END GOAL: Cork hurler Conor Lehane took on the Master’s in Personal and Management Coaching to fulfil his wish of returning to UCC.

31 Jul 2024

The urge to return to UCC reached its tipping point during COVID. He started looking up courses and the Master’s in Personal and Management Coaching caught his eye.

Conor Lehane had a sense of unfinished business when it came to his time in UCC. He studied an Arts undergrad and a Criminology postgrad but he had the nagging feeling of not giving it the same total commitment that he’s used to investing in his hurling with Cork. “I felt when I was in college at that time, I never justified myself in really giving it 100%,” says Conor. "You can float through it a bit. I wanted to challenge myself and go back and see how I get on."

“I knew going in what I wanted to get out of it; putting myself in the position of being back in college and going through essays again. I used always struggle with assignments and putting the time in and having the discipline and trying to get that done. That was the whole point really to do something that I felt I never gave 100% to back when I was in college. That, not satisfaction, but [that feeling of] at least I put myself in that situation again to see can I do it more properly than I did before?”

When Conor came out of his first course, he didn’t feel ready to leave college yet. Criminology was the choice as he had an interest in getting into the Gardaí at the time. When he finished that, his next destination was just across College Road to the AIB branch. As Conor says, “I went out of UCC just to go back to UCC!” For the past three years, he’s been working as a rep out on the road for Bulmers Ireland. The urge to return to UCC reached its tipping point during COVID. He started looking up courses and the Master’s in Personal and Management Coaching caught his eye. “The fact that I had such an interest in it had a huge impact because you’d be a lot more driven to do it and finish it out.” Having the choice of studying online (students can also choose a predominantly classroom-based delivery) made the work-sport-study balance all the easier to manage. “It can be applied to anything, that’s the beauty about it,” says Conor. “It’s just what I’d be interested in normally and the fact then there was a course based around that… I was very interested in how people think and how they work. Coaching was a good avenue for that.”

What he particularly appreciated was the way in which he could zero in on the topics that most intrigued him. “It’s mostly about what appeals to you the most because as you go on, you narrow down into your own field that you feel you’d be best positioned in. Whether it be business, sports, group coaching, individual coaching, we cover all those areas and then when it comes to your thesis, you narrow it down to what suits you best and what you’d be most interested in.”

Conor’s chosen thesis topic is about the pressures on midadolescent teenagers as they approach adulthood. “That’s a period of time where you’re still a young mind, your brain isn’t fully developed, but you’re taking on a lot more responsibility. I’m wondering will coaching help a person at that stage of their life to make more informed decisions and take more responsibility in what they’re doing? With all the influences you have at that age between your friends, your family, what’s expected of you, it’s a way of narrowing that down and letting the person making the decision be more informed. Is it their own call or is it a family member that pushed them to do something? There’s no one path for everyone but a couple of years will go by and you could be doing something that you’ve no interest at all in and then as time goes on and you get more mature, you figure out if only you had this knowledge when you were younger. That’s my route in, to bring that kind of hindsight to a younger age rather than being 25 onwards and then realising it.”

A unique aspect of the course is the 50 hours of pro bono coaching work students undertake. That practical element counts for 40% of the first year credits. Conor put the call out on LinkedIn for candidates interested in being coached. “You have to put yourself out there a small bit. You’d avoid getting someone that you’d know, you’d want to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation really… having to put yourself in a position where you’re meeting new people and not knowing their background. Coaching is all about going after a goal and using self-awareness, descriptive questioning, and really intense listening so the topic itself wasn’t necessarily the most important thing. If someone wants a goal to go after, it’s our job then to listen to where they’re coming from, question, and direct them in a way that suits them best and gives them the responsibility to actually achieve it.”

As for his own goals, Conor credits programme coordinator Pat O’Leary and the support staff for enabling that balance. “Everyone was so accommodating, that was the biggest help with it. Nobody was, by any means, putting a gun to your head or [saying] ‘this has to be done’. The course is brilliant for that.”

Even online, there was still scope to learn from classmates. “It was unreal because they were from all over Ireland and there was a couple of students living in France or England,” he says. “You’d learn a huge amount just from listening to other people and what they experienced coaching."

The course seeks to build emotional intelligence in coaches through effective self-management, evidence-based mindfulness, and heightened personal and social awareness. Does any of it have external benefits for Conor on the field with Cork or as a leader in a dressing room full of promising young players? “It definitely would… Normally you take on the expectation of a whole year all at once without realising it and nearly fry your head a bit. But when you break it down, set a few goals here and there, and then work towards those goals itself, the process of the whole thing is the most important aspect of it rather than the end goal."

“You learn about the importance of setting a goal for someone who’s looking for coaching but it’s what it takes to get there is where the real benefit comes from. The goal is the by-product of what you’re doing throughout that term."

“And then coaching can help give you a lot more confidence in terms of talking to people and really taking in what they’re saying. When you’re actually hearing what other people might say, it really changes the dynamic of your response.

“It’s all small little things but when they’re done over a period of time, you can see the benefits of it then. Rather than one big moment and then two months later, there’s another big one, it’s more the consistency of it.

“You apply it to your life as much as you can.”

Interested in these programmes? 

• Personal & Management Coaching - Postgraduate Cert
• Personal & Management Coaching - Postgraduate Diploma
• Personal & Management Coaching - Masters
• Coaching & Coaching Psychology - Higher Diploma

This article was written by Journalist Stephen Barry and originally published in the ACE newspaper in 2023. See all additions of the ACE Newspaper HERE.