Who’s coaching you?

    A dream is to fulfill one’s deepest desire. The dream for coaches of professional athletes is to see them win.  For some it may be the Olympics; for a tennis player the ultimate prize is a championship at Wimbledon. The question is how does one get there?

Sports coaches have the unique ability to impact lives and to make dreams a reality.  Some coaches have tasted this success on their own and wish to share it with others. Others have only dreamt of this success for themselves, but strive to support those more talented to achieve their goals.  

Coaches love to teach athletes with heart, desire, fight and most importantly the motivation to improve and excel.  However, in order to be successful, coaches need to be able to help their athletes to achieve success on many fronts: emotionally, physically and technically.  Knowing how to coach an athlete to success in itself a carefully learned art.

The question remains though, how does a coach go from good to great?  Often it is their athletes that challenge them to be the best in the game.  At the top coaching levels coaching is less about teaching and more about facilitating success. 

The answer really is that like an athlete, great coaches never stop practicing and continuing to learn how to be better.  In his latest bestselling book, The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that it takes 10 000 hours for one to become master their passion whether it be sport, art or science.  If this is true, this theory could then be applied to coaches as well.   

Preparation for success in coaching mirrors that of an athletes’, coaches must challenge themselves to learn more, practice more and consistently evaluate their own performance.

Great coaches:

·        Ask questions and listen

·        Read all types of materials including biographies

·        Observe matches, players and other coaches

·        Work with executive coaches

·        Never stop learning

Executive coaching is an excellent tool that coaches can use to become the best that they can be. “Coaching is recognized in business, in teaching, and in sports as a positive and empowering strategy for performance and leadership development.” (Witherspoon & White 1997). An executive coach works with their clients to determine what they want, who they are and then develop a strategic plan for navigating through the obstacles along the way.

Your executive coach might ask you questions like: What is your coaching philosophy?  What are your professional values?  What special coaching tools do you have to help unlock the success of your athletes?   They may seem like simple questions, however, very few people actually think about them. Executive coaching opens the door to dialogue that you may already intuitively know about yourself, but have never actually spoken out loud or written down. Every single person holds the key to their own success; a good coach helps them to unlock it.

What are you doing to become a masterful coach?                                               

 

Comments

[Prem Rao]

Very nice post. I like the point you make that succeeding as a coach does not give you the power to sit back and relax.

You can add value only when you yourself as a coach are abreast of the latest happenings in your business/field and are truly au courant .