What can a coach (such as myself) uncover? No matter the field…
- Filter out the noise into digestible information, decrease information overload, tailor training to resonate with your learning style
- Accountability, structure, organization, efficiency and balance, self talk management
-Strength and weakness analysis, growth strategies and tactics, personal discovery - what makes you tick?
- Decrease anxiety, increase confidence, improve comfort level, boost results in performance
With all of these benefits, utilizing a coach seems like a no brainer. So why aren’t more people accessing one - especially with the financial means to do so?
Seth Godin gives an interesting perspective:
“At the top tier of just about any sort of endeavor, you'll find that the performers have coaches. That said, there are areas such as business and school where this is seen as the exception. Partly because the work feels like an extension of something we've been doing our whole lives. "I've got this," is a badge of honor.
It turns out that the people with the potential to benefit the most from a coach are often the most hesitant precisely because of what coaching involves. Talking about our challenges. Setting goals. Acknowledging that we can get better. Eagerly seeking responsibility. And yet we hesitate. It might be because having a coach could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. And what if we acknowledge our challenges but fail to overcome them? It could be that we don't want to cause change to happen, or that we're worried that we will.
And so, paying for a coach, for something that's hard to measure, which might be socially awkward, to get better at something that feels normal - combine that with a hesitancy to ask for help - it's a wonder anyone has a coach. The paradox is that the very things that hold us back are the reasons we need a coach in the first place.”
So where does that leave us?
Change the narrative. Each of us have the opportunity to open our minds to different ways of thinking and to accept the responsibility to be better than we were yesterday. What I’ve seen in my 8 years of coaching is pushing oneself and dancing with discomfort has always led to growth, maturity, and perspective. After all, what is there to lose? You’ll never regret investing in yourself.