When you think of regripping many automatically think of a workshop tucked away at the back of a Pro Shop at a club and then nothing more than a selection of example grips on the side of the shop counter.

Well it doesn’t have to be like that – you could add regripping to your business regardless of whether you run or have access to a retail facility like a shop or store.

If you are a coach working at an academy, or maybe you run an indoor practice facility, then you too could add regripping services and Golf Pride products to your offering.

All you need is an area within a facility where you can create a grip station and also promote your regripping service and the products you have on offer.

Golf Pride’s team of local distributors will then help explain what your specific requirements are, what products you can stock and how to go about effectively marketing your services and Golf Pride’s range of products on offer.

4 Tips For Marketing Regripping Outside of the Pro-Shop

1 – Make sure your regripping service is clearly on offer to your students or customers

Place marketing materials in driving range bays, discuss the service with every student you have, bring products with you to lessons, and keep your regripping point-of-sale materials and stands in view of your teaching bay or passing customers.

2 – Utilise your Social Media presences and leverage your email database

Make an announcement about the introduction of your services, make use of the Golf Pride retailer resources on offer, and keep regular communication going with clients.

3 – Make it experiential

Have specific times on the range or at your academy where you regrip clubs in front of customers to show your expertise, attention to detail and the services on offer. You could create a while-you-wait service for people who are practicing, or perhaps invite the local distributor to spend a few hours with you and your clients to share their knowledge of the important of regripping.

4 – Keep regripping at the forefront of your mind

Hardwire the services into your teaching process, ensuring your students are all using appropriate grips and you regularly check their grips to ensure they are fit for purpose.

—————————————-

To find out more about setting up your own regripping service with Golf Pride visit www.golfpride.com/about/wholesale-distributors and find your nearest distributor.

Why did you decide to offer a regripping service?

Regripplng is something we do through our PGA training and something I have been involved with for a long time. I’ve been regripping golf clubs for more than 20 years! Sometimes it’s an element of the club which is overlooked by golfers, who tend to look at the head and the shaft and forget their only contact with the club is actually the grip.

For that reason we’ll do MOT checks throughout the year. We’ll often pick a club out of the bag and say “how do you manage to hold onto this?”  You’ll find it’s one of those typical shiny grips where you can pretty much see your face in it!

It’s all just about starting the conversation and making them aware that regripping their clubs can help them to improve their golf.

What benefits will a golfer get from regripping their clubs?

On social media now you see a lot of people talking about grip pressure and that’s really important. Your only contact with the golf club is your hands and you’ll feel that pressure through the grip, so it’s important you’ve got it right.

The right size of grip is important too – if the grip is too small you’ll have more wrist action. These are just a couple of the selling points that you can take to the customer to show them how important the grip is, when right now it’s probably something that they’re overlooking.

How often should a golfer regrip their clubs?

It really depends on how much they use them. If they use them a lot they will get worn quite quickly but you would definitely say that, after a year, you would like them to come in and get an MOT done. Often we will start that conversation by asking the customer how their grips are looking and feeling and we’ll give them a quick check while they’re here.

How do you know which grips will suit a certain golfer?

Simply by talking to them and getting it in their hands – the Golf Pride display allows you to do that.

We’ll start them off with the normal, standard golf grip and then move them up to the mid-size and then pop a jumbo in their hands. We get them to feel it and then tell us which one gives them the feeling that they want. It’s their feedback that we’re after and allows us to make the right decision on what will suit them best.

Why did you choose to stock Golf Pride grips?

We stock quite a few of the major brands in our pro shop here and we feel it is a nice fit among those. Golf Pride provides us with a grip wall which instantly helps you to sell that product to the customer.

Rather than sticking to the old school ‘do you do grips?’ approach, customers can instantly see it right in front of them.

Once they’ve found the type of grip they need, we often find that the variety of the range means we can offer them loads of different colours to suit their tastes.

We’ve given the wall a prominent position in the shop where customers can touch them, feel them and put them in their hands. That then gives us a good lead into the sale of a golf grip and a starting point for us to begin to educate them on the importance of regripping.

How does regripping complement your business?

Once I had the grip wall installed I would say that sales in gripping went up at least five times, if not more.

During the course of the year we’re maybe doing three sets a week but that can go up to three or four a day at busy times during the winter.

This time of year is big for us in that respect. We do a lot of regripping in the winter because if you go out on the course and that grip is slippery, it is really going to affect your golf.

We do a lot of promotion on social media and through poster around the golf dub. At this time of year we increase that a little bit as it is an important time for regripping but, importantly, we don’t just limit ourselves to the pro shop – we promote the service right around the golf club.

It’s nice to have that additional service to offer to the customer. We’ll often ask them If they are staying around at the club for a bite to eat or a drink and if they are we ask for half-an-hour to take a look at their grips.

Once we’ve done the regripping and taken it upstairs to the customer they will usually turn around and go “wow, you’ve done that already – that’s fantastic!”

What advice would you give other pros considering offering a regripping service?

The first thing they have to do is get a nice display, which is something Golf Pride can offer.

Get that in as it immediately makes your customers aware you have this service available to them and creates a starting point for the conversation. Once they can see it and feel it, they can make a choice on the grip and then you haw that final bit where you offer the slick service.

I feel by offering Golf Pride and displaying the products on a grip wall where the customer can feel them, you are enhancing that service and ensuring the member has exactly the right grip for their clubs.

For more information on Golf Pride visit www.golfpride.com.

Click Here to Visit the Golf Pride Corporate Partner Hub Page

Here are some good examples of where you could make more of an investment career-wise:

1. Build relationships. Create your own circle of influence; find a mentor. Make time to make connections, pay attention to and nurture meaningful relationships.
2. Do the career management thing: make a plan, devise some goals. Take time to review your objectives and challenge your own commitment levels daily.
3. Recognise what you are good at and get better at it. Spend time observing yourself and your colleagues in meetings or just day to day and notice what you uniquely bring. Then invest some time and money getting better at it.
4. Be prepared to take a step backwards. It may be that to move forward long term you need to forego some short term gratification. A lower salary now could mean great things in the future.
5. Get a qualification/attend a course/learn something new.
6. Build your online brand. Create a webpage to showcase your work or simply keep your social networking profiles updated and constantly be on the lookout for anything that could be perceived as negative.
7. Raise your professional profile. Spend time on a committee or board or take on a challenging new project. Find ways to gain valuable, marketable experience.
8. Ask for feedback. And learn from it.
9. Take a risk. If you don’t really have to think about risk it probably isn’t the life changing or breakout move you were looking for.
10. Make time for that which balances you: your family, your friends, your hobbies. They will offer you perspective, different experiences and a much needed escape from the world of work.

If you think about it you probably invest more time and money in your choice of holiday than you do in your career. Given that you spend two-thirds of your waking life at work and your career goes a long way to determining your quality of life, it may be worth reassessing your investment portfolio.

This content appears courtesy of Abintegro, experts in career management, transition technology & e-learning for today’s modern, mobile and technology-savvy workforce – Find out more at www.abintegro.com

Credit: Forbes; HBR; LinkedIn; Investopedia

There’re often times beyond this, once a brand is established, where time is still scarce and efficiency is the name of the game.

