Mark Mungal - Developing Youth Leadership Through Sports: Developing Youth Leadership Through Sport

Transcript

[0:00:29] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with Mark Mungal, author of Developing Youth Leadership Through Sport. Our kid’s coaches and PE teachers all have a unique opportunity. Through sports, they can help our young people develop the skills they need to succeed in life, whether they become sales people, stay at home parents or CEOs. Marcus, the directing cofounder of the Caribbean Sport and Development Agency and over the last 20 years, he’s facilitated workshops in 13 Caribbean territories and spoken on youth leadership and sports at conferences all over the world. From Switzerland to South Africa. In this conversation, he shares the sports program that he’s developed to awaken the confidence and leadership skills for middle schoolers and high schoolers. Now, here is our conversation with Mark Mungal.

[0:01:49] MM: I think I’ve been lucky to have had a lot of really positive childhood experiences in sport. My dad was a volleyball coach. He coached our national men and women’s team over the years and because of that, we always had volleyballs at home. We used those volleyballs for football, we used them for basketball and volleyball as well. Part of our culture at home, along with my brothers and sister but also with our friends who lived on the street. The street was our playground back then and I think throughout our the school life as well, particularly at high school, we had a group of friends and we often got together and I owe a lot of it, it was part of the culture for high school back then. That high school actually had a sort of embedded culture of leadership as part of the – what made that school what it was, that’s Presentation College back in San Fernando. As a result of that, we had a lot of youth led type of activities so during the lunch times, we would be involved in the class football games and I mean, when I say football, the real football that you guys call soccer. It was all organized by the students and there was very little, in fact, I don’t think there was any involvement of teachers for those events. Otherwise, a lot of that at the college, not for football but for sport, other sports and for other types of activities including scouts, which I had been a part of as well and which was also organized and led by the students and young people. I remember maybe I was probably about 15 or 16 years old and one of my brothers and a group of crazy friends that we played with, we started our own little volley ball club and we actually entered a B division competition. It was all just – you know, getting together as a group and starting to plan what we wanted to do and I think probably one of the most exciting things was not so much actually playing but getting our first kit. We actually went to – Because we couldn’t afford the high end kits at the mall and we went to a factory that made, of a garment factory and we went with our own design and everything. I remember when those kits who were made for those, they were quite unique because nobody else would have used, it was not branded, nobody has a plague in the tournament, had anything that even looked like it. This few already special and I think for us as a group of young people. Having the opportunity, not just to participate but to take on our own leadership responsibility as organize everything ourselves and to compete at the competition. I don’t want to tell you, maybe I should, we didn’t have such a good run but we still enjoyed the experience and I think - those things add value when you think about it, a lot of those guys, because of those early experiences of not just participating but the early experience of organizing our own business. I think they all remain, involved in sport and I think a lot of those experiences would have added value to the other things that we got in life. Yeah, I think it’s something that all young people should have an opportunity to experience. Around 2002, I was at the time like the teachers college, right in the Trinidad, I was so bloody frustrated because my subject was physical education and as you probably are aware, whether it’s in the elementary school, high school or tertiary ed, physical education is kind of treated as just the little add on and not really seen face value. And I had a real tough time there. Working with some really lovely beginning teachers who were committed to the subject area and the frustration was that, at the end of the day, after spending two years at the teacher’s college, graduating with a diploma, when they got back into the system, it was difficult for them to implement or apply a lot of the things that we would have developed because the school system didn’t value physical education back then. Still, to some extent, not. Coming out of that around 2002, together, myself and three of my students at the teacher’s college, we started an organization, we founded what was then known as the Trinidad and Tobago Alliance for Sport and Physical Education. The acronym that spelled TASPE. Some years later, we rebranded because we were looking up and down the Caribbean islands, it’s now known as the Caribbean Sport and Development Agency. We founded that organization back in 2002. Out of frustration that nothing was happening in the fraternity, we weren’t being respected or valued as a subject area and as a fraternity. That initial startup was to try to raise the roof of physical education in Trinidad and by extension, the Caribbean region. That was kind of the start and I guess if you think about the Caribbean, a lot of people think, conversation with you Charlie that a lot of people think about the Caribbean as a holiday resort. Sun and sand and sea, festive music and spicy food and friendly people. A lot of people outside the Caribbean in our global community also think about the Caribbean people as kind of laid back. Even bordering on lazy and maybe not so productive and maybe not adding much value to the leadership globally. Part of that is not just about the global communities also ourselves, that’s Caribbean people, you know? We tend to have that kind of inferiority complex. Part of I guess of our own colonial history, undervaluing ourselves and as we started working up and down the Caribbean, it really hit us hard that every time we wanted to do something, to raise the profile of physical education to create a new program to do something really well. That there was always an intent, somewhere along to engage somebody from outside of the Caribbean. As if in the region here, we didn’t have the leadership or the capacity to do those themselves, you know? Always reaching out to the preverbal north. We get some support from the Australians or from the UK or from Canada or the US. Always kind of depending on the external or intellect if you wish.

