Professional Development

Professional Development

The Institute is committed to supporting the performance directors and key personnel within the various sports to further their knowledge and expertise and in turn enhance their delivery to their athletes and teams through professional development activities.

The Professional Development Programme initiated and provided by the Institute is called Sparking Performance. The Sparking Performance initiative consists of a number of complementary elements; workshops, survey engagement, and peer assist.

Workshops

The first Sparking Performance workshop took place in Sports HQ in Dublin; home of many of the National Governing Bodies of Sport on in April 2009 and was attended by Performance Directors and High Performance Coaches from ten national governing bodies. Resources from this workshop are available to download here Survey Engagement.

In high performance sport, effective elite coaches and performance directors are implicit in the development of our Irish high performance athletes. The Sparking Performance survey is designed to identify how the Institute can help our elite coaches and performance directors develop through skills through high value, tailored workshops.

The first engagement survey, completed by performance directors and elite coaches in April 2009, helped to identify topics for the subsequent workshops and Peer Assist sessions. We intend to continue to engage with our elite professionals throughout the year to ensure that we are on target to deliver professional development initiatives that are appropriate, high quality and, most importantly, useful!

Peer Assist

Performance directors, elite Head Coaches and Chief Executives of relevant National Governing Bodies are invited to join the Institute Peer Assist community. In a collaborative and friendly environment, this community will take the form of structured, practical sessions where high performance management and coaching professionals can get together to learn, talk and share expertise and support each other. Again, the topics and format of these sessions have been and will continue to be identified as a result of consultation with the professional that we are serving.

The next Sparking Performance workshop entitled Negotiation Skills and Conflict Resolution will take place on April 13th and 14th in the Institute offices at the National Sports Campus. The target beneficiaries for this workshop are High Performance Directors, High Performance Head Coaches and CEOs within sports that have athletes on International Carding Scheme.

To book your place on this workshop please email Ali Porter at aporter@instituteofsport.ie