The team at Smart Pension has felt both sides of this in the past couple years and has experienced the time crunch particularly on the social media side (sound familiar at all with your experience?). One of the UK’s leading pension companies, the Smart Pension team pulled through in an incredibly inspiring way.

Here’s their story of how they’ve come up with their social media strategy, saved time, and found the best tools to use.

Social media and an early-stage startup

Jack Saville, a marketing executive at Smart Pension, built his startup to be the go-to source for UK pension and auto enrolment. And one of the key marketing strategies he chose for traction was content.

One of the first jobs was to put as much great information and helpful content on the website as possible. However when we finished creating content, we also wanted to shout about it on social media.

We were churning out so much content in the beginning that logging and posting each article on each social media channel was becoming a real time consuming exercise. If we had had Buffer in the beginning we would have saved a great deal of time (and money) in the crucial start-up, make-or-break phase of our business.

Smart Pension made it through this early critical stage and is grateful to now be a more established entity. They’ve kept right on working.

The content team crushed it early on and put together the majority of the foundational, main topics needed to be a thought leader on pensions and enrolment. The next phase was tackling current news and changes, being more of a real-time resource for Smart Pension’s growing audience.

This shift to timely content also needed timely distribution, which is where social media marketing has really paid dividends for the team.

The news section is where we direct most of our efforts now. This is important, as investing a lot of time in your news section shows your customers that you are well aware of the changes in the industry, and that we know that the services we provide need to be altered and suited to the current market and the current pension laws. Social media is the channel in which we communicate our knowledge of industry changes to our customers.

Not a content creation problem … a content distribution one

In building out this news hub, Smart Pension ran into a slight problem:

We work so hard on making sure our news section addresses the current topics in the pension industry, that sometimes we finish a number of articles at the same time.

It’s a similar problem that might crop up for publishers, news organizations, online magazines, and others. It’s not that there’s any trouble coming up with content to share, it’s more a matter of knowing what to share and when to share it.

Jack and his team found the solution here with social media scheduling from Buffer.

Smart Pension spaces out new posts every few hours so that there’s room between each update.

The articles don’t all go up as a wall of similar-looking tweets and posts.

The buffered schedule makes it so that content hits the timeline at all times, helping to reach people who may be online at different times throughout the day.

And the beauty of it all: All this scheduling can be automated.

The scheduling function is also helpful to the work flow of the team. The team member who wrote the article can schedule the post for times of the day that we are posting less and then proceed to the next task. The team members do not have to try and remind themselves of when to post their articles.

Additionally, with the scheduling function we can then post articles at night and at weekends when team members would not necessarily be working. This means that we can have a round the clock presence on social media, without having one of our team members staying up all night!

Scheduling + Analytics

Lots of content to share and a set number of times to share it all: When do you get the most bang for your buck with social media sharing?

The Smart Pension team came up with a few experiments to test the best time to post for engagement.

Here’s an example:

To find out if it’s better to post extra content at night or over the weekends, set up a schedule for both and check the results.

After a few days, log into the Analytics section of Buffer and check to see which time slots have tended to perform the best. You can see this from the Analytics view with a quick glance and intuition…

… or you can export data from your past period of experiments, and filter the results for each different time.

Here’s a sample spreadsheet using data from my own sharing:

(Couple this with the takeaways from Buffer’s optimal timing tool to get even more confirmation for which way you’re leaning.)

Great content goes great with images

As we are a start-up, we cannot afford to have a graphic designer to create the imagery for our social media posts every time we need to post something. Pablo give us the ability to make our social media posts look interesting and exciting, whilst not having to pay for a graphic designer to design them and create them.

According to our most recent data here at Buffer, we’ve found that tweets with images get 150% more engagement than tweets without.

The takeaway: Test content with images!

We believe in this so strongly that we built our own tool for making this as easy as can be. The free image creator at Pablo makes it simple to create images for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and more, all at the ideal image size, all looking beautiful—no matter your design skills.

Here are some that the Smart Pension team has used on their latest social media updates:

Click to read The Employer’s Guide To Auto Enrolment Contributions. https://t.co/9bUmJBNxA9 pic.twitter.com/El3z1lFPjU

— Smart Pension (@smartpensionuk) December 14, 2015

Click to read our guide on lost pensions. https://t.co/JwLXr8PQlg pic.twitter.com/BLJ0v3e7ar

— Smart Pension (@smartpensionuk) December 14, 2015

Click to read our guide on spotting the tell-tale signs of a pension scam. https://t.co/ZVRzn4DCwT pic.twitter.com/PAl8FdoV3s

— Smart Pension (@smartpensionuk) December 14, 2015

Working with a team on a social media calendar

And another key piece to the team’s workflow and system is keeping all this distribution organized. One of Buffer’s newest features works great in this case: the social media calendar.

Our content calendar is designed to make sure that we are regularly completing and posting content through buffer. We can all log into buffer and see what other people are planning, and then we can plan our content around the existing scheduled posts.

Image sources: Iconfinder, Pablo

From the 1^st to 4^th November, teams will have the opportunity to play 54 holes of betterball strokeplay over Quinta do Lago’s North, South and Laranjal Courses for The Invitational Team Championship.

Professionals will then also compete at the same time for the Individual Invitational Championship title and the €50,000 prize fund*.

The event also plays its part in the support of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Anderson Foundation charities, raising money through the off-course events and activities that take place throughout the tournament week.

Entry includes a practice round on the 1^st November and tournament rounds on the Laranjal, South and North Courses, with both amateurs and Professionals using buggies in all rounds, along with access to the various evening functions including the Gala Dinner Charity Auction night.

Last year’s tournament was won by Sweden’s Peter Gustafsson whose outstanding second-round, eight-under par 64 gave him enough of a lead to take home the €8,200 winner’s cheque and the 2016 title.

For More Information & to Enter Visit http://eur.pe/2017Invitational

————————

For more information about The Invitational Pro-Am 2017, visit the Tournament Hub Page, follow @PGAsofEurope and search ‘#TheInvitationalProAm‘ on Twitter, or like the Confederation of Professional Golf Facebook Page.

More information on The Invitational Pro-Am 2017 is available at www.TheInvitational.eu.

IGPN spoke to Brian and Seve to find out more about how they work together and what lessons can be learned about creating a successful, effective team of practicioners around an elite performer.

Becoming an Effective Part of a Player’s Team

How did your working relationship come about?

SEVE: Our relationship began when I was a young lad playing for England. Brian was the England squad psychologist when I was about 17.

BRIAN: I remember seeing his name and like many people I thought it was misspelt.  So that was noticeable at first in terms of his name but I remember meeting him as a what was really a young boy of 15 and of course now he’s in his late 20s.

What sort of work did you do at first?

BRIAN: It would of been a typical session with a young junior golfer on the fringe of England recognition with ‘boys’ – what you’re trying to do is get to know somebody and how they approach the game because we’re all different.  Then largely it’s individually based – so for some people it might be very much on putting work and with others it might be their approach off the course.

But for a lot of young golfers, there are their own expectations of how far they want to go in the game and it’s very competitive in the game from a very early age.  What I probably recall from Seve…would be something about expectations of yourself, and of trying to forge a career in the game.

What has your working relationship entailed?

