Have you ever been on a sports team? If so, then you can probably remember your good coaches and your average coaches. I hope you did not have a bad coach, I have and it is memorable…
Have you ever been a coach on a sports team? If so, then you probably know who the coachable people are and who are less flexible to your coaching approach.
Have you ever been given the opportunity to manage or lead a team of people in your professional endeavors? What about social or religious circles? Chance are there is a substantial amount of overlap when it comes to coaching and the roles you play here too.
Over the past few years I have been able to welcome a number of professionals that have coached me in various aspects of my life – all aimed at helping me improve upon things.
All of these coaches were welcomed into my life outside of my employer and the associated benefits that I enjoy as an employee. In some cases, I likely could have received coverage for those coaching services, and in other instances – there was zero chance of being able to have these expenses covered.
I have had every single coach enter my life as a result of a direct referral, and in a couple of cases – these referrals were seemingly accidental and coincidental.
A quick note about the difference between a therapist or counselor and a coach.
I believe a therapist is aiming to help someone with an illness and possibly some underlying trauma. There are well established rules of conduct and of practice given the nature of the therapy involved. Professional certifications are required to perform these services.
I believe coaching is aiming to also help someone, but in a very different manner. The coach is working on removing things that are blocking the best version of yourself all aiming to unleash the power you already possess.
For example, a psychologist is going to assist with overcoming an illness for someone that is not completely healthy. This is analogous to your primary care physician.
Now let’s take a look at an executive coach, these types of folks are going to work with someone that is healthy in terms of mental/spiritual makeup. They are looking to unleash an ever better version of yourself. If you are already reasonably health, and you retain a personal trainer to help you jump start your physical health – they will get you advancing even faster than you likely could on your own. Same deal here. Building upon a baseline of success is the idea.
In a corporate environment, there is absolutely a role for coaching as a leadership style and many of the best leaders/bosses I have had – were naturals at pulling me aside to say where I had a blind spot. They were focused on helping me build upon my strengths while also calling a more mindful approach to the forefront for myself as I worked for them.
This is my preferred leadership style as well. Leadership styles are another thing I have been studying a bit more recently. I can tell you what sorts of leadership styles I truly enjoy employing and receiving, and I know which ones that do NOT resonate with me. This is definitely another future post – I have a lot to say about this topic.
Okay so back to coaches. Let me run through the roster of coaches that I have enjoyed over the last few years in a loose order:
- Personal Coaching – I’ll call out Rhett Smith here, again. I am big fan of his. He in many ways reintroduced me to myself. He provided a platform for me to safely dive into some things that had been locked away, and these things were essentially imprisoning me at the time. Many of the self care practices I have adopted grew from the conversations we used to have over a year ago.
- Executive & Career Coach #1 – I was referred to this coach by a 20+ year veteran that I had worked with at EMC and again as founding member of VCE. Then one day he announced that he was jetting, this guy bled EMC blue. Now I know that part of it had to do with the EMC acquisition conducted by Dell, and the payday I’m certain he enjoyed as a result of the stock liquidation. However, he was never about the cash – always about solving really fing hard technology problems and building crazy scale businesses. So I called him up and asked him point blank – who did he engage to pull this off so seamlessly. He provided me this coach. She was and remains incredible, and frankly she helped me as much as Rhett did on some personal things. I left the initial engagement with her freed from some historical baggage that was unexpectedly awesome, and in many ways the work with her and Rhett during the same timeframe fed on itself. I also left the engagement with a modern resume, executive profile, and an emerging clarity of what I wanted in my career, with my sons, with my parents and siblings, and resume/LinkedIn profile that seemingly works okay at the moment.
- Wellness Coaching – Rhett introduced me to a whole health wellness coach here in Frisco, TX. This was the next step in my evolution. I’ll outline the results of my work with her, and profile the work we have done together over the past year. I continue to retain this coach, and between her, my first executive coach, and Rhett – my life was literally saved.
