The Importance of Having a Coach
I am definitely biased here, but I think the evidence shows that having a coach is incredibly important, and not just for kids. I’ve spent my entire adult life coaching youth, middle school, and high school athletes. Before that, I always had a coach advising me, guiding me, and helping me to be at my best. Admittedly, not all coaches are equal. In high school I had three different head coaches who were all very different, and in college I had the same head coach for five years, assisted by an amazing group of coaches that all shaped my life in different ways. I was never even close to good enough to consider a professional career as an athlete, but if I had been then I would have moved on and continued to have coaches. Even as a fledgling club athlete for a few years I had a group of people that were helping me be at my best.
I don’t watch many professional sports throughout the year, but when I do there is always a discussion about the coaching staff. During the 2024 Olympics when Grant Fischer won two Olympic bronze medals (in the 5,000m and the 10,000m, an absolutely incredible feat for anyone) the commentators discussed Fischer’s coaching change and what it did for him. Similarly, when Cole Hocker launched himself into the annals of Olympic history by upsetting the European favorites Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingerbrigsten, the discussion centered around Hocker and his teammate betting on themselves by moving with Coach Ben Thomas to his new school in Virginia. On football Sundays, the amount of pressure placed on coaching staffs around the NFL is unlike almost anything else in sports. The best football players in the world can be on one team, but if the coach makes poor decisions the team suffers, and if the team suffers enough the coach will be looking for a new job before long.
Why is it that other professionals do not have coaches? If the best athletes on the planet all have coaches for what they make a living doing, why don’t people in other realms do the same? The secret is that many of the best in the business world, the sales industry, and many other industries are in fact hiring coaches. There are coaches for marriages, C-suite relationships, HR coaches, sales coaches, customer service coaches, climate and culture coaches, and coaches for anything else out there.
I’ve spent the last seven years or so examining the culture of my teams and looking for any possible way to help get my teams to the next level. I believe that the culture of a team dictates so much of what is possible, and a poor culture will ruin even the most talented team. Think back 20 years to the 2004 Olympics when the US men’s basketball team failed to win the gold medal for only the second time in my life. Some of the best players in the world on the same court couldn’t defeat teams with far fewer stars (at one point, the US team lost to Puerto Rico who did not have a single top tier star, and was had few if any NBA players at the time). I recall being incensed by their loss and sounded like a broken record telling anyone who would listen: “We should have sent the Detroit Pistons! They’d have won it themselves!” The Pistons won the NBA championship that year, but they were not the most talented team, they probably had the best team culture though!
No matter what industry you are in (even if you are a coach!), you should consider a coach to help you. Coaching can help you see your organizations’ blindspots and improve your culture and climate. I have a group of coaches around me that are amazing about letting me know if there is something I’m missing or overlooking, or if I am failing to live up to my own standards. Corporate culture coaching can be invaluable, and having an outside voice from someone that understands the values of coaching (values that can be applied in any and all industries!) can help you maximize your results!