BRIAN: Seve’s always been a quiet individual, keeping himself to himself…I think sometimes with players, when they’re quiet they can be deemed to be unconfident but I would say Seve had quite a quiet assurance about him, which he’s always had.

SEVE: Working with Brian for this length of time has been a real joy.  He has always kept me focused on the process of what I am doing.  After working together for a long time he has become a great friend.  We meet on pretty much an ad-hoc basis from time-to-time and after seeing Brian I’m always left with a sense of calmness, which I love.

BRIAN: The beauty of working with somebody over that extended period of time is that you see him or her through so many psychological transitions – not just in terms of their game, but also as a person going from a young boy into a young adult.  Then they’re developing long-term relationships off the course in terms of their partner, along with other transitions such as buying houses…and all the things that we probably don’t think much about when we look at sportspeople play golf.

At the same time you’re cautious about the fact that you’re not their friend.  When you’ve known somebody for 14 years you get to know them very well but it’s a professional relationship, it’s not a personal friendship relationship.  Therefore we’re both quite disciplined in that way that it retains a professional sense whilst it is in a friendly way.

How do you manage these influential factors with players like Seve?

BRIAN: Work with any player is very individually-based if it’s going to be the most effective because you’re trying to establish a very unique relationship – what makes a player unique, what’s their way of thinking about the game, and how can you remind them of those things when there might be a sense to search for something that’s going to be more effective.

So we retain contact only maybe by text before and after a tournament. When he’s home for a reasonable stretch of time we try and meet up either at Wentworth where he’s based or more locally to me.

Then it’s very much in the moment about what’s on his mind – is it a performance issue or is it somewhere else in terms of lifestyle or his approach that he’s maybe lost his focus – it really comes from him.

SEVE: Since a young age, Brian has helped me to become very strong mentally and cope with any situation that may arise on the golf course.  I think that as time has gone on our relationship has improved and Brian knows how I tick so when something comes up in my game we can deal with it really effectively.

Brian, you’ve seen Seve through all of these various stages of development – is that a challenge to get background and relationship bond with players when you first begin working with them?

BRIAN: Yes, in new relationships getting to know one another, getting to know how someone thinks about their game, their particular issues or the demands/pressures at that point, gets easier as you get to know people.  But by and large, in sports psychology, they’re actually more short term relationships – people come to you with a specific issue and that may last as little as one or two sessions, six sessions, or over six months, but is more fleeting.  I think that this is where it is different from a PGA Professional because although players do change coaches my experience is that they generally do have a bit more longevity than a sports psych.

[Sports psychologist] relationships are generally more fleeting and therefore there’s more pressure on you to be effective over a short period of time, whereas with somebody such as Seve or a longer-term relationship, there’s a sense that you can get into other areas that perhaps they wouldn’t think are performance-related by getting to know the person better.

What is it about Seve and others that set them apart?

BRIAN: They’re all very different in their approach…but my observations of working with the amateur-professional transition in the English game would be that they invest in themselves.

So at National coaching level there would be a number of technical coaches with specialist areas, a physio, strength and conditioning people, and one of the difficulties for players when they turn professional is that all of a sudden that team largely drops off because they’re not at your beck and call as a national squad player.

So all of a sudden the support structure that you’ve experienced and the edges in performance through sports science or through certain technical coaching is no longer there.

I think that when you speak to people who have made ineffective transitions, you find that their team completely dispersed and they really suffered as a result of that.

Whereas I think that with people like Seve, Danny [Willett], Chris [Wood], what they did very well was that they still invested in themselves.  So at a time when perhaps money might have been at a bit more of a premium, they still tried to retain as many people of that core team as they could.

SEVE: I think my professionalism, relentless work ethic and commitment to the game are my strong points.  But they all come from the fact that I’ve always focused on, and invested in, the mental side of my game and made sure I put the effort in to maintain what I’m doing.

Because I’ve known Brian for a while and specifically since I was young, he’s helped me to mature as a person and become very professional in what I do.  We also spent a lot of time in the past looking at goal setting so our work has helped me become very clear on how to achieve those goals.

Brian, how do you fit into Seve’s coaching team?

BRIAN: I’m very rarely at tournaments, the European Tour is obviously a world-based tour now so there’s the cost implications of [travelling to events].  And also I think Seve is ‘low maintenance’ so I don’t think there’s a need for that a lot of the time.

Generally I’ll try and see him play a couple of times a year – clearly the UK ones this year, Wentworth and Woburn, are the easiest, and that’s more observationally.  As I say to him, I’m not looking to intervene at that point; it’s really an observational point to see how he operates because a large amount of his work is based on his reflections.  Also of course there’s a chance at that point to interact more with his team – he has a world-class coach in Pete Cowen, he works with Justin Buckthorp who works with Justin Rose and a number of other players in terms of his strength and conditioning, and I get a chance to meet with his caddie.

He works with Phil Kenyon on a week-to-week basis out on tour…so it gives me a great chance to catch up with their work and the putting work I am doing with him to make sure it’s in accordance with them.

So to get the views of other people who are closely involved with him in terms of their observations on maybe his improvement or areas where there could be more improvement is very useful.

So that’s how it works, but otherwise when Seve gets back after a series of tournaments we’ll either catch up face-to-face or by Skype, FaceTime or phone, whatever’s the most convenient to him.

How do you make yourself an effective part of Seve’s team and manage his expectations of what you hope to do?

BRIAN: There are many sports psychologists that would emphasise the content of interventions and ‘this is what you do’, and often there’s a lot of ‘yes, this technique will enable you to do x, y, and z’.  I’ve always approached it from a slightly different way – I’ve always recognised that the relationship is of primary importance.  So, as somebody begins to trust you and you build rapport with them, the relationship is in a sense also how you help people change their views or beliefs, or how they approach a certain situation.

So I always put great emphasis on the importance of the relationship with any player.  As it is with Seve, that’s easier to say as I’ve known him a long time.

The second part of it is that I try to be open to his needs at whatever point he is at.  Sometimes players give you that themselves.

I would like to think that sometimes I challenge his way of thinking when I think it is unproductive to him, or I present a different story to him that could be equally valid based on his experiences.

Let’s say in terms of expectations, in terms of your progress through the game, you could write a story where you say ‘well Seve’s never won on tour’.  He’s won as a professional, but like many people he hasn’t won on tour yet. They’ll be other people who will say ‘well Seve should have won by now’.  Now of course if that creeps in to your thinking that can put you under enormous pressure.

Where as an equally valid story is to say ‘well actually year on year he’s improving and whether he wins or not is not entirely down to him’.  It’s down to how in any given week, the rest of the field also perform.

SEVE: It’s really important to have a good team of people around you.  I would say that the team would each need to be open-minded and have minimal egos – that way they can work effectively for the player.

————————-

With thanks to Brian Hemmings, Seve Benson (@SeveBenson) and Northampton Golf Club (www.northamptongolfclub.co.uk).

Through our numerous assignments and research initiatives at Global Golf Advisors over the last twelve months, we have encountered both unique challenges and consistent trends at golf facilities throughout the EMEA territory. Here, I have identified five that are particularly noteworthy for their influence on current golf facility performance at European Clubs.

