TEAM POINT OF VIEW

If I hire a business coach, will my team believe that I am not capable of running the business on my own?

I am a big basketball fan. NBA, college, high school – if their playing basketball, it’s likely that I am watching. It is amazing to watch great athletes – especially great shooters – when everything is going for them. It seems effortless and they know when the ball leaves their hand that it is going in.

Regardless of the list – or who created it, two of the premiere shooters in all of NBA history are Dirk Nowitzki and Steph Curry. In their era and for their position, each redefined the offensive game and the approach from defenses because of their shooting prowess.

Not only are these two great shooters, but they also have many other things in common. Nowitzki played his entire career with the Dallas Mavericks; Curry is in 13th year with the Golden State Warriors. Both players have been voted the best player in the league receiving the NBA Most Valuable Player. Both received the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player awards when their teams won the NBA championship. Both received numerous NBA All-Star honors.

Another thing these top 10 shooters in NBA history have in common? They both secured personal coaches – beyond the coaches provided by their teams.

Business is not Basketball

Coaching is an integral part of sports. All sports. Each team is led by a Head Coach, but also every team, every discipline, and every position has specialized coaching / coaches. 

It’s natural to think that business is different than sports. 

In business, the team is led by a CEO instead of a Head Coach. There are managers, supervisor, and employees instead of position coaches and players. 

Business owners / CEOs are expected to exude confidence. Their teams trust the strategies and the vision cast by their top leaders. Their teams look to them for answers.

Many small-to-medium business owners are not only the boss they are the founders of their businesses. Whether you bought or built your business from the ground up, you have poured blood, sweat, and tears over many years into your business. 

You created the product and service ladder, you are the business expert, and your customers view the business and you, the owner, as one in the same. Your personal and professional identity are synonymous.

As your business grows, gaps and issues in service delivery, product offerings, and throughput will begin to arise. Your team – because they are invested in the business – will experience the same frustrations and disappointments as you do.

The idea of hiring a coach to provide you an outside perspective on building your business might not be as offensive to you as it is to your team! 

An Outsider’s Perspective

We’ve all heard the derogatory statement, “those who can – do, those who can’t – coach.” Ouch! 

There is a lot of truth in that statement. Even if they wanted to, the coach can’t do the do – the coach is outside the boundary lines of play. They coach can draw up plays based on their knowledge and experience, assist in the players’ development by teaching specific techniques that will be used in the game, and provide their perspective on the game. But they cannot make a single pass, they cannot kick a single ball, and they cannot make a single catch on the field of play. So, it’s true, the coach can’t execute any of the plays themselves!

We often use two analogies to describe the role of a business coach:

·       A mirror 

·       A person viewing painting

Both images are designed to describe the fact that their role is to provide feedback on what they see - what worked well, didn’t work well, and to provide recommended improvements for the next time. 

We all use mirrors to get a quick assessment of our appearance – Pants or skirt too wrinkled? Hair in place? Shirt straight? Smile – salad stuck in teeth? These are not deep introspections or hyper-critical moments of feedback; they are just a quick status check that we all take consciously or sub-consciously throughout the day.

A quick mirror check allows us a moment to see how others view us, a chance to:

·       see ourselves from outside our own point of view

·       see things about ourselves that we could never see without a mirror

·       ask – and answer, “is that the image I want to portray?”

·       adjust before we embarrass ourselves

A professional business coach will fill that role for you. A quick check in a mirror on a regular and recurring basis provides an outside perspective and allows you to look at a reflection of your words and actions to see how you may react and adjust so that you can grow and develop.

Imagine looking at a picture hanging on a wall. Your perspective allows you to see everything in the picture – all the people, the full environment, and the potential of what might be coming next. Any of the people in the picture have a more limited point of view. They can see what is in front of them and immediately around them, but their view of what is behind them or beyond their field of vision is obscured. 

How beneficial is it to have someone outside the frame providing us input and feedback? Let’s go back to the athletic coach example. Just think about how many times you felt like you executed an activity just like you had intended to, but if you had game film, you would have seen that you failed to do so. 

Without an outsider’s viewpoint, we don’t have the ability to see a replay of the action, its intended consequences, and its unintended consequences.

Viewing the full frame with a different point of view and a seasoned perspective allows a coach to provide insight and feedback that you wouldn’t get even if you could watch real “game film” of your interactions with your team, suppliers, and customers.

You’re willing to invest

Contrary to the viewpoint that you are not capable of running your own business, your team will see your investment in coaching as a sign that you are committed to doing what is necessary to continue to grow and improve. 

Neither Nowitzki or Curry terminated their coaching relationships when they made the NBA – in fact, they realized that to continue to develop and improve their game they needed a coach more than before they landed the big contract. Their teammates didn’t view this as a weakness. They didn’t question whether the superstar had what it took to stay in the NBA. They saw and understood the commitment to excellence that these players had. 

As we move from basketball back to business, let’s think about CEOs at top companies in their respective industries – do you think they have coaches? Absolutely. Is this a “luxury” that only comes with a Wall Street pedigree. Absolutely not. In fact, we would argue that smaller businesses have fewer experts inside their company and could use the collaboration from outside even more than the largest organizations.

Marshall Goldsmith (best-selling author of MOJO, Triggers, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There) has been recognized as one of the Top Ten Business Thinkers in the World and the top-rated executive business coach at the Thinkers50 ceremony in London since 2011. His client list is a Who’s Who in executive leadership from many of the top Fortune 500 companies in America. Goldsmith has been sought out by top CEO’s and their Boards to work with over 150 major CEOs and their management teams. 

Goldsmith’s client testimonials describe the opportunity and honor that it is to have insight from a respected coach with a depth of business experience. He doesn’t know the details of each CEO’s business, but he does know and understand the dynamics of team and what makes businesses – and business leaders successful. That is the insight they top Board of Director’s seek out.

Your ActionCOACH team is comprised of experienced business leaders with a depth and variety of business backgrounds coupled with systems, processes, and frameworks developed over the last 30 years in thousands of small-to-medium businesses across the globe (80+ countries, all industries).

Long-term relationships add value

Not only did Nowitzki and Curry secure personal coaches but they had long-term, deep relationships with a single coach. This allows both the player and the coach time to develop a level of trust that cannot be achieved in a short-term or ever-changing environment. 

Both player and coach need to be dedicated to learning and growing – change is inevitable. The game changes, defenses change their approach, and the player ages – all these factors dictate that both player and coach will need to change too.

For Steph Curry, Brandon Payne is his personal performance & skill coach. The basketball trainer has worked with the 4-time NBA Champion for over a decade. Injury recovery, ball handling skills, full court awareness – all to put Steph in the best position to shoot have been the areas of focus over the years.

For Dirk Nowitzki, he first met Holger Geschwinder when he was a 16-year-old phenom – and they stayed together for 25 years until Dirk retired. Gerschwinder followed Dirk from Germany to the USA and coached him on shooting throughout his full NBA career. Their relationship progressed to one of “family” – not just player-coach.

Your coaching relationship may not last 25 years, but to be meaningful and impactful for you and your business it will be a long-lasting and rewarding relationship.

Take a step, contact a professional business coach. You and your team will see it as a positive step indeed.