[0:08:05] Charlie Hoehn: That’s really fascinating, had you noticed that before in other areas, other realms in the Caribbean or was that the first time it really hit you that the mentality was. “Let’s depend on outside countries?”

[0:08:19] MM: That’s kind of embedded in our ethos, that’s part of our colonial history. That we’ve always depended on and valued more than our own value, the inputs and the expertise of the global north. That was not unique to the Caribbean either, that’s part of the colonial history across the world so it’s to see them in other developing context. It is changing. During the time since 2002 and starting that look at a regional level, it really jumped at us because it was writing off this. If we were doing work in St. Vincent or Granada, Jamaica, Barbados, any one of the territories have been working and because we had good partnerships, we actually had partnerships with the Australian Sports Commission back then. With UK Sport, with the Commonwealth Games, Canada. We had a good relationship with the international alliance to support out at the US. Because of those relationships, anytime we were in one of those islands, in one of our Caribbean islands, the leadership in those islands recognizing our connections would always ask for help from those partners and rather from, rather than looking at ways that we could solve our problems ourselves. That kind of strength, no commitment and mandate to help all Caribbean people to recognize their own value and recognize that they could do anything, we can do anything that we want to do if we develop that value and recognizing that we have the potential to do anything that we want. All of that kind of, has been part of the ongoing journey to show the value of people. Not just any Caribbean because this existents parts of the world, even in developed countries or if you think about the challenges that you have in the cities, in the US for example, where people are struggling with all sorts difficulties and thinking that the only way that they could resolve those problems or those challenges for some big brother to come in and resolve it for them. Some kind of godfather syndrome or something like that. Even in the education system, when working at a teacher’s college, you know, it’s kind of crazy that as a student, when I was a student, I was a student teacher myself back in the 80s. Then in 2002, working at a teacher’s college as a lecturer. We were doing the exact same content, the exact same curriculums, nothing changed and in fact that curriculum has been to a large extent and continues to be very declarative content. And so that’s okay, we learn about history of education and we learn about the series and all of that. We’re not going beyond that, we’re not creating any new history, we’re not creating our new theories, our own theories, we’re not bringing any added value. That’s not for me a way to develop and to groom. If we want to, if we really want to evolve as people and to group and to realize the full potential, we have to be thinking beyond just that type of education system that says, “This is what exist.” Instead, engage in a system that says, well, “What can we create, what can we do that’s new and different and do it ourselves too.” Actually, it’s not that I have anything against collaborating rather than hiring expertise, I have not problems with collaborating with other experts from outside of the region. I mean, we’ve had really good partnerships as I mentioned to you, our colleagues from the Australian Sports Commission, from UK Sport, from Commonwealth Games Federation and another organizations. They bring good value but we also have value to add and I think that is where the challenge lies for us, that – and many of the developing countries think that, in some of the developed countries communities that are minorities or that are struggling with their own demons, come to feel like they can’t get out of their challenges themselves and they only way it to get out of anything, is there’s somebody comes in with whatever skillsets that they have an expertise that they have a intellect, they have to solve all problems. And we’ve learned that there are, during the time that we’ve worked in the region for the better part of two decades, that Caribbean people have amazing value that they can bring to the table. It’s time for us to step up and share that value rather than be sitting and waiting and put your hands outstretched and asking for some hand outs and all of that. This journey has been about helping people and I’m not just the leadership of the sports sector in the region, but people, including the young people to recognize that they have amazing value and they don’t have to depend on external sources to help them through anything. That they can add value to anything at the global level as a matter of fact.