1. Capital Maintenance Trends

Capital maintenance, capital improvements and the funding of both are amongst the greatest challenge facing golf facilities now and are expected to continue to be so into the immediate future. 40% of clubs are reporting that they have more than three year’s worth of deferred capital maintenance and expenditure, largely a consequence of economic recession/stagnancy between 2009 and 2015.

Long-term capital planning is rare, with most clubs lacking a formal plan to fund capital requirements, using whatever cash is available each year to fund their reserves. Less than 50% have a capital reserve study in place informing long-term capital requirements. Of those that are investing in capital, almost 6 in 10 are using a combination of debt and membership levy to fund their programs.

Clubs spend on average 7.6% of gross annual revenue on capital maintenance but estimate they need to spend 9.6% to keep pace with capital maintenance.

2. Women make the ‘buy’ decision

Historically golf clubs have been institutions that served male viewpoints, wants and needs. New programs and services are changing membership structures, methods of club governance and the feasibility of many clubs.

In her book, “Marketing to women” Martha Barletta indicates that 91% of home purchase decisions are made by a woman. Typically, the club membership decision is a part of the home choice decision due to location, psychographic and demographic profile.

As such, clubs must reset membership programs to address the primary push/pull factors that influence the buy decision. Women prize their clubs as a platform for socialization. Clubs must demonstrate in clear and appealing ways that the lifestyle of the club is diverse, active and accessible for busy women and their families.

Sales and marketing tactics in forward- thinking clubs are seeking to address schedule flexibility, interesting and current programs and the opportunities for meeting and keeping friends.

3. Business Intelligence

There is increasing adoption amongst clubs of more sophisticated business intelligence for decision-making. This includes the tracking and analysis of financial and operational performance trends, market pricing trends and positioning, member satisfaction and net promoter score (NPS), comparable club benchmarking and targeted market segmentation.

Club Boards/Management have an increasing need for quantitative, interfaced data to afford informed decision-making about the club.

Club Managers continue to report feeling pressure due to performance comparisons to benchmarks and competitors in all areas, especially as they relate to dues, fees, compensation, benefits, pricing, and staff levels. Other leaders struggle to meet their Board’s demand for data which has led to an increase in staff hours to track, monitor, analyze, and produce data. Some GMs have found traditional sources of data to be insufficient in providing the data their Board/Owner wants.

Top performers are tracking specific internal and external market KPIs and act upon them to sustain the market position. Many clubs – which lack the comfort of capital or staff resources to execute their own intelligence program – rely on frequent, concise surveys that monitor customer satisfaction, such as the secret shopper program provided so effectively by 59Cub. Some have even tied staff bonus incentives to member/customer satisfaction ratings.

More recently many clubs have turned to subscription-based services such Global Golf Advisors’ Strategic Intelligence Platform to track operating performance, customer satisfaction, and competitive market data all in one central portal.

4. Sustainability

Last July, London’s new Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a ‘crackdown’ on pollutants. His goal is to “Make London one of the World’s most environmentally friendly cities”. His plan to achieve this goal includes amongst other things creating an ‘Ultra-Low Emission Zone in central London by 2019 and beyond central London by 2020.

The fact that Mr. Khan has placed this issue near the very top of his agenda, is a great indicator of just how much influence sustainability and environmentalism has on the public mindset – politicians don’t tend to tackle issues unless they are going to improve their popularity.

Many clubs are now rightly keen to present their sustainability credentials, but to have resonance, consumers want to know the details/specifics and the outcomes. For clubs, this means their efforts in this space should be measured and proactively reported, with the support of a trusted third party.

The Golf Environment Organization is doing extraordinary work in supporting clubs achieve exactly this. Their club tools are not just providing vital guidance on best practice for sustainable performance, but are now also providing measurement and reporting tools to aid in effective communication of the results of such performance.

5. Membership

Gone are the days when most clubs were operating with waitlists and a pipeline full of members lined up to join the club. The reality is that most clubs must now aggressively seek and find new members. Successful clubs are adopting a more data-driven approach to membership recruitment/retention and are adjusting membership and amenity offerings to be more competitive in their business space.

61% of clubs map the location of their members to identify trends and areas for new member growth. Global Golf Advisors recommends that clubs do this annually to maximize membership sales effectiveness.

Six in ten clubs have encountered challenges with an aging membership or growing senior member category. Two-thirds of this group has adopted a set of tactics to address these challenges, among which adjustments to age bands and entry fees are most common solutions.

More than one in four (28%) clubs have experienced a decline in their total number of members in the last 5 years. The annual attrition rate of clubs in the UK is 3.5% while in the rest of Europe that rate is 4.7%.

The top three factors for creating a sustainable membership strategy include

1. improve overall amenity quality,
2. embracing modern technologies to complement modern lifestyles, and
3. further enhancing the club’s platform for connecting its membership.

Trends such as these, although not universally applicable, are highly valuable indicators of change. The capacity to be prepared for change and take advantage of the opportunities that come with it, is what marks a successful club. Best put by Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”.

Rob Hill is a Partner at GGA with responsibility for their EMEA Office. A former recipient of Boardroom Magazine’s “Strategic Planning Firm of the Year” award, GGA brings an unmatched financial, marketing and operational focus to each of its strategic assignments. The firm serves over 2,700 clients around the world from offices in USA, Canada, Sydney (Asia-Pacific) and Dublin (EMEA). Rob can be reached at rhill@globalgolfadvisors.com.

The monthly publication is distributed amongst the Association’s 36 Member Country PGAs and their collective 21,000+ PGA Professionals becoming a hugely valuable resource that allows the Confederation of Professional Golf to support the PGAs with their advancement of their own Members.

Issue 36 is a Coaching Special featuring interviews with Mike Walker and David Leadbetter, content from SNAG Golf, Golf Pride, the PGA of Switzerland, Peter Millar, BMW, the Ryder Cup European Development Trust, and news from the Confederation of Professional Golf and its various events and activities.

IGPN originally took the form of a print publication for a number of years, however, with the continued development of digital communications and the work of publishers, All Square Media, the magazine went exclusively digital, ensuring it can be read widely and provides the best possible responsive and interactive reading experience no matter what device is being used.

Its success has largely come from the quality of content produced, both in-house, and using curated international expertise from a wide variety of expert contributors. Content is featured in a broad range of areas such as marketing, coaching, psychology, productivity, business management, career development, golf development, sustainability and much more.

The magazine also ties in to the Association’s ‘A.S.K.’ (standing for Attributes. Skills. Knowledge.) activity in which content is created and curated for a dedicated thought-centre on the Confederation of Professional Golf website – cpg.golf/ask – and is open for PGA Professionals to read whilst providing a valuable content resource for PGAs to use in their own communications.

If you would like to contribute to IGPN or A.S.K. then please contact Aston Ward at aw@CPG.com.

Sign-Up to Receive IGPN for FREE @ cpg.golf/IGPN

With job security and a standard career path less and less attainable across many industries, a capacity to handle uncertainty and adversity has never been more important (or in demand).

Such is the case that many employers will try to find out about your resilience through interview questions on how you’ve handled stress, pressure and failure in the past. Additionally, job hunting itself can be an incredibly demoralising experience if you let it. Focussing on building your resilience can make all the difference to your inner confidence and success rate across many areas in your life.

