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Techniques
Coaching Beyond the Scoreboard
Part III
In the last coaching article, we discussed legendary college basketball coach John Wooden. Shortly after publishing that article, the Los Angles Lakers won another NBA championship led by a legendary coach in his own right Phil Jackson. Famous for building championship teams both in Chicago and Los Angeles, Phil Jackson's success is most impressive because of the sustained performance of his teams. His winning teams have demonstrated that attaining a single championship is not what winning is all about. Instead, his winning teams have demonstrated that sustained effort, along with sustained teamwork and lots of hard work combined with well thought-out yet flexible game plans that leverage team members' strengths and competitors' weaknesses can lead to sustained championship-level performances. In the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers scenarios that culminated multiple times in back-to-back-to-back championships. Truly, what business, community and family leaders desire to achieve - ongoing sustained success!
In the business world, effective Coaches/Leaders blend the experience and skills they possess along with that of their hired managers, supervisor, and mentors and yes even their version of on-the-field or on the court players/leaders often referred to as associates or team members into seven key skills used in conjunction with one another as the ingredients for effective Coaching:
Teaching
Providing direction/instructions and modeling behaviors by providing examples and demonstrations. Teaching is primarily intended to develop understanding (Knowledge development).
Evaluating
Observing and evaluating performance to determine current skill-level/proficiency and identifying areas for improvement.
Motivating
Providing external motivation to team members in order to obtain commitment towards achieving goal(s).
Delegating
Transferring responsibility for a task to team members while providing opportunities to measure knowledge, skills and commitment level, while freeing up the leader/supervisor to concentrate on other immediate needs.
Supporting
Encouraging team members to work through difficulties in learning new tasks and developing new skills.
Communicating
Delivering praise, recognition or redirection through effective listening and verbalizing feedback. This includes allowing the other party to "vent" frustration.
Debriefing
Allowing team members to assess/measure their performance, while identifying required areas for additional refinement or skill-building.
As you can see, effective Coaching allows Coaches / Leaders / Mentors to take an active role in t team members' development, while providing the opportunity to monitor progress, and allowing team members a chance to assess their own knowledge and skill-levels and to vent concerns or frustrations as they are developing/refining their understanding and skills.
To sum it all up... Coaching is a critical skill of all effective business owners, managers, supervisors, mentors, local community, family leaders, not just the local youth soccer, baseball or football coach. So put on your "Coaching Hat" and go help someone you know become an all-star performer for your company, your community, your family or your team!
By Gary Willison
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