Yesterday I blogged (or wordalogged) about how you assess a
‘player’ you are thinking about coaching.
The goal of this assessment is to understanding the player by looking at
their Knowledge, Skill, Motivation and Confidence. There is a second part to the coaching
relationship. The coach.
In my mind, no one should begin Coaching until they have
done the exact same criteria assessment on themselves. You have to be brutally honest as well. If you are not as self-aware as you might
like to be, look to others for input…but assess yourself.
So how do YOU rate on the four criteria? Knowledge, Skill, Motivation and Confidence. You need to use the same rating system as you
did for them. If you scored your
potential player on a one to five scale for each criteria, you need to assess
yourself the same way.
As you assess yourself, for Knowledge and Skill, so long as
your experience in reaching your goals
and meeting the objectives are a match for your player (same goals and
objectives) this should not be too hard.
You need to know if you have the requisite Knowledge and Skill to pass
on to the player. These two criteria are
the best ones to have someone else co-evaluate you on. You want to make sure that you don’t have a
blind spot when it comes to your opinion of yourself. I know.
My goodness, how would that happen, right? The other component you need to evaluate for Knowledge and Skill is
your ability to demonstrate or show someone else what you know.
For the Motivation and Confidence, you may have plenty. That, however, is not how you should be grading yourself. If you have reached your goals and objectives
and want to show others how to do the same, you probably were motivated (or it
grew in you along the journey) and you more than likely have a boatload of
confidence that you can be successful doing these programs yourself. To coach, however, you need to help others to
do what you did. On these two criteria of Motivation and Confidence,
you have to evaluate yourself for having them, but also place a heavier
emphasis on being able to instill them in others. It is slightly different from passing on
Knowledge and Skill.
To pass on Knowledge and Skill, it is very much like
teaching. It’s not always easy, but if
you put the information in front of a motivated person, they will embrace
it. To pass on Motivation and Confidence
requires a different approach.
Motivation and Confidence can’t really be passed to others, it has to be
instilled.
In my blog tomorrow, I will cover the ways you can help a
player in each of the four criteria but, for now, how well do you think you
grade in each area?
So, if you graded yourself and the players, you now have a yardstick for yourself and your players.
What are your strengths?
Let’s look at Beachbody Coaching or, coaching for physical
fitness. The Knowledge part of this requires
that you know about Training Technique, Physical Conditioning (to include
preparation, execution, and rehabilitation) , and Nutrition. Are you very good at Physical Conditioning
but a little weak on Nutrition? Maybe
vice-versa? Maybe you have everything
needed...you lucky dog!
How about Skill?
Skill is different from Knowledge in that you may KNOW how to do
something, you just haven’t spent a lot of time doing it. You can read about baking…but to be a good
dessert chef, you need to do it a lot.
You need to have done the work.
For Beachbody, how much work have you done? Have you tried all the products? Can you speak to Insanity and P90X? Have you gone through what your players need
to do? If they are looking for
weight-loss, have you done that? What is
your life experience? How do you rate?
Can you help someone to gain confidence in their ability to
perform? In Beachbody, if you have the
requisite skill and have done it yourself, you are in a good place. The closer your personal journey to your
player, the better your chances of giving them confidence. If you can communicate your journey to
someone else, then you can instill confidence that they can be as successful as
you are/were.
Can you motivate someone to perform? Of all of the criteria, as a Coach, this will
be the most challenging. Why? Because motivation comes from inside the
player. It is something that needs to be
generated by the players themselves. You can give them fuel, but they have to be willing to light the fire. It is the
hunger, the need, or the urgency. I am a
huge football fan. When teams draft their
players every year, they look desperately to find this. What fuels the passion in each player. To motivate someone, you need to know their
internal drivers (more on that tomorrow) and you need to know how to stoke the
fires for each.
So, you have evaluated yourself. You also have evaluated your players. Now, are you the right fit? Not every coach is right for each
player. What do they need? What are your
strengths? Again, honest assessment is
necessary. The player’s success depends on
this and, remember, this is always about the player.
You may have graded low on Knowledge but are high on
Skill. You may be great motivator but
not real skilled as you are new to the tasks.
Do you have what they need?
In Beachbody, you may have a player with lots of Skill but
not a lot of Knowledge…are you high on Knowledge? Is it the right Knowledge? Maybe the player knows a lot about training
but nothing about nutrition. Does your
player have to be constantly motivated?
Can you motivate them? This
ability is the toughest for any coach in any arena.
Most people who become coaches have, at some point, been players. The best players are usually the ones that
have the deepest internal motivation drivers.
These are the Larry Bird, Walter Payton, Michael Jordan, and Michael
Phelps types. Believe it or not, these
people almost always fail at coaching because having to deal with a player who
lacks motivation is completely foreign to them.
Not only do they not understand it, they have no patience for it. How many great players have ever moved on to
become really good coaches?
So how do you match up to your player? If you have been the Larry Bird, maybe some
other coach is more suited to your player who needs a cheerleader. If your player has motivation, confidence and
knowledge, but needs to skill themselves…maybe you are their coach.
Are you the right fit for the player?
If you have a particular coaching challenge right now, and
it is not working, do the criteria assessment again. I bet you find the answer!
Tomorrow, how to help your player improve the four criteria.
Have a great day!
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