching them about motivation, assertiveness, goals, initiative and communication.
Very basic.
The guy who had written the course was teaching us.

I liked him. The more i have thought about him this last week the more inspired by him I have been...

He used to be a cop. In a rough part of Manchester. Towards the end of his time being a cop - quite a high up cop, the police force sent him on a coaching course.
When he got back he thought he'd try it out.
There was a group of shops in a square which kept getting set on fire by kids putting paper through the postboxes.
Duncan (the guys name) went to the local school and got together a group of kids - rough kids - and told them about the problem (which of course they knew about... Duncan thought some of them were the arsonists).
He then set them the task to solve the problem.

They came up with lots of ideas, and eventually settled on one idea.
Duncan got the school and the shop keepers together and they discussed it and tried it out.
None of the shops suffered again.

The next big problem was young people playing football around an old peoples home - cause upset and lots of smashed windows.
Duncan went in to the local school and tried the same thing.
Again the young people came up with a solution.
They tried it.
It worked.

Duncan was shocked at the results.
This was no heavy handed police tactics.
No threats.
No one needed leaning on.

He gave the young people a chance to take responsibility.
To be creative.
To be trusted.
Given the chance to solve a problem.
He inspired them to contribute. To be bigger than they were being.
He gave them through the process a chance to learn other ways of looking at things.
The chance to learn how to work as a group.
A chance to be grow in self-esteem.

Duncan retired from the police force, learnt more about coaching, and went back to his local school with the vision to enable young people to grow, and change and be part of the solution in his area.

His course is simple. It's nothing amazing.
It's not the perfect course, nor the perfect method.
It is good though.
and what's inspiring is that he started.

He “just did it”.

He's helped so many teenagers think more, to become part of the solution to their own problems and the problems in the area.
Duncan has a simple way of looking at it all.

He helps one young person.
That person has 2.5 children.
They all have 2.5 children.
and suddenly there are 10 people being the change in a place.

:-) Simple.

It's not perfect. It's not rocket science.
But he's doing something.
Some thing positive.

Bring it on.


Disclaimer - these are all my words, I'm not totally sure this is how he'd describe it all - but it's what inspired me.