Whether it’s sports or career, I like to reflect on people that display an uncanny ability to be great coaches. Wow, these people really grab and captivate my attention. Typically, I witness a person with an engaging leadership style. In addition, they are readily approachable and always available. They listen and try to push you. They are intelligent yet unconventional. Interestingly, the best coaches enjoy taking calculated risks. Best of all, they allow people to feel vulnerable.
Beyond those elements, I have found one other element to be true: Great coaches played the game, although they were not and probably never were the most talented person on the team. Rather, they are a student of the game. That is the precise reason I want to learn from them. They have lived, learned, and overcome their own deficiencies to rise to a leadership position. This creates the perfect spot for them to coach and mentor other people. Many times, these coaches haven’t had things come easily to them. Instead, they forced themselves to put in extra work to stay ahead of the competition. Their focus on the process is key to learning and improving.
Focus on Inputs
Society and the media spend their time on the outcome. Making judgments on the outcome over-simplifies the success or failure equation. It creates a situation where success is celebrated and pursued at all costs. Conversely, failure is disdained and swept under the rug (or worse, it’s trolled). I will argue that the greatest value and satisfaction is derived from focusing on the inputs and not worrying about success or failure. To improve a facet of your game or to learn new skills, let’s connect and learn from coaches who created success through:
- Hard work and successfully overcoming challenges and tough competition
- Gaining knowledge and leveraging data to create an advantage
- Taking risks and deploying unconventional tactics to carve out an opportunity
To improve your game, I seek people who have worked their way to the top. I avoid people who were given a position or were blessed with tremendous talent. Instead, I try to emulate hungry and driven people who earned their position through success and failure. These people love the game and want to share their love with others. Great coaching exists all around us. These people make themselves available for us to use freely and often. Let’s take a look at how to learn from these people and dig deeper to find out what makes them so special.
Satisfaction Has Staying Power
People get enamored with success, whether it’s a Hollywood star or a flashy overnight success. It’s exciting and we feel led to copy their model. Their success, typically, fades away quickly. It lacks a solid foundation. When success is created without work, perseverance, failure, and defying the odds, it does not last. I am drawn to long-term, sustainable success.
My advice on finding this type of success and satisfaction is to follow a different path. I seek humble, hard-working friends and colleagues to copy. Learning from these people feels authentic and sustainable. Discovering such a coach pulls me in and grabs my attention. Their willingness to share their knowledge and techniques makes it fun to work with them. In fact, it’s almost like not working.
Humble and Hard Working
Let’s be honest. Take a look at your friends or co-workers. Which of these people has carved out success through hard work versus those who are simply relying on their God-bestowed gifts? These gifts, whether it’s looks, personality, or upbringing, cannot be emulated, nor should you try.
Instead, I feel the best bet is to keep looking around. Soon enough, I find people who have worked themselves up with a combination of hard work, guile, and tenacity. They clearly have talent but they have also supplemented it by continuing to learn and study. They are constantly talking to others about their work and seeking new ideas. Their attitude separates them from the pack.
What You Learn from These Hard Workers
These humble and hard-working people were probably passed over for new roles, promotions, or prime assignments. They took that rejection and re-examined their priorities. The process thickens their resolve to get them to where they strongly desired to go. Failure did not discourage them or suck the life out of them. It added another log to their fire.
How does this help me? Looking for people that should be discouraged or disappointed yet are mysteriously satisfied fills me with hope and encouragement. I love to gain insight into how they maintain that mindset. Do they use the rejection to learn new skills? How do they strengthen their resolve? Watching them turn misfortune into success creates a wealth of knowledge for me to leverage.
Coaching Uses Knowledge and Data to Create Advantages
For some reason, a new school of thought has emerged that leaders don’t need knowledge and details to make decisions. The expectation is to have people available with critical information. The leader brings in the information and makes the decision based on their overall business mind. Thankfully, new research is beginning to refute these ideas and put knowledge and expertise back on the table as an important leadership trait.
