Athletes Value Coaching. Do You?
Top-performing athletes have similar mindsets, a healthy level of discontent coupled with a commitment to be the best they can be in their profession, and a willingness to work hard. They also have and value coaches and coaching.
The business world seems different. Many business leaders don’t seem to value coaches and coaching as players do. Let’s look at some differences between an athlete and a business leader.
Players are what we in the business world call front-line workers. Both players and front-line workers are the ones that produce results.
Players get promoted into starting roles and must continually perform at a top level to stay there. In business, front-line workers get promoted into management roles because they mastered the job to be done in their area of accountability. The belief is their job mastery will enable them to effectively manage the work in the same domain and lead others as well. What’s missing however is knowledge about leadership. In business, too often we just expect managers to be able to lead.
I believe people collapse management and leadership into one bucket. I distinguish the difference between the two as follows. We manage things: projects, finances, supply chain, manufacturing, sales cycles, and processes, and we lead people. They are two distinctly different skill sets.
Years ago, the largest corporations recognized the need to develop leaders to ensure their future success. In 1956, GE established its leadership center in Crotonville, NY, to make itself the “best-managed company.” Other big companies followed. IBM created its learning center, as did Boeing Corporation. I trained over 1500 Boeing first-level leaders at the Boeing Leadership Center.
Over time, Organizational Development grew as a discipline within large companies. Their job was to make sure that managers and leaders developed the knowledge, skills, and abilities to make each successive turn up the corporate ladder. Naturally, training and development organizations grew both inside and outside large corporations to service this demand. Today, the leadership development market size is over $40B, while business coaching is just $14B.
Leadership development is typically a few-to-many delivery model, meaning, a few people are training or developing many people at the same time. Coaching in business is typically a one-to-one delivery model, as such, it’s more expensive. It’s also much more effective.
Why, then, don’t more leaders value coaches and coaching like athletes do?
Large companies value coaching and invest in their top and high-potential leaders by providing coaches. However, as you step down in company size the mindset toward coaching seems to change. I recently experienced an HR executive at a multi-billion-dollar company who viewed coaching as only for dealing with problem situations.
In the last year, I’ve had two requests from the top executives for me to coach senior leaders who were having issues with other employees. Neither of the senior leaders wanted a coach. Why? Likely because of the negative stigma some in the business world attach to coaching which says if you have a coach, something is wrong or looks bad.
There are two types of coaching, remedial and growth. Remedial coaching is to rectify a problematic situation like the ones referenced above. Conversely, growth coaching is for those who, like top athletes, are committed to becoming the best they can be.
What is an Executive Coach and what do they do?
It’s been my experience that there are two types of coaches. One comes from a psychological or organizational development background and the other has a business background. The latter coaches from a been there done that mindset, i.e. a former CEO coaching a CEO. Few like me have both a business background and a psychological approach. I’m a behavioral analyst.
Executive coaches help their clients in several ways. They help them in dealing with a whole host of business issues including personal issues. They help them explore what’s needed to elevate their individual performance. They help with breakdowns as well as how to balance work and life demands more effectively.
What a good coach shouldn’t do is tell you what to do. What they should do is ask thought-provoking questions.
When asked if he only had an hour to solve a problem, how he would go about answering it, Albert Einstein responded, “I would spend 55 minutes thinking of the right question to ask and 5 minutes solving the problem.” Questioning must be pretty important.
The job of a coach is to help people resolve issues, not have answers. My job is to get my clients to see their world differently. This is because we do not respond to what’s in front of us, but rather how we see what is in front of us. All of us are limited by what we see. That’s why I have a coach. The path to improved performance or new possibilities is paved by seeing your world differently. That is the role of a coach, to get you to see your world differently.
The tools I use to get you there are questions, not processes. I know I’ve done my job effectively when my client says that’s a great question, no one has ever asked me that. Or wow I never thought about it from that perspective. Questions expose whole new worlds of possibility. I believe I can coach anyone in anything, based squarely on the combination of my global perspective, and my confidence in my ability to ask questions and listen. I know I can get my clients to see their world differently and when I do, new opportunities for action emerge.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where we expect our leaders to have all the answers. In that world, having a coach would likely be viewed as a weakness.
My experience is different. Great leaders know they don’t have all the answers and they have the humility to admit it. The best leaders I’ve seen ask probing and thought-provoking questions. They are excellent listeners and the last to speak, not the first. They synthesize and integrate large amounts of information and data and make thoughtful and timely decisions. They are generalists, not specialists.
In the last few years, I met two senior leaders who were being considered for top positions in their respective firms, both of whom claimed they wanted a coach when they got into the top job. Neither of them got the top job. I can’t tell you having a coach would have guaranteed they would have secured the promotion, but I can tell you coaching would have made a significant difference in them understanding their reason for wanting the role and they would have more effectively demonstrated their demeanor and preparedness as well as elevated how others likely viewed them.
Do you have the mindset of an elite athlete? Are you ready to spread your wings? Would you like to transform yourself into a more effective leader? If so, get a coach. It will be the best investment you’ve ever made.
The time to get a coach is before you need one.