[0:13:15] Charlie Hoehn: Right, sounds like you’re really – this is a bigger endeavor than simply developing youth through sport, it’s actually developing ultimately Caribbean’s into independent leaders themselves. Who feel confident and competent and being able to add value back to their society.

[0:13:39] MM: Yeah, absolutely, it has evolved and because, I mean, initially, as I mentioned to you, it was out of our own frustration that people didn’t recognize the value and I’m seeing the value. The value that we saw for physical education and for sport and for physical activity was way beyond I think the very narrow minded perspective that still think that sport is important and physical education and mainly for health and all of that. But there’s so much more that we can harness for physical activity and physical education to do and I think over the last decade in particular, across from UN agencies, right down to grass and organizations and governments across the world have recognized the power of sport beyond its inherent contribution to health and wellness. But also, as a powerful tool for just in conflict for dealing with poverty for social cohesion, for education, for equity, et cetera and the programs all over the world that are actually using sport for those specific outcomes.

[0:14:38] Charlie Hoehn: Right, not to cut you off Mark, but I’m a big believer in sport and play and fostering these positive qualities in individuals and communities. I’m a big believer but not all people listening know or maybe believe in that so can you tell some stories where you’ve seen sports develop leadership in our kids?

[0:15:05] MM: We’ve had our own personal experiences at the organization and I refer to now called the Caribbean Sports and Development Agency. One of our very specific areas of focus would have been around developing youth leadership and using sport as a tool for developing and empowering young people. We actually deliberately worked with young people in different setting across the region and in different ways as well. We have seen, in the book, we actually describe one of the stories that I think is a pretty amazing story working in a youth center, sadly it’s no longer operating but it’s a youth center that was known as the El Dorado Youth, it’s called El Dorado Youth Camp back in the – this would have been a space for young ladies who would have fallen out of the traditional school system. Their own challenges based on home situations, based on their own personal issues and so on. We developed a simple intervention using the same model, the same youth sport leadership model which essentially gives young people the opportunity to take responsibility for doing and running a simple program on their own. It was two phases that starts with the coaches and the teachers and the volunteer, supporting them but gradually, passing on that responsibility to the young people. I remember my co-director for the Caribbean sport and development agency, Andrea Collins, good friend as well. Tries to play a little golf in between. Andrea and I had visited one of the days, it was closing event that they had at the youth camp for the girls and there was an incident that happened, the young girls themselves were officiating, it was a volleyball game and while the game was in progress, one of the girls who was on the court, she reacted really negatively to the referee’s call. She had a history herself of violence. Luckily, I shouldn’t say luckily. I think because of the intervention and the leadership responsibility of the young people over the period of time, that situation was controlled really well and at the end of the day, speaking to the leaders, the adults, their response was that in normal circumstances, that situation would have ended in an all out brawl. Because of the program that was implemented, and because the young people have developed somebody to ship skills and capacity to manage situations like that, it went really well. It was perfect but it did not end up in an all out brawl, in fact, what happened was eventually, the young lady took a time out, she was removed from the game, she knew what she had to do to get back into the game. The captain of her team consulted with the official which by the way the official who was herself a young person from the youth camp and she was returned to the game after and continued playing. What we do know is that this intervention works and we’ve seen it working with the Caribbean Healthy Lifestyle Program across several of the countries in the region. We’ve seen it working in our project which is not unique to the Caribbean but which we also manage and we’ve seen it working across our own youth and biometric sport program, working directly with the youth but we’ve also seen it working to the intervention that we do via coaches and teachers and volunteers who deliver the program. We’re not directly delivering those but just in the workshops that we do with those coaches with those teachers, we’ve gotten good feedback about the quality of those interventions in other territories.

