📰 One of the best articles about coaching I have ever read
- John J D Munn
- Aug 8, 2023
- 3 min read
This article from the New Yorker is a masterpiece at underscoring the real value of coaching. Arguably more importantly, it highlights how a coach isn't some fancy commodity that other people should have but something that can help everybody in all businesses and professions.
When I first read this article it shifted my perspective slightly on coaching overall - the coach doesn't need to know everything, the coach doesn't need to be smarter than you. Many people know things they can do to improve, but the problem is being able to objectively identify what needs to be improved in the first place.
A good coach is a bit like a 'spotter' in the gym, they don't need to be the best weightlifter but they do need to be able to provide an objective viewpoint to help the person better see the situation themselves. The coach needs to ask good questions and help guide the person to improve. To help the person to see the woods through the trees.
While I take a blended approach today, with direct actionable to-do-list type feedback when people need it and 'holding up the mirror' at other times, being able to understand the real value of coaching significantly helped me improve. It allowed me to offer more value to the entrepreneurs I work with. Whether you are a coach or you are somebody who wants to improve your skills (in any field), I strongly recommend checking out this article.
A quote from the article:
Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every elite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be. But doctors don’t. I’d paid to have a kid just out of college look at my serve. So why did I find it inconceivable to pay someone to come into my operating room and coach me on my surgical technique?
A second useful quote:
Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short. This is tricky. Human beings resist exposure and critique; our brains are well defended. So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
These are just two of the many gems in the article. Well worth a read.
💡 Quote I'm pondering
"Energy is like a pent up crossbow. Decision is like releasing the trigger" - Sun Tzu.
Quote from his book, The Art of War
I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-august-9-2023
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