This might be easier said than done though – to achieve resilience means possessing the right blend of self-awareness and inner strength, and the flexibility to adapt to changes in circumstances and surroundings. It’s rather like a palm tree: a strong, firmly rooted base supporting an element that’s far more flexible and able to cope with being blown around by different winds.

Here are three key building blocks that can help you towards developing a resilient professional persona:

1. Positivity

Having a positive view of yourself and the world around you is the basis for developing resilience. Pay attention to the messages you send yourself throughout the day. If you find yourself making negative assumptions about yourself or anything around you, consciously switch to a positive thought. With practice this should become automatic. That will keep you grounded, rooted like a tree, and give you the stability you need for a positive mindset.

2. Commitment

Get to know yourself and recognise what is important to you. Have a clear idea of your future aspirations and where you want to go in your career. You need to be willing to commit to your goals and invest in making them happen. Knowing what is important to you and being committed to your goals strengthens you in your core. Don’t forget however, that even the best-laid plans can sometimes go off course or need to be abandoned altogether. Make like a palm tree and allow yourself flexibility to go with the flow when things don’t go to plan.

3. Control

Control means being aware of the situations or areas in your life you can influence as well as recognising those that you can’t. Being able to distinguish between the two will allow you to focus your energy on the things that are most important or achievable. It will give you the flexibility to prioritise your goals and adapt to different circumstances.

Remember that in order to be resilient you also need to be healthy in mind and body so pay attention to your general well-being, take proper breaks, eat well, and look after the relationships that support you. When it comes to resilience it’s about knowing that you can’t stop the waves, but that you can certainly learn how to surf them.

This content appears courtesy of Abintegro, experts in career management, transition technology & e-learning for today’s modern, mobile and technology-savvy workforce – Find out more at www.abintegro.com

Subscribe iTunes | Android | RSS

Read the entire story behind this here from James Clear.

Will’s first suggestion – The Ivy Lee Method

1. At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
2. Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
3. When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
4. Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.
5. Repeat this process every working day.

Read the entire story behind this here from James Clear.

The biggest killer of everyone’s day is opening up emails first things in the morning.

Everyone is always asking “how” questions. What really matters is the “why”.

Take some time to improve your business / sales skills if it’s something you struggle with and go outside of the typical education / certifications. Give yourself permission to try some new ideas out with the framing of an experiment or challenge.

3 Morning Questions:

• What happened yesterday?
• How do I feel about that?
• What am I working on today

Will’s past episodes on coaching programs:

Group Coaching Q&A part 1
Group Coaching Q&A part 2
Working with Groups

Links / Resources

Charles M. Schwab productivity story – Ivy Lee Method
2017 Coaching Workshop in Orlando
Will’s Consulting Company RGX
BJ Fogg – Tiny Habits

@MindaZetlin

You know that job applicant has the right skills to fill your open position. But what about the right personality? Ignore cultural fit at your peril, for your new hire likely won’t last long.

I’ll always remember one of my co-workers at my first company. Although she did excellent work, she seemed to zig while the rest of us zagged. In a group of frumpy, often pudgy writers, she was an accomplished martial artist. Where many of us were just getting our feet wet in the business world, she had been around for a while and worked in some legendary places. Where we tended toward the silly-a plastic-encased slice of prosciutto once spent a week tacked to our department’s bulletin board-she was deadly serious. Not surprisingly, she soon moved on to a job at a prestigious non-profit that was working hard to change the world.

Hiring someone who doesn’t fit your company’s personality can be a very costly mistake. To avoid making that mistake, make sure to interview job candidates for cultural fit, as well as job qualifications. That advice comes from Tara Kelly, CEO of customer experience software provider SPLICE Software.

Kelly makes sure to include a culture interview in the hiring process, and she says it’s made a big difference. “It is important to understand employee values, motivators and interests,” she explains. “Understanding what keeps employees fulfilled is a key element to build a truly successful team. Whereas regular job interviews focus on verifying qualifications, culture fit interviews focus on ensuring potential candidates fit the corporate culture and core values of the organization.”

Given that every new hire is a big investment, it’s worth taking the time and effort to interview for cultural fit as well as skills and experience. Here’s how Kelly does it:

1. Define your company’s culture.

You may not need to do this, and Kelly doesn’t mention it, but if yours is a small or start-up companies, your culture may not be something you’ve given a lot of thought to. You should, though, because you definitely have one and a bad cultural hire will hurt you.

Your mission or vision statement is a good place to start-it won’t define your culture, but it should identify the values that drive you and your employees to show up and work hard every day. Beyond that, take a look around and consider how your company compares to others in your industry. Ask your employees or colleagues for input, until you can come up with a sentence or two that captures your company’s personality. Consider this example from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos: “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.”

2. Write job ads with culture in mind.

“Culture fit should be integrated into every aspect of recruitment,” Kelly notes. That begins with your job ads, which should reflect both your company’s brand and its culture. If yours is an informal, family friendly workplace, with child care on site, and where pets are welcomed, say so. If yours is an elegant workplace with a prestigious history, say that.

3. Include culture questions in regular interviews.

From your first conversations with a candidate, interviewers should be thinking about cultural fit, Kelly says. “Once applications are assessed, pre-screening interviews should occur over the phone to see what first impressions candidates make and gauge personality for a possible fit.”

Candidates who pass this screening should be invited to an in-person interview with their potential department head. “The department head should also screen the applicant for culture by introducing a few less technical questions,” she adds.

4. Know which questions to ask, and which not to.

“Ask questions that speak to the core values and culture of the organization, without directly asking about each value,” Kelly advises. “For example, ask ‘what is something you have accomplished this summer that you are really proud of?'” This type of question helps SPLICE find candidates who like to learn new things or improve their skills. “At SPLICE, we really value a love of learning and improving things,” Kelly explains. “Our fundamental core value is, ‘We believe it can be better.’ So we like to see that not only in someone’s work life but their personal life too.”

It should go without saying that there’s a difference between culture and bias, and you should be clear about that difference, especially when it comes to questions that could land your company in legal trouble. To say that your culture is fun-loving and risk-taking is fine; to say that all employees should participate in extreme sports means your workplace discriminates against disabled or older workers.

In Amazon’s we’ll-settle-for-intense culture, an employee who’d just had a miscarriage was told by her supervisor that the company was likely the wrong place for a woman looking to start a family. Not surprisingly, many labor lawyers have been contacted by current or past employees seeking to sue the company for attitudes like these. Someday, one of these suits will get filed.

5. Train employees to conduct culture interviews.

“Once it is verified that a candidate has all the necessary qualifications and has passed all the preliminary culture fit screenings, a culture fit interview should be introduced as the last phase of the process,” Kelly says.

But you’re not the one to conduct the culture fit interview-the candidate’s potential co-workers are. That means they’ll need some training about what to ask and what to listen for. “It’s crucial to ensure the team is prepped on the purpose of a culture fit interview prior to participating,” Kelly says.

In general, she says, you should select four to six employees from around your company to talk informally with the job candidate about hobbies and interest and how these things tie in with your company’s personality. “Employees should be encouraged to ask questions that tie in to the organization’s value system.”

