Who is the coach?

Perhaps one of the most important things we do (for most of us certainly) in our lifetime is to learn how to coach and to be coached.

Clearly I would say that because I have invested heavily in both ends of this, being extensively coached by various different people and becoming a coach for various people which has been financially beneficial, but it goes much further and wider than this in the same way that selling is much greater than most people think as described by Dan Pink.

Perhaps to coach and be coached is entirely human but something that in today’s society something that many people shy away from as a sign of weakness of for fear of giving advice which is wrong. So yet again some examples of where coaching has had an enormous impact on my life:

1. Playing International basketball as a boy and being exposed to multiple different styles and sources of coaching from individuals. It was massive in shaping me as a person.
2. Teachers who took me under their wing, looked after me and nurtured me, able to see that I worked much better with a carrot than a stick.
3. Mentors at University who are still friends and who inspired me to greater things; things beyond what I ever thought I could achieved.
4. Later career mentors who still look out for me, help me in times of need and are a shoulder to cry on when things go wrong.
5. Business coach, Chris Barrow – thanks for everything.
6. Triathlon coaching. Different styles from different people but now with Simon McCarthy, even through the hellish four months that I’ve had, I am still able to turn to him whenever necessary and he enabled me to achieve more than I could have ever imagined.

But there is a flip side to this, because there is a duty and a responsibility to take your experience of being coached and to coach others at whatever level you think that is.

Mentoring for implant dentistry is coaching.

Teaching young graduates is coaching.

Training your staff, nurturing your staff, getting the best out of them and putting square pegs into square holes is coaching.

Raising your children is the ultimate in coaching.

I was shy as a child (hard to believe I know) I was terrible at football which all the other boys could do. I was turned away from that, both by the guys I played with and by the people who coached it because I simply wasn’t good enough. It wrecked my confidence and the was only restored to some degree when basketball found me and the coached at basketball found me.

Of late I have had the privilege of being asked to coach my little boys under 8 football team (I know nothing about football but I do know a little bit about coaching) We have a little boy in that team who isn’t very good at football (in truth none of them are very good at football!). But this little boy is less good than the rest and is on the verge of giving up. I spoke to his mum the other day and she said “I just want him to not give up” and I completely understand that because that was me and it still is me. At the warm up for that game one of his own team caught his leg and he was in tears and wanted to go off and see his mum but I took him off an rubbed his leg (child protection!) and gave him the Captain’s armband. I told him that if he was going to be the Captain he had to stand up and lead his team, run as hard as he could and not give up. He played the best game of football he has ever played, in his life I think. His team mates were so nice to him at the end that he couldn’t quite believe it.

Carrots and sticks… carrots and sticks. That’s coaching.

Blog Post Number: 871