7 Steps to Making Sure Your Coach Works for You
No 3. Have a goal for the whole process
This is vital if you want to keep control of the coaching process. Although you may enjoy every meeting and come away feeling ‘better’, inspired or energised it is easy to suddenly realise after a lot of time spent with your coach that you haven’t actually moved any closer to what you wanted at the outset.
Even if you did your thinking early on about why you want to work with a coach and decided you didn’t want an advisor or a trainer to teach you something, or a consultant to answer a business issue, or a therapist to help fix a personal issue, make sure you spend as much time as necessary early on in the coaching to set a clear goal.
As we discussed before, it may be that you’re very clear about what you don’t want or what you haven’t achieved yet but you’re not so clear about the positive goal you do want to achieve. That’s fine so long as you ensure your coach stays focused on this early goal clarification step before you move on.
There is good evidence that simply being able to imagine and visualise yourself achieving a goal puts you well on the way to making this future imagined scenario happen. In one of the most well-known studies on Creative Visualization in sports, Russian scientists compared four groups of Olympic athletes in terms of their training schedules:
- Group 1 = 100% physical training;
- Group 2 – 75% physical training with 25% mental training;
- Group 3 – 50% physical training with 50% mental training;
- Group 4 – 25% physical training with 75% mental training.
Group 4, with 75% of their time devoted to mental training, performed the best. “The Soviets had discovered that mental images can act as a prelude to muscular impulses.”
See e.g.:
Robert Scaglione, William Cummins, Karate of Okinawa: Building Warrior Spirit, Tuttle Publishing, 1993, ISBN 0-9626484-0-X.
Martin, K.A., Hall, C. R. (1995). “Using Mental Imagery to Enhance Intrinsic Motivation.” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17(1), 54-69.
One method I use to help me (and my clients) stay focused is by writing a clear goal statement in one sentence and having this pasted on the office wall at all times in the meeting. The rule is that at any time in a discussion either of us can ask the question, “how is this item related to moving closer to this goal?” If it isn’t then we can either discuss if we need a separate goal or if we can drop the topic and move back to the original goal.
Once you’ve decided you really do want to work with a coach then to make sure that coach works for you, take responsibility for that work. It’s like most things in life; the more you put in the more you get out. This is true of coaching.
To draw on the world of elite sports for a moment, the British Cycling team performance director, David Brailsford, interviewed after a world-beating performance by the team at the Beijing Olympics, told how he had to change the attitude of both coaches and cyclists to coaching. He pointed out that no coach ever won a medal – only the cyclist on the track could do that and at that moment the cyclist is totally responsible for their performance. Also during training the cyclist has to be in charge of their own development. It’s not the coach’s agenda that drives the process.
I know it may be stating the obvious but it is true that when you work with a coach you will be responsible for any change in your performance. The least useful thing you could do for yourself would be to sit back and relax in front of your coach waiting for them to give you the magic injection!
This means that to make your coach work for you please be prepared to make it work by:
- Knowing the overall goals you want to achieve from the work; if you’re not absolutely clear then take control by asking your coach to help you get clear.
- Setting your own outcomes for your conversations: what do you want from this meeting or call that will move you at least one step closer to your goal? If your coach prefers to take over and set the agenda be prepared to challenge this and suggest your own ways of using your time together.
- Agreeing at the end of each session a plan of action – who will do what to keep you moving towards your goal between now and the next session.
- When you’ve agreed the action, keep this as a focus for yourself i.e. find a way of preventing everyday events from taking over. One client of mine put it well when he said it was my job was to make him think about him, whilst back at work everyone else’s job was to make him think about them – his boss, his team, his customers etc.
Remember, the session isn’t an opportunity for the coach to demonstrate how effective they are – it’s an opportunity for them to demonstrate how effective you are!