6. Gather feedback.

Employees who conduct a culture interview should fill out assessment afterwards that scores applicants on numerical scales of good-fit-to-bad-fit, and also ask for written comments. After you review those assessments, call the employees together for a quick debrief to make sure you understand their feedback and get a better sense of how the candidate might or might not fit with your company and its values. All of this input, together with the candidate’s performance on your skills assessment, will put you in the best position to make the right choice.

This article originally appeared on Inc.com – to view the original article visit http://eur.pe/1kkmevy.

Audiences have become more sophisticated over time and as a result it is important to have some sort of social media strategy. In order to start implementing that strategy, a schedule is a must for a lot of businesses.

A sharing schedule can help you double your traffic and provide your audience with consistent and valuable information that will make them more likely to follow and engage with you.

It can be a little daunting getting started, though. As you try to figure out

• Where to share?
• What to share?
• When to share?

In this post I’ll help you answer these essential questions and share some ways that you can develop and perfect your sharing schedule (with a sneak peek at how we do things here at Buffer too).

Let’s dig in!

Where to Share?

So you want to share, but where should you share? There are so many different platforms all with their own advantages, however it’s almost impossible to share on each network well unless you have a large team helping. If that isn’t the case, focusing on specific platforms might be the best solution here.

When thinking about which platforms you should prioritize in your schedule, a good question to ask yourself is:

Where is your audience?

Do they spend most of their time on Twitter? Facebook? Knowing this will allow you to focus your energy on the place where you have the potential to reap the most benefits.

Pew Research Center put together a list of the demographics of all the key social networking platforms. This might help you get a little more insight into each platform.

Once you have narrowed down the platform(s) you would like to focus on, you can now come up with you sharing plan.

Different plans for different platforms

I would definitely recommend coming up with different plans for each platform you select. Facebook is very different than Twitter for instance, so it makes sense to have a different approach when sharing to your audience on Facebook versus your audience on Twitter.

CoSchedule has a really neat graphic sharing some of the different topics to share for each platform. They also go into depth for each platform over at their articles if you would like more information.

What To Share?

Now that you have figured out where you want to share your awesome content. It’s time to figure out what to share.

Sharing More Than One Type of Content

A good way to share is to have a mix of content to provide your audience. I would recommend not solely focusing on your own content, but giving them variety to look forward to. Providing a service or entertainment to your audience is more likely to lead them to follow you and engage with all of your content, rather than bombarding them with only promotional updates.

Here is an example of the type of content you can share.

According to CoSchedule, a report from The New York Times Customer Insight Group found five major reasons why people share content with their networks:

1. 49% share for entertainment or to provide valuable content to others.
2. 68% share to define themselves.
3. 78% share to stay connected with those they know.
4. 69% share to feel involved in the world.
5. 84% share to support a cause.

So give them something they can share! 

Is Your Content Evergreen or Time Sensitive?

When it comes to your content, it can be good to think about whether what you are sharing is evergreen (can be shared multiple times at any point in time) or time sensitive.

A schedule for time sensitive material will most likely be different than one for evergreen content. For instance, time sensitive material will only be able to be shared within a specific timeframe before it is retired, while evergreen content could potentially be shared again a year from now.

If you have both types of content, coming up with separate sharing schedule for each type might be something to consider.

How Do You Want to Share?

You have your content ready to be shared, but how do you want to share it? How do you want to relay it to your audience? Do you have a specific tone you would like to use?

Here are a few things you can think about.

Voice

Creating a consistent voice is a really important component of your social media strategy. We have written an extensive guide on how you can find yours here.

Type

Links, images, videos, quotes, GIFs. There are so many different ways you can share your content. Finding what works best for you whether it’s only images or a mix of everything will be a great asset for creating your schedule.

Update

While I do recommend sharing the same content multiple times, I do not recommend you share the same update twice. Find different ways to share the content. Pick an image to share for the first time, then find a quote the second time and maybe a GIF the third, so that your audience doesn’t feel like they are always seeing the same thing in your feed.

As for the update itself, we have a handy guide and infographic to help you with sharing the optimal length every time.

When To Share?

You have now figured out where and what to share. The next step is figuring out when to share and importany when to re-share! Kissmetrics found that re-sharing content could double your traffic:

Frequency

Let’s first think about frequency. How often do you want to share?

• On publish
• Later that same day
• Next day, Daily
• A Week later
• A month later?
• Even later than that?

It really depends on your needs and your audience’s response to that frequency. Some of the best practices for each platform are highlighted in the infographic from SumAll below.  This is only a guideline, I would highly encourage you to test things for yourself as well.

Here is our sharing schedule at Buffer. You can see that we tend to share more often on Twitter and less on other platforms, leaving more time between each share.

When starting out, I would recommend looking at the content you have already shared and taking a look at what you feel might be the best times to share your content. If you haven’t shared anything yet, this is the perfect time to start experimenting and learning about your audience.

A key part to figuring out your frequency will be finding the point at which sharing more would yield diminishing returns. CoSchedule has a fantastic graphic illustrating diminishing returns.

And that’s when testing comes into play, which I discuss further below.

Create a calendar

In order to keep you on track, creating a calendar might be a huge help. It can also help you outline one time events. For example if you plan special coverage around the Holidays, a calendar could help you plan ahead and make sure you won’t forget to share.

Hootsuite has a great template available for a social media content calendar.

Here at Buffer, we have our own Social Media Calendar which you might find helpful in planning your sharing. The calendar is available for those on Awesome and Business plans (if you’re not yet part of our paid plans, I’m hoping you this might convince you to give it a try!) and allows you to take a look at your week of sharing at a glance.

It could be helpful in planning and putting into action your sharing plan, by letting you schedule updates in the future, shifting things around if needed by dragging and dropping and giving you a visual of what you are sharing when.

Here is an example of our current social media calendar on Buffer:

Testing

Now that you have a base to work with, I would also recommend implementing some testing into your sharing in order to come up with your perfect schedule.

Some of the things you can test include:

• Different times
• Different days
• Different topics
• Different types of updates (pictures versus no pictures, videos, quotes etc.)

I would recommend being quite intentional with the way you test things. Make sure you are able to measure the correct variable and that what you are seeing is due to the variable you are trying to measure.

For instance, if you would like to figure out the best time to share your blog posts, trying different days and times is a great way to start. However, it is important to continue the experiment for some time before drawing conclusions. An update performing really well on a Tuesday at 9am, might be due to it being an optimal time or it could be the result of the blog post itself being more popular amongst your audience. That is why I would recommend, testing that specific time multiples times in order to confirm that posts shared then do in fact always outperform posts shared at other times.

Analyze

Once you’ve spent some time testing, you can focus on analyzing your data. A few questions you can ask yourself when looking at the results include:

• When is your audience online?
• When do you get the most reach/engagement?
• What types of updates tend to get the most engagement?

Take a look at the performances for all your posts in the previous 30 (or 60) days and figure out what seemed to resonate with your audience.

Buffer provides great analytics for you to use if you are using the application to share your updates.

Adjust

You’ve tested, analyzed and now you can adjust. Taking into account everything you have learned, you might want to adjust your sharing schedule by implementing some of the discoveries from your data analysis.

For example, if you noticed an increase in engagement for blog posts updates on Tuesdays at 9am (after you have confirmed it through multiple testing), you can start sharing your blog posts at that time from now on.

