Competence 4: Communicating effectively
Sports Professionals express their own vision, plans and decisions, both in English and Dutch, both orally and in writing, using various means of communication (including digital ones).
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During the second year the TOEFL- test was taken in order to see if my English was sufficient enough to take part in the minor abroad which it certainly was a score of 620/677. My theoretical English skill level was put to practice since the Municipality of Groningen had a couple of problems on the physical activity level and health of their citizens. Therefore the Hanzehogeschool was contacted to do research on these issues and come up with creative yet realistic plans. In four weeks we had to tackle four issues regarding sport policy, improving a public park in the Vinkhuizen area, increasing physical activity among elementary school youth during their breaks and new ways to finance and organize health interventions.
The class was divided in four consultancy teams with four to five members. My team, the A team, consisted of Maarten Lendering, Sander Kupurus, David Schostak, Lindsay Blok and me. Drew Henderson was there as senior consultant to give us directions and feedback.
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My main focus during the four weeks of the GAME was being a presenter as intended to improve my presentation skills. But before I could present we had to do research at the different topics of sport policy, improving a public park in the Vinkhuizen area, increasing physical activity among elementary school youth during their breaks and new ways to finance and organise health interventions.
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For the sport policy and new ways of financing and organizing health interventions desk research was sufficient, by searching for scientific and non-scientific articles. But for the improvement of the public park and increasing physical activity amongst elementary school youth field research needed to be done in the form of (street) interviews and observations done by me individually and together with Lindsay Blok.
After the research was done the data was analysed and used for input for our plan to tackle the issue. During the brainstorm sessions I supervised the ideas on being realistic.
Through discussion on the content of the solutions we came up with weekly reports, weekly presentations in front of civil servant, a final presentation in front of the alderman Paul de Rook and a summarising report. During the weeks we as a team had contact by using physical meetings as well as Skype meetings and had contact through by phone by using Whatsapp messenger.
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The end result of this GAME was that the alderman Paul de Rook choose our idea to be the most beneficial and realistic to execute. The alderman said that he would take some parts of our input and would make it happen. The renovated park in Vinkhuizen is the main proof for this.
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The GAME with the Municipality of Groningen was complex in the order of the weekly deadlines, communicating with different parties and doing both desk and field research for a fictive cause in the city of Groningen. The best argument I could give why this is proof of me having reached level B on this competence is that the alderman Paul de Rook took our ideas and worked with it in the improvement of the Vinkhuizen public park. So our ideas were communicated very well during the weeks.
My intention during this GAME was improving my presentation skills and at the end I was very pleased with my performance. I found my peace in standing in front of important people.
The next time in such a hectic project I would like to start better organised the roles between the team members and let everyone stick to the initial plan. This because there were some issues with bringing up last minute ideas when the time should be spent on the presentation of the initial plan.
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In the third year my linguistic skill in English were further developed since I needed to complete another linguistic test to get an Erasmus approval and track my progress during the period abroad. There I would need to communicate with people from other cultures and habits. Not only Portugese, but also Belgian, Hungarian and Polish people. Since I have met so many different people I didn't spoke only in English, but also in decent German and basic Portugese and Polish. This since I have lived close to the border with Germany and have been to Poland once before from which I remembered some words.The first of the two test was completed with a C1 level and the second test even with a C2 level which approves level B at this compentence is at least being reached in expressing and communicating as a Sports Professional. The test results are shown below.
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Following up my own insight of the previous internship, by communicating more clearly and open with the internship. This is the way I started in September of 2018 at MIBOSO. The first week of the internship was a short one since I started on a Thursday. It was more explorative in elaborating more about the mission and vision of MIBOSO and Kelly’s personal view on how he wants to support his client base in reaching a healthier lifestyle. An introduction to the team of personal trainers MIBOSO works with follows. Auke van Dijken and Sam Flik are part of the current team and the ones that showed me how MIBOSO interacts with clients and executes other tasks. Since they had to collaborate with me for the next period we interacted about our personal views on fitness and training. Interesting to see was that all of us have a different approach with a similar goal in getting better every day and supporting other to do so too. After some small talk as is usual in the process of getting to know each other better I felt that there were no friction points between us. During the next team meeting I addressed that every point of criticism should be freely discussed if it is well-substantiated and aimed at the professional and not the person. Having in mind that in the personal training industry communication is foremost informal and direct to create real connections with clients and colleagues.
To establish short lines of communication with the colleagues and the owners I was added to several different WhatsApp group chats.
All these ways of interacting with the team of MIBOSO created a nice atmosphere in the workplace and motivated me to be of as much beneficial value to the team as possible. Therefore, as a good intern needs to do, in my opinion, is start at the bottom and work his way up through the different tasks and duties running a business requires.
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Reflecting on my performance I can say I’m glad with how my communication improved in the start of the year. However, during the year I didn’t maintain a consistent way of communication. In future settings I would like to establish a regular well-planned method to keep communication on the right level, being level C. But as I noticed communication is one of the hardest parts of running a business.
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