PROVOCATION 1

Why Is It So Hard to Be a Great Coach?

TRUE CONFESSION: I like to be challenged by thoughtful provocations. When I come across a counterintuitive, fresh, and well-reasoned idea, I get excited by it, even if I don’t agree with it. One of the coaches who has consistently challenged me is David Peterson. In my conversations with David, who was director of leadership and coaching at Google for a decade, he has consistently shown a penchant for thinking outside the box. I have heard him refute a number of coaching’s sacred cows: coaches do have their own agendas, coaches can ask closed-ended questions, and coaches can occasionally give advice. His ideas are provocative and, in my opinion, exactly what coaching needs to improve.

David once wrote that it is easy to become a good coach, and just as easy to remain a good coach, but difficult to be a great coach.¹ That rings true. I watch a lot of coaching demonstrations and have as many conversations about coaching as I can. I’ve seen scores of people with good social skills, empathy, and verbal intelligence learn to coach well. I have seen fewer coaches shine in a way that makes my jaw drop in envy and awe. Learning to be a good coach is largely a matter of honing a few relatively straightforward skills and then adding one’s own natural social and emotional intelligence. All too often, however, people get stuck at that level. They plateau at good without ever getting promoted to great.

This might not be a problem. Not everyone can be above average, and a world full of good coaches is a nice thought. Even so, I think it makes sense to at least consider greatness. To begin, let’s consider what that might even mean. Professional proficiency can be understood through several frameworks, and I will offer versions of them here:

Novices—Novices are new to the field and just learning the basic philosophies, frameworks, and skills of coaching. They often struggle with counterintuitive ideas, such as the prohibition against giving advice.

Advanced beginners—These people are near the end of their training. They have a conceptual understanding of coaching and can execute basic coaching skills. They are not particularly adept, however, at dealing with complicated scenarios. They also have a tendency to focus on problem-solving rather than coaching the person in a more general way.

Competent professionals—These people can pass a certification exam, have a professional mindset, and deliver satisfactory services for a wide range of clients.

Proficient performers—These people are good coaches. They are flexible, are eager to develop, and can handle a wide range of complicated scenarios. They are helpful to their clients and can use advanced skills and take appropriate risks.

Great coaches—I am avoiding the word master here because I have seen some coaches with a master certification who do not seem all that masterful. I am not referring to a specific professional credential but rather to a person’s actual ability. Great coaches engage in deep reflective practice, can handle complicated situations, innovate new techniques, notice critical coaching moments, have accurate self-knowledge, and have developed excellent professional intuition. That is, they make great choices about which directions might be most fruitful and about which techniques to use and in which moments.

I would be happy if the world of coaching was full of proficient performers and great coaches. I also understand that most people have to pass through the earlier stages to achieve this level of performance. I worry, however, that too many coaches who are competent professionals think that they are great coaches. There are several common—and solvable—barriers to coaching greatness.

Coaching Culture

I am going to expose myself to potential criticism here when I suggest that coaching culture itself acts as an impediment to great coaching. The people who self-select into the profession are drawn from all walks of life. Even so, some common qualities unite us and give rise to a global coaching culture. First, coaches generally have a service mentality. We enjoy helping others. Second, we tend to be positive and upbeat people. We are optimistic about the prospects for change. Third, we tend to have an entrepreneurial mindset. We don’t mind setting up our own businesses. Taken together, you get a culture that is upbeat about helping clients and selling those services.

In my experience, our professional culture leads too often to forms of inauthenticity. I frequently hear coaches boast about their “bestselling book,” the unnamed high-profile executives with whom they have worked, or how helpful they have been to their clients. It boils down to rampant self-promotion. Often, these statements are exaggerations and, more often, are cherry-picked from the coach’s entire experience. I have never once heard a coach say, “The best thing I ever did as a coach was to take six months off when I started to burn out” or “I glance at my text messages sometimes when I am coaching, but I wish I wouldn’t because it is a terrible thing to do” or “I worked with a client for three sessions, and I just could not help them, and we parted ways” or “My book was a bestseller in a subcategory of Amazon, but sold only one thousand copies total.” In essence, coaching culture itself subtly reinforces an inflationary sense of self, even while it endorses humility.

The master coaches I know seldom talk about their accomplishments, especially publicly. Instead, they are more likely to talk about their own learning, the new ideas they are playing with, or a new approach that challenges their accepted wisdom. They are more likely to own up to their mistakes and admit to not knowing. They are actively and effortfully focusing more on their improvements than their self-promotion.

Mindset

Many readers will be familiar with my colleague Carol Dweck and her research on growth and fixed mindsets.² In essence, people with a growth mindset are more open to learning from mistakes, persevering, and embracing challenges. By contrast, those with a fixed mindset avoid challenges, give up more easily, are more immune to feedback, and tend to be more threatened by the success of other people. Unfortunately, people who learn about this research often have a simplistic takeaway: the growth mindset is the good one, and the fixed mindset is the bad one. They assume that we should all just have a growth mindset. In fact, this universal growth mindset fits with a coaching philosophy that anyone can improve at anything.

When I teach about research on mindset, I ask my students, “Five years from now, will you be better, worse, or the same in your ability to drive a car?” Most people (but not all) say that they will be better. Almost no one says worse. I believe this sheds light on common assumptions about the process of improvement. Most of us—and I am as vulnerable to this as anyone—assume that we will get better at a skill simply by doing it over and over. If I drive each day for the next five years, how could I not improve? I’ll tell you how! Over the next five years, my reaction time will slow, as will my ability to quickly process multiple streams of information. At best, any gains in experience will be a wash with these declines.

I further challenge my students with the following question: “What are you doing to become a better driver?” That brings most people up short. Driving to work and to the store over and over with no variation or conscious thought does not seem like a reliable way to improve one’s driving skills. If you wanted to actively improve your driving, you would take a class, such as one on driving in snow; you would have to get ongoing feedback on your driving; and you would have to identify the specific elements of your driving that you are trying to improve. In sum, you would gain the most if you set specific development goals and then systematically pursued them.

Conclusion

Improvement toward greatness in coaching has to be more than fulfilling continuing education credit requirements and coaching on a regular basis. Those steps are terrific ways to maintain your current good practice, like getting regular oil changes to maintain your car. To really catapult forward, however, you need to invest more effort. You need to be challenged, get feedback, and see change. Can you, for example, identify practices that you have ditched as you have gained more professional sophistication? Are there coaching practices you used in the past but no longer believe are helpful? Have you modified techniques to improve them? Do you receive peer or other forms of supervision? Do you experiment with your own coaching approaches? Do you engage with people who coach differently than you do to learn from them or argue with them? Do you keep a journal of insights into your own coaching and lessons you have learned about the coaching process? As these questions suggest, coaching development takes intentional effort. When this intentional effort is paired with years of experience, the door to coaching greatness is unlocked.