[0:18:45] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to Bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. Now, your book has principles, it has strategies and has tools for empowering young adults. I’m curious, not only, what are some of those tools but also, what do you think is the tool that you want people to take away from this interview and practice with? What is the one idea that you hope listeners will take with them and implement into their lives?

[0:19:59] MM: Look, there are some overarching things Charlie. I think it will be useful for the coaches and the teachers and the volunteers who serve young people and schools and communities who would read a book like this, to really understand the overarching concepts. A lot of the things in the part actually thinks that they would probably already know and appreciate and probably implementing in different ways. I think this brings all of that together to focus more specifically on leadership. If I had to think about it taking something away, I think a key thing would be understanding that leadership is not for anyone who - any individual who we think might be the one on in the group that has that capacity. I’d like them to recognize that all young people have the capacity to lead. I guess just like, you know, reading and mathematics and science, some young people would be better at mathematics and science. Some maybe better at literature and language. But they all would have an opportunity at the school system to develop their capacity to read and write and their capacity to do math and to do science. I think we’re missing the boat because we hand pick people and say, “You’re going to be a leader and we don’t give that opportunity to others and so a key take away from me from this would be, in that sport context that we need to move away from the kind of token leadership that we give on people. And we say, “Okay you’d be the captain, you get to do the coin toss,” which in a serve might be good and a nice experience for them. It is not really a powerful leadership experience. It is kind of a token leadership experience. And we usually give that to the star boy or the star girl or the best player on the team and I think that a key take away from this would be first to start thinking a little more broadly that all young people have the capacity to develop leadership. Some will develop it to a higher level than others but they all have the capacity and they all need to develop leadership skills because they are going to use those in different spheres of their lives at some stage or that’s in their schools and communities, churches, clubs, et cetera. Even in the work place. So I think a key take away would be for those who work with young people and that sport sector and in other sectors as well, to recognize that leadership is not something that should be held back for one or two individuals who you think may develop to be good leaders but added into something that all young people should have the opportunity to experience and to develop.

[0:22:32] Charlie Hoehn: I am in full agreement with you there and given that we have a decent amount of American listeners and one of the things that frustrates me in America is the emphasis on the individual rather than the community or the group. And you talk about token leadership of being able to say, “Okay the star player is the leader.” What are the things that you see teams, coaches getting wrong in developing leadership across all players rather than just one or two? What are some of other things that you see apart from saying, “Okay you’re the captain because you’re the best player”? Are there any other mistakes I guess that you see that just frustrate you that you wish you could tell coaches, “Don’t do that?”

[0:23:22] MM: Yeah, well first of all I think one of the things that I always like to recognize is that coaches who work with young people bring amazing value and to a large extent, a lot of the coaches who work not just here but across the world are really giving service that I think we don’t value enough. They serve as literarally as parents and mentors for young people and to a logic extent, a lot of children have really positive experiences from youth sports programs that add amazing value to their lives. So I want us to be careful about saying that coaches are doing things wrong. I think they do things differently and surely, one of the things that we and I am sharing in the book is that if we think about leadership as a skillset or set of skills and we want to develop it then we identify, okay, these are the key skills, the sub skills if you wish off leadership and they’re not going to happen automatically. Yeah, we know sport is a powerful medium for developing those skills. Skills like decision making, skills that involve communication. Skills like delegating. Those are skills that do not develop automatically. In fact, no skills really develop automatically. If we want young people to become responsible, if we want them to develop a goal setting skills, et cetera, if we want them to develop cooperative behaviors, those things must be deliberately done. So our responsibility as coaches and teachers and volunteers who work with young people is if we want to develop those skills, In the same way we develop the skill of striking the ball with a bat in baseball or catching, we have to design learning experiences that facilitate those outcomes. We always talk about the power of sport to do a hundred different things but those things are not automatically developed. We have to design them and experiences that lead you to develop it into skills and whether they are sport skills or leadership skills or just generic life skills, the responsibility of coaches is in the same way that they plan a program to improve your catching and your hitting and your running, et cetera, they have to similarly design a program that includes experiences that develop those leadership skills.