I would also encourage you to continue to test, analyze and adjust, in order to make sure your schedule remains adapted to the changes in your audience’s wants and needs.

Bonus: How We Share at Buffer

At Buffer we’re constantly changing and testing new approaches when it comes to social media, especially after losing almost half our social referral traffic. I wanted to share our sharing schedule for both Twitter and Facebook and some of the things we’ve been trying lately.

How We Share on Twitter

Our current Twitter schedule involves sharing 11 times a day during weekdays and 8 times a day during weekends. Here are the current times we share (our timezone is set to Denver, CO).

I would say that 99% of our posts include some sort of media. We tend to use mostly images, since they tend to be they help boost our engagement, we have also enjoyed sharing GIFs and videos once in a while.

Here are some of our most engaging posts in the past 30 days taken from Buffer’s Analytics. A few standout findings:

• You will noticed that these all contain an image (we tend to create our images using Pablo)
• 3 out of 7 are about Twitter
• Two of the updates link to the same article, highlighting the importance of re-sharing your content
• One is a competition we ran to celebrate reaching 400k followers. (We’d love to experiment a little more with competitions)

In general, we tend to reshare posts that seemed to resonate. We sometimes change the update and sometimes reshare as is.

How We Share on Facebook

Our current Facebook schedule has us sharing 3 times a day on weekdays and once on weekends. Here are the current times we share (our timezone is set to Nashville, TN).

On Facebook, we focus on sharing posts from Buffer’s Social and Open blogs and use the status copy to provide context or a story around the post being shared.

We have also recently started sharing quotes that inspire us on a regular basis (those quotes are also being shared on Twitter and seem to be appreciated there as well).

Here are some of our most engaging posts in the past 30 days taken from Buffer’s Analytics. Some of the things that seem to resonate here are announcements, images, insider story about Buffer and life hacking type articles.

One of the things we’re also thinking of experimenting with is the timing of our shares. One of the tools that we will be using to find new optimal times to share is the Buffer Optimal Timing tool, which finds the best time for you to share on a specific social network and updates your Buffer schedule accordingly.

Over to You!

What are some of the steps you’ve taken to develop and perfect your social sharing schedule? Have I missed any steps? Do you have additional tips? I would love to hear them all in the comments section.

After three rounds of regulation play, Gustafsson’s closing three-over 74 held him on six-under par (207) for the tournament.

[fb_plugin video href=https://www.facebook.com/PGAsofEurope/videos/1352656804801103/]

His playing partner in the final group, the PGA of Austria’s Georg Schultes [pictured below], worked hard for a closing one-over 72 on The Dunes Course, and, after holing a clutch 20-foot putt on the 17^th hole to save par, joined Gustafsson on six-under to force a sudden death playoff.

The pair halved the first three playoff attempts on the 18^th of The Dunes, but the fourth proved to be the decider as Schultes made a par five but Gustafsson made a birdie having knocked his approach shot to just two feet.

“I feel great – although it took a little bit longer than I had expected [with the playoff]!” said Gustafsson. “I missed a lot of putts today but did have a couple of good opportunities. But Georg holed a few good ones out there so it was just basically get out there, back yourself and get the job done.

“Aegean really put on an amazing event together with everybody involved – the conditions and courses have been great, you cannot forget the staff who have been great and everything is immaculate.”

The two-round, 60-team, Pro-Am event was won by the PGA of GB&I’s Stuart Boyle from Wentworth Golf Club and his amateurs Haris Papadopoulos, Georgios Kyvernitis and Dimitris Carokis. Their 183-point total (-39) allowed them to complete a Costa Navarino-double having also won the 2017 Messinia Pro-Am early in the year.

“We are delighted,” said Boyle. “We came second last year so we came back this year wanting to go one better and thankfully we pulled together as a team and delivered.”

[fb_plugin video href=https://www.facebook.com/PGAsofEurope/videos/1353741021359348/]

“The courses are great, the people are friendly, the hotel and facilities are fantastic – we always speak very highly of the event and it gives us the opportunity to feel like we’re pros,” added Papadopoulos.

Just three points behind was the PGA of Italy’s Gregory Molteni and amateurs, Massimiliano Merlo, Paolo Lange and Roberto Montalbano, ending on 180 points (-36) for second place.

For Full Final Scores Visit http://eur.pe/2017Aegean

————————

For more information visit the Tournament Hub Page follow @PGAsofEurope on Twitter and search the hashtag ‘#AegeanProAm’ or like the Confederation of Professional Golf Facebook Page.

Find out more about the Aegean Airlines Pro-Am and Aegean Airlines by visiting www.aegeanproam.com.

[Images courtesy of Dimitris Andritsos Photography – dimitrisandritsos.gr]

Starting at just inside the top-ten, Gustafsson took advantage of the still conditions that an early time afforded him, with two birdies out and four in for his total that sees him hold a two-shot lead on nine-under par (133).

[fb_plugin video href=https://www.facebook.com/PGAsofEurope/videos/1351539768246140/]

“The Dunes Course is challenging, the better player is going to win,” said Gustafsson. “If I play good I might have chance, I just need to stay focused on it.”

Second place went to the PGA of Austria’s Georg Schultes who battled through much windier conditions later on The Bay Course for a three-under par 68 and a seven-under 135 total.

The PGA of Italy’s Paolo Terreni sits a further two shots behind on five-under par (137), followed by the PGA of Austria’s Mike Burrows and the PGA of Germany’s David Heinzinger in tied-fourth at four-under (138).

Team Pro-Am results will be released shortly after the culmination of Round 03.

For Full Round 02 Scores Visit http://eur.pe/2017Aegean

————————

For more information visit the Tournament Hub Page follow @PGAsofEurope on Twitter and search the hashtag ‘#AegeanProAm’ or like the Confederation of Professional Golf Facebook Page.

Find out more about the Aegean Airlines Pro-Am and Aegean Airlines by visiting www.aegeanproam.com.

[Images courtesy of Dimitris Andritsos Photography – dimitrisandritsos.gr]

The field of 60 Teams are negotiating their way across The Dunes and The Bay Courses, and it was the latter where Gaggero made his move with six birdies and a single bogey to hold an early one-shot lead.

[fb_plugin video href=https://www.facebook.com/PGAsofEurope/videos/1350788354987948/]

Second place is widely spread with seven Professionals sharing a four-under par (67) total: Martin Dewhurst (PGA of GB&I), David Heinzinger (PGA of Germany), Steven Sharp (PGA of GB&I), Georg Schultes (PGA of Austria), Mike Burrows (PGA of Austria), Paolo Terrini (PGA of Italy), and Henrik Engdahl (PGA of Greece).

The first half of the two-round Team Pro-Am is led by Gaggero’s Team of Emanuel Georgoudis, Pino Peirano and Orlando Grondona; Rudy Whitfield (PGA of South Africa) and amateurs Andre Hugo, Harry Chrisofi, and James Johnston; as well as Gregory Molteni (PGA of Italy) and his amateur teammates Massimiliano Merlo, Paolo Lange and Roberto Montalbano, each on 93 points (-21).

For Full Round 01 Scores Visit http://eur.pe/2017Aegean

————————

For more information visit the Tournament Hub Page follow @PGAsofEurope on Twitter and search the hashtag ‘#AegeanProAm’ or like the Confederation of Professional Golf Facebook Page.