In contrast, a great coach knows the positions and what’s required to generate success. Understanding the details leads to analyzing how things run. In other words, using the data to solve problems. One pitfall, however, is most people treat all of the data the same. Great coaching does not fall into this trap. Instead, a wise coach finds the most critical parts of the data and uses it to create the strategy. Discovering the critical pieces of data separate ultimate success from failure.
From this distilled data set, a great coach determines the game plan. They focus on our strengths and blending them against the weaknesses of the opponent. In sports, this idea manifests itself in how to attack the other team while we are on offense and what we need to take away when we are on defense. Boiling down the details into one, overarching strategy is critical to success.
Don’t be afraid to follow the data but always lead with strategy
How Knowledge Creates Power
Watch how successful people gather and use the information to create a strategy. From that point, the strategy is used to drive all decisions and actions in a synchronized state to your preparations. This may sound academic but it works splendidly. The power of having all of your actions working together creates confidence and cohesion in everything you do.
This is the point I introduced when I argue about the importance of practice. Once you have the strategy together, all of your actions in preparing for engagement feed back into the strategy. It’s not just about skill enhancement. That does improve, however, the benefits are much larger. You are practicing to execute a well-conceived strategy. When you get on the stage or on the court, you have the confidence and preparation behind you to nail it.
Take Risks to Create Opportunity
Superstars with immense amounts of talent don’t have to work the system. They are able to succeed at most tasks with natural ability. Other people who gain success through trials often need to take risks. They realize talent alone will not get them there. To supplement the process, they deploy unconventional tactics to vault them over the competition and set them apart.
My waiting series of articles is filled with people who took risks. Whether it was Julia Child or King David, they laid aside their own doubts and put their faith in where they knew they wanted to go. Whether it’s becoming a television celebrity at the age of 50 or standing up to a giant as a teenager, being willing to take risks is what vaulted them into the public’s conscience. Risk-taking is a key component of their legacy and they used it at the most critical times for the most dramatic effects.
Learning from These Risk Takers
Doing what everyone else does puts you at a disadvantage unless you are the most talented person in the room. I doubt you are. I certainly am not. Instead, a prepared person assuming a calculated risk can step out from amongst the competition.
Think hard about the people you mingle with on a regular basis. Who has taken a risk? Where did it get them? Some of these risks surely failed. If they did, what caused that to happen? Did they take the risk poorly or did it just come off at the wrong time? Follow the same crumbs for successful risks. Examine what made them successful.
We can learn a great deal from the travails of the people around us, whether it is successful or meets with failure. If we are smart, we do not have to experience it ourselves to learn from it. Watching behavior is a terrific learning tool. Understanding when to take the risk is critical. Timing and opportunity to take a risk is found at the intersection of preparation and information.
A Word on the Power of Coaching
The greatest or most physically skilled players do not make the best coaches. Things come too easily for them. Plus, they often misunderstand the struggles of the average player. The best coaches identify with your struggles. They understand the challenges and have proven strategies to overcome them.
Great coaching overcomes failure through tireless study habits. A quality coach creates success through a thorough understanding of every position on the team and its role in a winning formula. They use these details to prepare and develop a winning strategy. They take no details for granted. Their preparation through sweat and effort far exceeds talent alone.
I am not the most talented person out there. Therefore, I want to learn from people who are also not the most talented. To compensate, they supplemented their talent deficit through preparation, knowledge, and effort. I want to learn to meet and beat the competition in a well-prepared state. Finally, I yearn to flip the field in my favor at a critical junction of the competition by deploying a well-timed risk when the opportunity arises.
Final Round
The best coaches know and understand all of the inputs required to create great outcomes. They use the data and information to formulate cohesive, coaching strategies to lead their teams into the competition. And, a well-trained performer is ready to take a risk when the opportunity presents itself.
Go ahead, look around you and identify the coaches in your life. Find people who have achieved something important in that area using the qualities I have discussed here. Network and discuss strategies and activities with these people. Focus on learning from them in order to put yourself in position to seize what you want to achieve.