[0:25:42] Charlie Hoehn: And in the book you talk about the important of reflection and the importance of listening. So on the surface I think or on an intellectual level, pretty much every adult knows the importance of those things but they don’t necessarily practice them. So what do you want people to know about the importance of reflection and listening?

[0:26:05] MM: Yeah, so as part of my own journey and understanding that whole process of as I reflect in the book, not so much learning as awakening. I prefer to use that term and suggest that all people, young people that we are targeting in particular already knew pretty much everything that they need to know. It’s already inside of them and so to a large extent our responsibility as coaches and teachers and volunteers who work with young people in the communities. Our responsibilities are not so much to teach as it is to awaken the knowledge that they already have. Just think about it, if you bring together a group of young people and have them sit around the table and you ask them to tell you of what do you think would be some of the things that would make you a good leader. You leave them for about 15 to 20 minutes, they will come up with the same things that you’ve read out of [inaudible] book or any of those leadership gurus. Because as long as you give them the time to think it through, it will come to them because it is not – these things are in the analysis that goes this from where I say these things are already inside of us and our responsibility is that so we can acknowledge that young people already have and we do that by designing learning experiences but also giving them an opportunity not just to participate in the experience but to reflect on them. And so there’s a little mantra that we use in the book that we learn best by doing when we reflect on what was done. So oftentimes and especially in the sports sector we do a lot of things where we do a lot of drills and activities over and over but we are not sure if we are already learning anything if we are not thinking about it and giving the young people the opportunity to reflect on what they do helps to facilitate a better understanding and a richer understanding of that entire concept or principle that you are trying to bring across.

[0:27:58] Charlie Hoehn: So you are giving them experiences where they’re said to do something well and then you encourage them to take a moment to reflect on it and discuss what went right, what went wrong.

[0:28:12] MM: Absolutely, and how they can do it better and that reflective process is as much as about embedding the concept and the principles so that they really understand it really well but it is also about creating new ideas and looking at ways that they could have done something better. So in a situation for example where they would have made a decision and at the end of it, they reviewed how that decision was made and what decision was made, not only would they better understand the old process of decision making. But they will now start to think, “Oh maybe we could have done it this way instead, what if we did this?” So it’s also about innovation and creating new ways of doing things better. When we run up a simple tournament and you have the kids involved in officiating and scoring and doing a little bit of sports journalism on the side, when you reflect on that on all of that at the end of it, it also helps us to think about ways of improving what we did. And not only improving but just ways of being more innovated or more efficient and so that reflective practice, that idea of doing things and then reflecting on what we did is not just about reinforcing on what we are doing and reinforcing what we learned. It’s also about thinking about new ways, new innovations and more effective ways to do things et cetera.

[0:29:27] Charlie Hoehn: You have a chapter on delegation and I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day where we are talking about the things that frustrated us about school that we only learned later on in life that we didn’t cover in school. You have to do everything yourself in school, you can’t work with others on certain assignments because that’s cheating but you talk about the importance of delegation and how it’s a leadership skill that we need to teach our youth. Can you expand upon what this chapter is about?