Find out more about the Aegean Airlines Pro-Am and Aegean Airlines by visiting www.aegeanproam.com.

[Images courtesy of Dimitris Andritsos Photography – dimitrisandritsos.gr]

This topic came up as we were recently discussing the results of some of our competitive clients.  It seemed we kept coming back to this commonality in describing our students who were experiencing the most success.  Obviously, they perform well because they are all highly skilled, but the players that seem to have an unwavering belief in their abilities– keep achieving— sometimes even beyond the level that their current skills would predict.

We love the queued up clip below of the current World Number 1 communicating an amazing sense of belief in himself and his abilities.

“They had no chance.”

“Who’s playing for second place?”

This steadfast outlook on his ability to perform manifests itself in a few key characteristics:

• a willingness to take on meaningful challenges
• a propensity to exert maximum effort in training
• a persistence in the face of setbacks

These traits allow the self believers to navigate the ups and downs of golf and better manage the stress inherent within competitive golf.  Psychologist and motivation expert, Albert Bandura, referred to this belief as Self Efficacy. Here is how he describes performers with high self efficacy:

Alternatively, we sometimes encounter highly skilled and technically proficient players who lack this Self Efficacy. They approach competition with anxiety rather than the exhilaration.  These are the players who, despite having robust skills, aren’t able to parlay them into maximum output. How often do you see a player approach their performance with trepidation and expectations that are not in alignment with what they are capable of? Why is that?

It may seem obvious, but so much effort is spent on refining skill and technique that it’s easy to omit this essential component to performance from our lesson plans.  And sometimes it’s worse than merely omitting— sometimes we prepare for an event in a way that inhibits self-efficacy and belief.  Spending too much time on technique in our interactions leading up to an event rarely fuels a belief in their skills ‘as-is’.  Instead, this approach may allow for a bit of doubt to creep in as the performer wonders what iteration of their mechanics will show up when it counts.  This is a really difficult roadblock to avoid, especially if performance wanes in the lead up to an event.

So how can we build belief?

One of the most difficult things to do, as coaches, is to persuade a performer to believe more in their abilities. And that’s because players need something more tangible– to see it, not just hear it. They need proof. While we certainly try to build it and protect it through how we communicate— ultimately that belief has to be earned.

In our experience, the best source of Self Belief is the memory of previous accomplishments. To that end, we work closely with players to build a success inventory – a storage box of instances that demonstrate to the player, that they are capable to excelling in a variety of situations.

Think of an athlete who struggles to perform.  If we know the person well, and know what they need to be successful, we can get pretty creative in creating situations where these accomplishments can be earned – and their memory bank can get filled.

Through reflection, we found a very common pattern – the occasions in which the people we work with reported the most confidence and performed best in events, closely matched the time in which we presented them with tasks aligned most closely with the ‘Build Efficacy’ quadrant of our Task Design Matrix.

These tasks – ‘Moments of Mastery’ – allowed the athletes to train in similar-to-play conditions under  achievable outcome demands.

In looking closer at the anatomy of a Moment of Mastery, our end goal is to craft a task that creates assurance for the athlete– once complete, they know their skill is on-point and ready.  We want them to be able to recognize a situation and refer back to the training they have completed and know, with great certainty, that their skill set is more than capable of producing the outcomes that they want – and need – in that circumstance.  This performance state serves as a stark contrast to the uncommitted, uncertain performer who just isn’t sure if they can pull a certain shot off.  If that’s the perceived belief, they SHOULD be nervous and anxious!

Although it sounds simple, there is an art to it.  Knowing how hard the task needs to be to get them engaged and exerting effort while also keeping the difficulty at a level that is likely to produce a successful performance is quite difficult, as it is often a moving target and a very thin line to walk.  However, it is the means by which this ‘swagger’ is earned, and it is something that expert coaches are able to do with practice and careful planning.

This is obviously made more difficult when the player attempts to create a Moment of Mastery with a technique that isn’t producing the desired results.  That’s when, as coaches, we have to scale difficulty and possibly even put certain aspects of technique in isolation, so the performer can mentally ‘check the box’ and move on.  While this ‘isolation’ technique may not align with how a player best learns in the long-term– it’s worth doing at times if we know it will have a positive effect on their perceived competence.  For an example of successful players training his way, visit the putting green of any tour event Mon-Tue and witness players going through their technique checks with any number of training aids in a noticeably superficial environment.

On these occasions, we prefer a stable, unrepresentative setting despite the stigma that often comes with these ‘blocked practice’ activities.  If, in that moment, it will help an athlete believe in themselves more, we won’t hesitate to go there.  Even if it’s a bit manufactured and unrepresentative– skill acquisition science be damned!

CREATING MOMENTS OF MASTERY

There are two things that we need to be aware of when designing Moments of Mastery.

• The goal is to boost a player’s perception of their ability to be successful under the gun.
• The boost comes from them being able witness their success in the first person, repeatedly.

With those action items in mind, we need to provide a task that has three distinct characteristics:

• Low to moderate relative difficulty.
• A like-golf environment.
• Repetition.

These three aspects of the training task – difficulty, instability, and time on task – work together to create an environment that has the potential to inspire motivation and perception of one’s abilities as it offers the possibility for the performer to be successful, in similar-to-play situations, often. Provided the outcome standard that governs success is in alignment with their skill set, these tasks serve as a catalyst to the creation of confidence.  Here is an example:

PRACTICAL EXAMPLE

In this instance, the athlete received certainty that what he is training, he is able to recall when he needs it and that the outcomes are very good.  Again, it sounds very simple, but the more we can create these moments, the more moments of success they have in the memory bank to reference during competition.

In addition to providing opportunities to see success, we can further promote their sense of ‘I-Can-Do-It-ness’ by keeping track of their performance.  Logging skills assessments or statistics, can show tangible proof of progress against early versions of themselves.  What will happen to the athlete in the screencast after we point out a drill that at one time seemed very difficult, but now they complete with ease?  This is another great source for self-belief— it’s a great way to promote their sense of ‘I-Can-Do-It-ness.’

While we don’t claim to be sports psychologists– we realize that our interactions need to impact performance state in equal measure to skill.  Exploring the motivational and psychological underpinnings of how we coach and train should be a priority for all coaches.  Luckily there are experts in golf like Pia Nilsson, Lynn Marriott, Dr. Bhrett McCabe, and Dr. Rick Jensen who share their insights generously.

If you feel researching this topic could improve your coaching– our friend Cordie Walker is putting on the Unlocking Performance Virtual Summit.  Some of the brightest minds in golf, including the ones listed above, will be sharing their thoughts.  We would highly recommend checking it out!

Another great source is James Sieckmann’s new book, Your Putting Solution.  Not only does he cover the technical components of putting in comprehensive detail, but the second half of the book is essentially a master class in how to coach, build belief, and train more effectively.

And after you check out those great resources, we hope you’ll engage us in further investigating this topic in the comment section.  What activities do you use to create similar ‘Moments of Mastery’?  Describe a task that you use that seems to evoke a strong sense of ‘I can do it’ from your students.  We would love to compile a database that we can all learn from and use in our coaching.

 – COREY LUNDBERG & MATT WILSON