On Coaching (My Take on it)

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So, coaching. 

Be it for Sports, Video Games, teaching, or another occupation that requires another person’s insight, coaching is both weirdly hard and, at times, surprisingly simple. 

The main problem that most people tend to not realize that coaching tends to involve a variety of different skills needed depending upon what you’re coaching for. For example, a football coach probably wouldn’t have a good idea of how to coach a marketing team (though, this isn’t accounting for a person’s skillsets). To that end, what a coach does varies upon the job.

What is a Coach?

Now, normally, when we think of a coach, we most likely think of a man yelling at football players and trying to get them to work harder.

Or, we could be thinking of sitting in ‘coach,’ like in the economy class on a plane. But, for now, let’s just focus on the coaching of people. How does one coach?

Well, there are a few transferable skills that work well with coaching. The first being that you have to know what you’re talking about. After all, you can’t help somebody get better if you don’t know what they’re doing well enough to point out flaws. 

Observation

The second being observation. Now, we can all look at something and get an understanding of how it works, but to be truly observant, a vital skill in coaching, you need to understand something as it works in motion. For example, if a football player has a bad habit, then a coach needs to be observant enough to notice the habit-forming.

See and understand

Likewise, a marketing coach needs to be able to see and understand, what a marketing team is doing wrong. To an outside observer, it looks like the coach has a magical ability to see what is truly happening when in reality, it’s just a matter of experience and the ability to pay attention.

Communicate the coaches findings

The third skill is the ability to communicate the coaches’ findings. I know that most people think that talking isn’t that hard, but being able to tell someone, clearly, about what needs to be done is surprisingly rare.

For example, when coaching a student who’s struggling with their math studies, it is important to be able to tell them why and how without hurting their feelings. Math is hard, after all.

So, yeah, that’s, more or less, the basics of coaching. It is a hard job and requires a good head on your shoulders, but you can do it!