- My Primary Care Physician and other medical professionals – This does not cleanly land as a coach, but the linkage to my wellness coaching direction directly infused this avenue of improvement. Through the maze of specialists and various tests over the past two years, I have learned a number of truths about the primary medical care of this country. I have been blessed with incredible benefits from my employer during this journey, and I cannot imagine how much harder – okay damn near impossible – to have succeeded in this space without the benefits. Primary care lessons learned – you guessed it, another damn post down the line. [As a quick aside, I am keeping a list of these promised future articles, and I am pulling them back up as the mood strikes or as the editorial calendar dictates.]
- Productivity Coaching – The guys at Asian Efficiency have provided me so much value and their systems have enabled me to scale my time in ways that are just mind blowing. I can remember reading their stuff over a year back where they promised to give me back anywhere from 10-20 hours a week with just one of their programs. I thought that they were completely full of shit. Seriously. Yet, I went ahead with it as they had some potential hacks involving OmniFocus which was an app that my old boss vouched for. I figured the few hundred dollars would be well worth it if I could just get 5 hours more a week squeezed in, while – and here’s the kicker – reducing my stress levels. There is a community based approach that they have developed, and these are my people. They are infused with the need to be efficient, without being judgemental asses when a newbie shows up – such as myself. I am wired to be efficient, it is part of my personality makeup.
- Executive & Career Coach #2 – About a year ago, I found myself talking with one of my closest brothers that I used to play soccer with back in the day at Babson. When I described some of the things I intended to do in the next six months. He jumped at the chance to introduce me to this person as she had already done somethings that I was considering to do for myself at the time. I’ll be profiling her practice very shortly, as she is about launch her entire curriculum online in the coming days. She and I skyped as recently as last week about her plans. I have much to share about the keys to my future that she helped me find the light switch to find. Turns out the keys were always on the table waiting for me, just needed the light turned on to see them…
- Financial Coaching – That same boss that told me about OmniFocus told me in passing about another opportunity involving this app/service called mvelopes. I have a chronic issue or two when it comes to financials, and I have retained these guys to help me blow through the restraints I have typically operated under. I am in the midst of a multiweek coaching program, and the coach I have at the moment has a masters degree in personal and family financial planning. WOW. She has a young family and do the virtual meetings in off hours – which is ideal given my career and familial commitments.
So that’s nearly all of the coaching services I’ve retained over the past three years. This is a shit ton of help, make no mistake. This does not include the additional classes I have taken say at Stanford (again on my own time/dime), or Mindvalley, or some other providers that I’ll get into in a future post. (is that 3 future posts promised today?)
This also does not include the clergy in my life. My partner in crime that is pulling me aside with gifts of insight. My colleagues at work. My parents and siblings. My mentors. My close personal friends that are just amazing people that are incredibly insightful, and they have been with me throughout the best and worst days along the way.
This does not include my virtual business coach, which is another paid service/course. This does not include my personal lawyer and accountant out of Boston – in many ways he’s kicked my ass a few times in the past few years as I have built up my family and business interests. Nor does this include my personal financial advisory team. This does not include an author or two that I have met or reached directly as a result of a book tour that stopped by here in DFW over the past few years. Being able to connect with a few key players that have done some of the things I’m building towards has been just incredible.
Then there are a few communities that I belong to online that also are enlisted in helping to further everyone within the community. A couple of these communities are open communities out on Reddit, while others are closed at the moment due to new membership being closed.
The point of this article is this – none of us can do this alone.
Coaches are there to help us if we are open to their help. Coaches are truly aiming to chip away the limiting garbage that we all carry, and to point us towards resources when we are ready to take them up.
There are a variety of coaches, and I strongly suggest that you enlist another person, professionally speaking, to help you on a given dimension of your life. The progress that can be made in a shortened timeframe can be a seeming miracle.
If you have the appetite for compound coaches, as I have employed recently, watch out! The results you can achieve may not be immediately obvious to those around you, but you will know that you have prepared for the lagging success that is sure to follow.
Times like this, they are exciting.
Hit me up if you want any detail on some of the services or folks I’ve alluded to here. I’ll be outlining a few of them in detail in the coming weeks as well.