Each and everyone of us plays a variety of roles in our day to day lives. For example we are all salesmen, each and every day. We have to sell our ideas, our thoughts, our choices, and even ourselves to others every day. In work, in dating, in friendships, with family, and a whole lot more. In addition to the role of salesperson we also play the role of coach, manager, trainer, and teacher each and every day. Regardless if we officially have these roles as part of our job title or are parents.
Managing and influencing the behavior of others, guiding them in the direction that they should go, and having an impact on others is all part of our day to day lives. Sometimes critically important, sometime simply convenient, but regardless it’s always good to have the tools available to do this to the best of our ability.
So let’s dive in how to do this. The 3 steps to coaching anyone just about anything in the most efficient and effective manner possible, without having to have a degree in coaching.
Step 1 To Coaching Anyone Just About Anything
Leadership and coaching share similarities. And by coaching I’m also including teaching, training, managing, and all of that under the same banner as coaching, just to be clear. But one big similarity between leading and coaching is that people will never hear what you say if your actions contradict what you say. Before anything else you have to coach and lead by example. This doesn’t mean if you coach athletes you have to be as good as they are in the chosen arena of competition. Then barely anyone could coach at a high level.
Rather it means if you tell them to be disciplined but aren’t disciplined yourself don’t expect to have the kind of impact that you could have. Likewise if you tell them to train every day but never train yourself then they’ll see you as a hypocrite and whatever you say will have much less power. Lead and coach by example, that’s the first thing. Do what you say. And be honest if you’ve fallen short or aren’t achieving something the way that you want. Honesty also goes a long way. No one expects perfection from you, but they will turn away from lying.
It’s an overused and sometimes cheesy saying but you need to ‘be the change that you want to be in the world’. Whatever change or difference you want to see you need to be it. Don’t complain about people being overweight if you’re overweight yourself. Don’t complain about people doing X or Y when you’re the perfect example of X or Y. Look to yourself first. Take the plank out of your own eye before worrying about the speck of dust in you brother’s. Doing this is hard work, sometimes painful work, but it’s the work required to be a leader and coach. As well as move forward and advance in your own life.
This step can’t be skipped.
Step 2 To Coaching Anyone Just About Anything
You can give someone the exact same piece of information and have them either hate you or love all depending on how you put it too them. As a coach you need communication and teaching skills. Figure out how people learn and use that you teach others all that you can. For example just telling people things doesn’t normally do much good, unless they ask directly. It’s often much better to keep asking them questions and let them puzzle things out for themselves. You’re teaching them to think for themselves and that not only gives them the tools to solve problems in the future but they’ll also accept the learning better because they came to it themselves.
Coaching is less about yelling and berating and more about subtly shaping and leading. Giving a gentle nudge this way and that and letting the person being coached do most of the work themselves, which is what they want to do. A coach can also lay out guidelines and give best practices as well. But it’s first important to establish rapport, trust, and to deliver information in a way that whoever is being coached will accept it and let it become part of their own thinking patterns.
Never underestimate the power of asking questions. Hold back giving advice until it’s truly needed. Let the person work things out for themselves. Give them the guidelines and then let them work within the guidelines, the more they can figure out for themselves and on their own the deeper the coaching and change will be. You want them to own their learning and empower them as much as possible. And part of this will be the traditional telling them what’s wrong, how to improve, and laying out best practices and guidelines.
But most already understand that, what is often left is the asking questions and the ownership of learning.
Step 3 To Coaching Anyone Just About Anything
Finally, understand that you can’t do it all yourself. You’re never going to know everything and you’re never going to be able to teach everything. Also you have limited time that you can give to any one person. Because of this there are two things that you need to do. The first is develop resources that work in lieu of you. Meaning things that have the basics of your knowledge laid out so people can familiarize themselves with the basics and therefore save both you and them time. Also you should connect people with good resources that’ll further their development.
Books, courses, teachers, trainers, and the like. Tell people where they can learn more and get more information, where they can further their knowledge and growth. Build a good team around you if relevant. Have something they can learn from when you’re not around. Write a book or ‘cheat sheet’ yourself. If relevant maybe even make a course of best practices to get people up to speed before coaching with you. Or even if it’s not an official role and you’re just sharing with a friend or family member. Tell them about a book or teacher that really helped you. Use word of mouth, it’s powerful.
Tell people what helped you and why then show them where to find it, beyond that it’s largely up to them. Though with good communication and sales skills you should be able to lead them as much as possible to what is right. But in the end, it’s their choice what they do with the information provided to them. And beyond that, there’s not much else that you can do.
The Basics Of Effective & Efficient Coaching
This isn’t all there is to be said about coaching, obviously. This is a subject that you can go very deep on and coaches at the top of their game do. There’s plenty to learn here. What I wanted to do is just set out some fundamentals that’ll get you started on the right track to being a more effective coach. Whether that’s just helping and guiding your friends and family, getting your sports team to the championship, leading your work team to be the best in the company, or whatever else life sets before you or you go out and get. Hope this helps and as always thanks for reading.
If anything I said here helped you I’d recommend checking my books out on Amazon, resources that should help.
-Charles Sledge
