The top 3 reasons for a performance coach in leadership.
No professional or high performance athlete would ever dream of attaining world class performance without an incredible coach that had an eye only on their performance.
However, in the world of business, it is the norm to do leadership alone. It makes no logical sense that anyone truly interested in high performance would rely on their own insights, perspectives, and experience to expand themselves. However, no one ever said that human beings are logical. Leaders have been bred to do leadership on their own. It is surely paradoxical that one of the critical qualities that most leaders possess, self-reliance or the ability to carve a path into the future in the face of unsupportive and even hostile circumstances, is the very same quality that inevitably limits what’s possible for these same leaders. No one, NO ONE, produces extraordinary results on their own.
So then, what is a coach and exactly how would a coach make a difference to people, leaders, who already have a knack for accomplishing things. The answer to that question starts with clarifying what a performance coach is and isn’t. And there are a variety of coaches out there: life coaches, business coaches, sports coaches, and so on. Here is what a performance coach is NOT. A performance coaching is not a mentor, not an advice giver, not a source of accountability (your parent or a cop), not a confidant, not a good listener, and not an expert who has the answers. A performance coach is someone who can empower you to uncover the blind spots which limit your actions and outcomes in business. A performance coach enables you to take new actions on these new insights; producing new results. A performance coach ultimately is out to transform your performance not just improve it. Here are three specific reasons this is valuable.
You are too close to your own work to objectively see yourself and your performance. Your boss is too close to your work as well and, chances are, has been trained to evaluate you more so than coach and develop you. And lastly, your employees aren’t reliable for telling you the truth about you. And the ones that will only represent a small sample size of what you need to know. Empowering you to uncover your “blind spots” is the primary objective of your performance coach. You aren’t stupid, when you see what you haven’t been able to see before about yourself you will know what to do. And a performance coach will be there to add horsepower to some of those new actions you now see to take.
NO HIGH-PERFORMING ATHLETE DOES IT ON THEIR OWN; WHY WOULD YOU?
This reason is pretty straight forward. No one achieves greatness on their own. Of the 100 most epic companies in the world, not one of them was started ALONE. That includes Google, Apple, Carnegie, Microsoft, Westinghouse, Ford, etc… The point is that greatness isn’t achieved as a loner. And what ALL great athletes have mastered is that coaching is indispensable if greatness is the aim. If mediocrity is the aim then doing it on your own is indispensable. And as much as having another powerful set of eyes on your performance looks self-evident, this is not something that you will have been conditioned to want. It almost goes without saying that a leader must be someone who can create results from their own grit and self-determination, often in the face of opposition. However, like everything, this strength eventually comes around to become the fundamental limitation to the next level of performance. Acting on your own with limited contribution is ultimately limited. And, almost no one is capable of “reinventing” their core strength of independence to that of interdependence. As a result, we will spend our entire careers using the same fundamental thinking, tactics, and assumptions that we used last year. All of them based on some version of an “I’m own my own” mindset.
YOU WILL DO WHAT IS COMFORTABLE; A COACH DOES WHAT WORKS
Performance coaches aren’t interested in your reasons, your justifications, and your explanations. Your coach only cares about doing what works. They do not coach to your feelings and opinions; they coach to what will bring about lasting success for your life and for your company as a whole. There is almost no one in your inner circle that will have this tough love view with you – including you.
And what is comfortable for you as a leader will almost always be to look at others not yourself, to know more and more, to appear strong and composed, and to talk more than you listen. No amount of books will ever change this. These are neurological patterns of behaviour that can only be addressed through committed and deliberate action. A coach will commit you to nothing less.
A good performance coach will restore years of live onto your leadership and open up completely new pathways to fulfill the results you want. In the end you have to ask yourself if this is worth it, and if it is – then get a coach and stop doing leadership on your own.
