4 Things that High School Taught Me About Coaching

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:54:20 +0000

When I look outside of my office window around 8AM and around 3PM, I see herds of high school students wandering first to school then home again. It takes me back a few (okay more than a few) years to my high school days. And while I’m thinking about it, it inspired this blog. So, here are 4 things that high school taught me about coaching.

1. High school students seem to be always just one Facebook Wall post away from a crisis: Sam was seen with Brenda, what could that mean? Or, Joe didn’t say hello to April, it’s the end of the world. The same holds true for some of our coaching clients: They are in a potential state of near crisis. I do mean this humorously but not disrespectfully. Our clients don’t know the stuff that we’re working with them in. It is a big deal with them. Our job is to navigate the situation with some sanity.

2. High school students need to balance dreams with reality. They might aspire to be a teacher or cop or rocket scientist but they also need to face reality. Do they have the marks to make it? Do they have the dedication? You don’t want to crush their dreams but you also don’t want them to run down a futile path. Again, that’s like our job as coaches. We need to help our clients understand their dream of (for example) creating the next Twitter with the reality that (for example) they have no social networking experience. Our job is to help them find a real path that will take them close to their dream.

3. There are a lot of things competing for the attention of high school students: Their school work, an after school job, a budding romance, friends, and all that kind of stuff. These take on a priority in the student’s mind and it’s hard for the lower prioritized stuff to get the attention it needs. It’s the same as a coach: We can give plenty of advice and guidance to our clients, but we’re only speaking into their lives for an hour or two a week. The rest of the time they’ve got work to do, family life to live, the dog to walk, and the garbage needs to be taken to the curb. Our job, then, is to help them follow through on the advice we give (obviously we don’t want to do the work for them) but to make it easy for them.

4. Fashion is a ridiculously important element in high school. (I guess it’s important outside of high school, too, actually, but it seems to be more critically urgent in high school because of the impact that it can have on peer relationships). This kind of "cool" also appears in our work, too. I don’t know about you, but I often get clients who come to our sessions with the latest, most fashionable flavor of marketing idea to implement in their business. My job, in these cases, is to help them weigh the value and determine whether or not it’s truly going to help their business. As mom said, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s right.

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Coaches on Coaching

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:44:14 +0000

This is a great video about coaching. It’s actually just a 3 minute teaser for a much longer (paid) coaching video but it’s still a fantastic synopsis about what coaching is from different perspectives. But it’s not just a video for beginner coaches: I’m a coach and every time I watch this I think "hey, that’s a great way to think about coaching". It gives me a new perspective and "refreshes" my thinking on what my opportunities are with my clients.