I’m learning to live with other people, and coaching helps me with that.
Coaching helps me to shut up and listen.
Coaching helps me to silence my judgements while others talk.
Coaching helps me to not think about the next thing I want to say.
Coaching helps me to understand what the other person wants and then ask what they really need.
When I am at my best as a coach, it is when I am working with people with intent – people who bring energy, they have something they are working on, and they need my help.
Coaching helps others get clear on what is really important to them. Not what they feel they have to do, but what they really want to do.
Coaches ask questions like: What are you working on? What do you really care about? What are you interested in?
Answers can be dull at first, but not with practice. Soon, with practice, we drop the things we really don’t want and begin to get curious about the things that we might do instead. That’s why the idea of coaching in sports and physical education is so exciting to me.
Because I don’t think I’m the only person who struggles to do their best work when the people they are working with wish they were doing something else, somewhere else.