[0:30:05] MM: Yeah, I think dedication is just one of several leadership skills and again, just to go back to the broader picture, we don’t directly teach leadership in the school context and so where is it being to and one of the worries I have about the education system across the world and even though they are some of the more forward thinking nations that are doing different things to a large extent, we are still stuck in a lot of content that’s not moving our children beyond what we did 50 years ago. So they are doing a lot of the same things, the same math and literature and science and so on and so we’ll lose, we’re not addressing some of those skills that I think that are skills that we need now, to solve problems that we don’t even know what problems exist 10 years from now. So if we still focus in on problem solving for existent content that we’re not developing innovative thinking et cetera and leadership, how are we going to solve the problems that we don’t even know about? How are we preparing our young people to solve those problems that we don’t even know about? And so delegation is one of the sub-skills of leadership that we address in this book and it comes out of manifest and experience with the team that we have worked with over the years. That CSD team because initially, we were a small group and we were doing everything ourselves and as the group grew larger, we had more things to do and obviously, we couldn’t everything ourselves. And that was a learning experience for us and of course, we learned the hard way. And the hard way meant that we passed on tasks to some staff and some of those tasks were kind of a menial tasks or some of them were not clearly communicated and when we delegate in a way that is not effective and is not efficient, if you keep giving somebody on your team only the menial tasks to do, they start to feel undervalued or unvalued and so that’s not going to help them. And they are not going to then put any effort into doing whatever you need them to do as a team. If you delegate tasks to someone with all clarity so they are now really clear about on what they have to do then that also leads to some challenges. So in that skillset of delegating, there are several things that we address. So what and how and what and how to do that delegating effectively and efficiently so that you get the results that you want and how do you do that as a leader. Without shaking your responsibility as a leader but at the same time not holding hands as it will with the team member but making them feel valued. So we give some examples of how we could do that at the sports setting and in the real sports setting. I think that’s a really valuable skill. As we see on our team our responsibility whether you sit on the chair at the highest level or as a sub group of the team, now your responsibility is not to do anything necessarily. But rather to get things done and in order to get things done sometimes means you delegate to other members of the team and so that sub-skill of delegating is a critical one for leadership and just think about that in the broader context of the work space and so on too. That is in the corporate sector. If you are a leader, you have tasks to do, you have a team to work with, you can do everything yourself or you could one off turn of course is to delegate some of those task to others. And the book gives you some guidelines about how to do that so that is to maintain the quality of what you want as you manage the relationship between the team leader and the other members of the team and all of that. That could be a bit complicated dynamic again, the book gives you some simple guidelines to follow to help you to develop that and hone that skill of delegating.

[0:33:47] Charlie Hoehn: Mark what is your personal favorite transformation that you’ve seen of a youth, a teenager who’s use or who’s gone through these sports leadership development programs, gone from point A to point B and had a big transformation? Does somebody stick out to you?

[0:34:09] MM: There’s some stories but there’s one that jumps into my head right now of a young man who was actually part of a youth program run in the Caribbean and I think who would have benefited from that entire youth leadership experience. I think he benefited more than others because he was given more opportunity and one of the things that we had set up early on in the organization is learning from our colleagues out in Canada and Australia in particular. The Canadians had a program that was a leadership program and they would take a university students and give them an opportunity to participate in some voluntary work all over the world particularly in developing country contexts. And we actually hosted several of those Canadian youth leaders they were called at the time and we saw the benefit of that model. Here you have young people immersed in really authentic experiences applying their leadership capacity in real settings. So this is not as you say in the classroom setting where you have a paper, pencil, exam and you figure, you know the answers, the correct answers about leadership. This is not about leadership, this is leadership and so we borrowed that model and we were able to provide opportunities for young people in the Caribbean to have similar experiences and we hosted a young guy from Guyana some year’s back who is volunteer, intern. So he was immersed in our organization as a young person. And have the opportunity to apply the leadership skills that he would have gained from participating in what was called the Caribbean Healthy Lifestyle Program and he just evolved as a real champion, because of that I mean it is a combination of things obviously. He brought a lot to the table as he brought his own passion and commitment and I think the reason why I say it’s an amazing transformation is because I saw him from that young excited passionately sport, he is actually a good athlete, I saw him evolve into one exactly known academic. He is lecturing at the local university here and I think that the opportunity that he got really helped him to further develop not just as leadership capacity but his capacity in general. And now he is giving back in a very significant way to young people not only through the university system but also through his work with our organization. So I think he is already for me a champion having seen and grew through that Caribbean Healthy Lifestyle Program, serving as a young volunteer in our youth leadership program. And now, taken on a leadership role both in academia, the university here, but also through the volunteer work that he continues to do.

