Chances are you’ve had many coaches in your life, maybe starting as a child in sports. But coaches aren’t just for sports and aren’t just for kids. We know from our experience that the best performers have coaches. Examples range from acting to classical music to professional sports. The list could go on.
But we don’t live in those worlds, so how does this apply to us?
Hopefully you have examples yourself. I’ve had coaches who made me more effective, and I’m grateful for every one of them.
Seven Lessons We Can Learn from Coaches
Perspective and awareness of blind spots.
When someone else knows us and our situation, they can see things we can’t see. They can help us look in new directions. They can speak truth we can’t see and help us understand things from perspectives we haven’t yet considered.
Fundamentals.
Great coaches help us do the everyday work better, reminding us of the fundamentals and making sure we’re doing them well.
Technical and continuous improvement.
Coaches can help us get better at the technical parts of a role and, in general, keep us moving forward and growing through continuous improvement.
Possibilities.
Coaches can help us see our potential. This is a very personal perspective change. This may be one of the most important things a coach can do for us.
Resilience.
A coach can encourage us and help us keep moving and build our confidence based on what we’ve already achieved rather than focusing only on our most recent challenge.
Specific insights.
Coaches can give us specific insights into situations we’re dealing with, giving us direct advice and asking us just the right questions to help us deal with a current situation.
Reflection and learning.
Coaches help us look at what we’ve done, reflect on that, and learn to move forward. While we don’t necessarily need a coach to do this, often conversations with them help make this happen at a deeper level than we ever would reach for ourselves.
What Makes Coaches Great?
The skills and tendencies of great coaches are far more nuanced than this short list and yet these skills and attributes are critical to being a great coach.
- Interest. The best coaches are interested in us. They want to understand who we are. They care about us being successful and their interest affects how they coach.
- Attention. The best coaches focus their attention on us. The time they spend with us is all about us and our progress and results.
- Insight. Great coaches bring their own experience and their own insights to our situations to help us see things in ways we couldn’t otherwise see them.
- Questions. Great coaches are willing to ask questions and know when to ask the right questions.
•A process. Great coaches understand the learning process, the discovery process, and the feedback process in ways to help us move forward.
(Want to help the leaders in your organization build these skills and far more? Look at our Coaching with Confidence Workshop.)
What Keeps Us from Having Coaches?
Most of us know that having a coach would help us and yet many don’t have one. Why is that?
- We expect/hope it will be our boss. It would be great if our boss was a great coach. Not all of us have that opportunity. For those who do, congratulations.
- We’ve never considered that option. Many of us never thought that a great coach could be available to us and so we’ve never thought about it.
- We don’t have the resources to hire one. We know coaches cost money and we’re sure there’s no budget in our organization for that to be an option.
- We don’t know how to find a great one. Even if we’d like a coach and a budget might be available, we don’t know how to find one. If we can’t find a great coach, we can’t have one.
- We think we can figure it out on our own. Even though we know a coach would be helpful and even though we’ve heard the examples of high performers having coaches, we believe we can figure it out on our own. After all, we’ve made it this far, haven’t we?
The Achilles’ Heel of Coaches
The Achilles’ heel of coaching is that we can’t have access to our coach any time we need them. This isn't something we’ve thought about because we didn’t have another option, but with the advent of AI (and specifically tools that make AI far better coaches), the Achilles’ heel becomes obvious. With a tool that is available on any device, we can get help from a coach anytime: not during our weekly coaching call, not when the coach happens to be available, and not for something that might seem too small to ask them about.
That’s where having the right tool to either supplement a coach or become your coach (if some of the issues above are in your way) matters.
What is Claridus?
Claridus is an AI platform that learns who you are as a leader: your style, your strengths, your story and your mindset. It coaches you in the moment, and 30 years of how we coach leaders shapes everything it does. It includes our Bud to Boss content and will soon grow to include more of ours and other experts’, so you get the content you need (and can trust) and not whatever turns up on the internet.
If you’d like to see it, I’ll spend a free hour with you and anyone else in your organization who should be there. About half of the time is working through the leadership challenges you face, and half of the time is a demo. You’ll leave with something useful even if Claridus isn’t right for you. You can learn more and request that hour here.
If you think your organization needs this but don’t hold the budget, the same page has a Champion Kit to help you introduce it to others in your organization.
What if all your leaders had a world-class coach whenever they needed one?
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