Whether you are a new Coach or not - the job of 'coaching' is basically the same.
Set the 'Rules' before you start - Your introduction should include your 'Risk Management' and 'Behaviour' as well as a brief outline of what you will be covering in the session (according to your session plan)
Follow a pre-planned "Session Plan" which covers what you plan to do in that/ each session - make sure you revise each one before you plan the next one.
Preety soon it will come naturally.
I am sure your peers will respect your professional approach.
Good Luck !

It is hard to coach your peers because they most likely have the same experience as you do. I would advise you to not act like a coach, but to act more like one of the boys. Make you sessions fun and enjoyable. Part of being a good coach is to be able to pull someone into line when they need it but not discourage them. It will be hard for you to do this as your peers will not like being treated like a child by another child if you know what I mean. Don't take things to serious and allow yourself to be open and approachable to all players. If you can get a teacher or parent to sit in on the traing session it would be worthwhile as well.

Good luck.

I would say "Show your own skills to their best" Be prepared to learn others skills. Learn from your "pupils" If they see that you are trying your best, they will give you their best. I use my charges as a sounding-board, get "Feedback" from them If you don't know the answer, admit it (But try to find out)

I am also a new coach with a very small XC team. They did not have a background of hard training and I was afraid to push them too hard and have them quit. Unfortunately, by the end of the season I realized I should haved trained them a bit harder. Anyone have advice as to know how how hard to push? I don't want to make the same mistakes in the T&F season.

On going through my coaching course, I had to observe some archers, & then have an interview to report on my findings. One archer was quite young, say mid-20's, the second archer was, I would say in his early to mid 60's. They both had their faults (As we all do), The main question was, "How can I improve these archers?" Withuot thinking, my response was "How far do they wish to go in their sport, & do they want to improve?" Perhaps the older of the two was quite happy to be in company, & as long as he could "Keep his end up", improvement did not come into it Perhaps the younger archer wanted to improve. We were not alowed to talk with the archers in question so feed-back was denied to me.

Find out just where your team want to be, are they serious about their sport, or is it some place to "Hang Out". Get feed-back from them, be positive, never negative, negativity just give bad reults.
I wish you & your team all the best.
C.

I run my own tennis club and regularly have the better juniors helping with coaching duties. My advice is make sure you have a plan, talk it through with someone 1st, dont be autocratic or dictational, say as little as you can (BIG TIP THERE) and demo once perfectly and leave it at that. Best thing is to do a pictoral lesson plan so THEY can see what you want clearly. It will help you organise.
Now to the coaching part, coaching is about motivating and that is going to be your challenge. Try and remember this, Encourage them, Congratulate Them, inspire them but never demean them. Always start you comment with a positive, "I liked the way you did xxxx maybe xxx could e a little like this" then show. If someone gets out of line try reason, if that fails you will have to be firm. They maybe your peer, but right there and then your the boss and as soon as they know it they will accept it.
Its a toughy, maybe you should ask them on a 1 to 1 basis if they have any reservations about you, I dont envy you though. Good luck

Have a team meeting before the first practise of the year to set team expectations and goals, for XC individual goals as well. If the runners are older than 14, allow them to have input into the team goals and expectations. They will be a lot more open to harder training if they think that they chose to train harder.

I did this with one of the box lacrosse teams I'm coaching. The players are 15-16 and have never played A-level ball until this year. At the first team meeting I told them that I wanted them to play two shifts of offense and defense before coming off the floor and gave them the option of doing a lot of conditioning work or having them practise drills at game speed. They took the second option and now I don't have to yell at them to run through drills because they have got it in their heads that they want to run all of their drills at game speed.