The indoor clinic we delivered today at Interski looked at SBINZ’s role in helping instructors find the sweet spot to their purpose in the industry.
With the theme of Interski 2019 being Future.Snowsports our goal of the clinic was to highlight that in order for there to be a future of snowboarding, we need to make sure there is a pathway for instructors to find their purpose and continue to stay in the industry. This is no secret and is something that is being faced around the world.
In the clinic we delivered we used an external concept from our traditional knowledge of skiing and snowboarding methodologies and ideas. We used “Ikigai”.
This is a Japanese concept from Okinawa and it’s literal translation is “reason for being”. As you can see from the graphic, the sweet spot in the middle is one’s reason for being, or purpose. What we really like about this concept is that it has helped us tell our story to other nations about how we are contributing to SBINZ instructors’ sweet spot as an organisation.
For each key middle aspect of the graphic; passion, profession, vocation and mission, we discussed some ideas and influences of each.
Passion
As you can imagine this is an easy topic with many of the audience at Interski currently hovering around their own purpose sweet spot. Things such as making turns, teaching, sharing, travel, the culture of snowboarding we’re all there.
Profession
The focus within this section was to explain what SBINZ is currently doing to help our instructing staff continue to get paid to do what they’re good at. What is it that we’re putting back in? Well, our role is to provide an education, so we have been working hard to provide more appropriate resources to our membership. This started strongly with a full manual re-write in 2017, along with an e-learning platform and a video series since. Finally, a key mentioned was given to the concept of self-reflection and how we view this in SBINZ along with a couple of examples from a new level 1 instructor, through to its use as an organisation.
Vocation
This part was great; we couldn’t find anyone who could tell us that the world doesn’t need snowboarding! So with that good news, we showcased some examples of barriers that may get in the way of getting paid for the worlds need to snowboard. Work visas, families, injuries and burnout to name a few. Of course some of these barriers are out of our control so we wanted to show what SBINZ is doing to help mitigate those within our control. A great example here is our professional development days to continue to invest in what our instructing staff can ultimately be paid for… their growth in skillsets.
Mission
Obviously, we love snowboarding and the world needs it which is why SBINZ has a vision, and that is “to be a global leader in snowsports professional development.” This is highly valued in our organisation as the opportunity to continually develop can contribute massively to finding our purpose sweet spot. For those that didn’t know, we shared that SBINZ has a development fund available which can be applied for to provide these opportunities. A way we’ve been doing this and want to continue to do so is with exchange programs with other nations to learn more about other systems and training environments around the world. We’ve hosted Oscar from APSI at our Examiner training just last season, and have since returned a visit to Australia. We have also hosted Toby from the Swiss system to shadow a level three workshop and a Park & Pipe exam and in return, we’ll be sending Richie to Switzerland to shadow their level 3 process. As an organisation we believe these opportunities are so valuable not only for the travelling trainer but for our education system and our membership.
To wrap up our time with our audience we re-visited our journey as an overview and it’s contribution to the next generation of future shredders!
If you joined us indoors for the presentation we hope you enjoyed it. If you’re reading this from further afield, please feel free to comment below with any questions you may have. We’re 100% stoked with the outcome!
– By Leo Carey