If I were to ask you what the word COACH means to you, I’m sure several different descriptors would come to mind. You can think of a sports trainer, you can think of a modern bus, you can even think of a horse-drawn vehicle.
Although the most recognized forms of coaching come from the world of sports, the idea of the horse-drawn trainer is a great analogy to explain how coaching helps clients, so I’ll use it metaphorically here to help you demonstrate:
1. What is performance training about?
2. How coaching helps people: some real examples of results and consequences
3. Why people could benefit from working with a trainer
The word coaching literally means transporting someone from one place to another. One thing that all forms of coaching seem to have in common is that people use it to help themselves move forward or bring about change.
Often when I first meet my clients, they are like a bus without wheels. This isn’t necessarily a bad place, it’s just that they’re a bit stuck or feel like they’ve been standing still for a while. They need to do something to move forward or create change.
So one of the first ways a trainer helps is to help the client put some wheels on their trainer. However, before we can do that, there are two things we need to figure out.
1. Where are they now?
2. And much more difficult: where do they want to be?
We need to know this so that the wheel options are suitable for the terrain and the trip that the customer wants to take. Think for a moment. What do you want? What do you really want? If you weren’t AFRAID what would you do? What are you doing right now that you wish you hadn’t? What do you really want from your life, career and business? Wouldn’t life be so much more fulfilling and satisfying if you knew the answer to some of these questions?
Destiny doesn’t always have to be shocking, more often than not it can be a small change that could make a big difference.
These are some of the destinations I have helped clients reach
o Feel more motivated to make sales calls
o Develop a marketing and sales strategy.
o To improve performance in Interviews
o To be clear about the next step in your career
o To make better presentations
o To double the business profit
o To set clear business goals
o To feel more confident in business meetings
o To network more effectively
Are there any of these destinations somewhere you would like to move towards?
Once we have decided on the destination, we can put some wheels on the coach. But even then that’s not enough, we might be able to move on, however something is still missing. Horses!
The horses provide the power and strength for the carriage to move. Have you ever tried to get a horse to do something that he doesn’t want to do? If not, take my word and experience! You try to lead a horse down a path he doesn’t want: he will either throw you off or turn around and run in the opposite direction! This is often the reason why we have great difficulty in motivating ourselves to do something. It is because our unconscious is acting like reluctant horses. Why? Because we often set ourselves destinations that we think we SHOULD aspire to, instead of what we really want.
Since the horses in this analogy represent motivation and commitment, to help my clients get their horses moving, it is important that I check that they are truly motivated and committed to the actions.
I have many examples of this. She was training Claire, an assistant brand manager at a large corporate organization. Had great difficulty dealing with others in meetings, was afraid to offer ideas, felt awkward giving presentations After only 2 hours with Claire, it was clear to me and more importantly to her that she hated what what was he doing. She had fought hard to get into this job, she had taken her two years of internal networking to secure the position, she hadn’t really considered that the position wasn’t what she expected at all. She changed her job 6 months later and is now a sales director at another organization and is very happy.
I often use a coaching process called GROW to prepare the coachee. Very briefly this involves the following steps:
o Goals: establish what they really want to achieve
o Reality – we look at the current reality – we establish the starting point
o Options: we analyze all possible options; sometimes, there are options that people haven’t considered at all (like Claire above, who hadn’t considered finding a new job as a real option).
o Will – This stage is about turning a discussion into a decision. It is the construction of an action plan to meet a requirement that has been clearly specified, on a site that has been carefully studied and using the widest possible choice of construction materials. The person being coached always retains choice and ownership, even if it is their decision to take no action.
Try this sequence yourself when you are trying to solve a problem alone or if you are helping someone else.
Well, at this point the trainer, his wheels and the horses are ready and motivated. In 1750 it took 12 days to travel from London to Edinburgh. It was not possible to do the whole trip in one go, it had to be done in stages. Like the stagecoach that stops at the inn, as you make your way to your destination, you need to understand the stages involved in your journey. This is often the reason why people give up on goals. They set a destination and a journey that is too long, and it begins to seem impossible.
If you are developing a new business strategy, it will involve a phased plan. Sometimes you will need to stop and rest your horses to make sure you have the energy, strength and motivation to see it through. Often we’re not that good at doing that – as a coach I help people identify where these stages are and encourage them to assess progress, which in itself keeps them motivated.
Sometimes I start working with people who have arrived at the first inn, but have left without a map, so they have no idea where they are going now. I started working with a small company employing 20 people after a year. They were fine, but they didn’t feel in control. The MD felt that he was going to crash because he had no plans and no vision for the future. After a management-focused training program: sales doubled, they have a clear brand and marketing strategy, a business plan, and a much happier CEO.
As you make your way down the highway, your bus can get heavy when some unwanted passengers take an elevator: Freddy Fear, Donald Distraction, Wilma Worry, Deirdre Doubt, Bert T Busy, and more. As your coachman, I can help you keep your coach lighter by dislodging these passengers as we go down the road. Like many other trainers, he used NLP and life coaching approaches to keep the mind sharp and focused.
Also remember that on the road you can get into an accident by hitting a pothole or puddle in the road or be a victim of highway robbery (usually the tax man nowadays!). Again, having a coach by your side to encourage and support you, then you are more likely to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and focus on getting to the next stage.
So who usually buys a ticket to ride the performance coach?
There is no typical customer, we are as individual as our fingerprints. I guess the main thing that unites my clients is the will to move forward and create change. To give you some ideas about the type of clients who would find business or performance coaching helpful:
Individuals:
– Start-up of new businesses – less than three years of activity
– Existing businesses that want to make a radical change in their performance
– Newly promoted people who want to do great things.
– Ambitious people who really want to succeed.
– People who feel challenged or unsure about where their business or career is headed.
– Companies that conduct seminars or motivational training for their staff.
In short, using a performance coach means people get to the destination they want, not the one they think they should. Working with a performance coach gets you there faster because the coach can help you lighten the load, getting rid of unwanted barriers and self-imposed limitations. It is claimed that working with a performance coach makes you 100 times more likely to achieve your goals because together we create a motivational plan with clearly marked stages or goals.
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Everyone who got to where he is has had to start where he was.” Are you ready to hop on the performance trainer and get to a better place than here?