Everyone Needs A Coach

Everyone Needs A Coach

Brent Engel
Contributing Writer
Grow. Perform. Succeed.

Everyone needs a coach. My father owned several businesses, the last of which was an ice cream factory (imagine my childhood) and he had a coach. Many business owners and leaders have coaches and mentors.  Tony Robbins made a career of being a coach.  The best shape I was in was when I had a personal coach.

A coach can help you achieve extraordinary results.  Some business owners and their mentors include:

• Mark Zuckerberg mentored by Steve Jobs

• Tim Cook mentored by Steve Jobs

• Steve Jobs mentored by Robert Friedland

• Oprah Winfrey mentored by Maya Angelou

Having a coach is good for us.  A good coach helps us reach our goals.  Look at the Pittsburgh Penguins.  They were not supposed to win the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row.  They lost their goalie in warm-ups before the first game, they were full of defensive injuries and without their star defenseman, and they faced two of the top three teams in the first two rounds.  And the Penguins are the Stanley Cup champions.  Coaching is effective.  So that leads to the question of why?

Defining an effective coach is hard.  If I ask a group of 15 people to tell me what makes an effective coach, I will likely get 14 different answers. I know this because I teach coaching to business owners and when I ask for a definition of an effective coach, I get 14 different answers.

There’s a problem with a list of 14 different items–no one remembers more than the first few and the last few. Scientists now believe that short term memory can only hold about four items. Thought leaders in human improvement recommend trying to attain no more than four goals.  With such wisdom in mind, I am going to limit my definition of an effective coach to no more than four items.

The first thing that makes a coach effective is having a plan.  An effective coach knows what’s important to achieve the result.  The coach uses this plan as a benchmark to guide us and move us in the right direction.

The next thing that makes a coach effective is the ability to focus on the important.  Too often we get caught up in the day to day struggles that demand our immediate attention that we lose sight of those behaviors that are truly important.  An effective coach will refocus us and provide the feedback we need.

The third thing that makes an effective coach is an ability to set stretch goals.  An effective coach will challenge us to challenge ourselves to move us forward.

The fourth thing that makes an effective thing is the ability to be there.  A coach provides us with accountability.  It is easy to put off tasks and performance as life grabs our attention.  An effective coach will be there even when not physically present to move us again in the right way.

In a personal example, I think of my running hobby.  My friend approached me one day with a plan to run a marathon in six months.  Neither of us were runners, but I had a running partner and coach from that day forward.  He found a plan on the internet.  We would run the long runs together on the weekends.  When I would call up to say I wasn’t going to show up because it was raining, he told me to focus on running and ignore the rain (I wouldn’t melt).  As we trained for other races, he would set speed goals for me that I thought were challenging.  Finally, he would pass by my desk daily reminding me of the weekend run and asking me when I was finally going to get serious about my training.  I can say 15 marathons later that it was a thrilling time and I was beyond pleased each time I crossed the finish line faster than the goal he set (I showed him).

So there you are, everyone could use a coach to help them achieve exceptional results. Exceptional coaches have a plan, focus on the important, set stretch goals and provide accountability.  Time to stop reading and get a coach.