[0:37:05] Charlie Hoehn: That’s excellent, that’s got to make you proud. Now the biggest take away I think of taking from this conversation and from your book is that leadership skills are really for everybody. They’re not just for individuals, they’re not for the team captain. It’s for everyone and I like to wrap up these interviews with a challenge. So what is one thing that our listeners can do or try from your book this week that could have a positive impact on their life?

[0:37:36] MM: One thing, look I think to be honest one and I threw this out to the coaches and the teachers and the community volunteers who work with the young people is often a difficult challenge for them but it’s a start. If we want to develop real leaders, in other words we are empowering the young people, giving them power, then we have to give them the opportunity to make choices. That is one of the most difficult things for a lot of coaches and teachers because as coaches and teachers, we tend to want to be in charge of everything. We make all of the decisions, we are the ones who run this program, we are leaders and so it’s often difficult because of our very nature as coaches and teachers, our own inherent leadership natures. It is very difficult for us to give up that decision making process and pass it on to the young people. So a key challenge that I’d throw out to coaches and then teachers and then those volunteers who work with young people, create some opportunities where you don’t make the decisions. You give the young people the opportunity to make the decision. So you don’t decide, give them the opportunity to decide. But to do that, you start in a controlled way and as they develop in their decision making skills improve and you give them or you have awaken their decision making skills, you allow them to make those choices in a more open environment. You might start off the choice might be, “Okay class,” or, “Okay guys, or, “Ladies, this is – we have an option today, we can either do this or we can do that. You choose, are we going to do A or B?” That’s kind of control option. We want you to move to that level where you don’t even have to give them A or B or C or D. You let them decide and they come to you and say, “Coach, today we’re going to be practicing this or coach, today we’re going to be in a practice game against this” – or, “Coach, today we’re going to be doing a classroom session.” You want to move to that point where they may call on this decisions themselves. The book gives you some options to do that as well. Let them decide for example, what format the competition will be, whether it will be a round robin or whether it would be knock out et cetera. Give them the opportunity to make choices. The reality is, we’re not empowering young people if we don’t give them choices, a key part of this empowerment which is what leadership is about that as well. A key part of that is decision making. I few keep telling them what to do, we’re not giving, we’re not empowering them, we’re not developing their leadership skills. If we really want to do that, a key part of it is giving the young people the opportunity to make decisions. Let them decide. That’s a challenge, I throw that out to the teachers and the coaches who, as a key take away.

[0:40:23] Charlie Hoehn: I love that. Just kind of reiterate, restate said, maybe start off with some controlled decision making, “Do you guys want to do A or B?” Then, ultimately transition them so that they are deciding what is happening. I love that. That’s fantastic. Mark, how can our listeners potentially connect with you or follow you in your journey?

[0:40:46] MM: Well, as of now, we haven’t developed the website and all of that yet. As of now, the main form of contact will be email, you can get on to me directly, you can email me at mmungal@gmail.com.

[0:41:07] Charlie Hoehn: Well, this has been great, thank you so much Mark.

[0:41:09] MM: Yeah, thanks a lot Charlie, it’s been a great interview. Thank you very much, I’m looking forward to hearing from your listeners who want to learn more about how they can develop leadership among young people using this powerful medium and of sport.

[0:41:24] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Mark Mungal for being on the show. You can buy his book, Developing Youth Leadership Through Sport, on Amazon.com. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about book with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.