No matter whether you are interested in sport or not, you can’t help but be amazed by high performance athletes. Usain Bolt pelting down the track at full speed. Committed body, soul and spirit. As awesome sight.
We have an aspiring athlete in our house. When I watch her on the basketball court, something in her comes alive. It is beautiful to watch. We knew that she was kinaesthetic from before she was even born. We knew that for her, to be able to move would be her saving grace. Recent events have born that out as we saw a marked upturn in academic grades after an increase in frequency of basketball sessions. We trust her coach to know her strengths and weaknesses of body and mind and to work with her to get her to maximum performance.
One evening, we got to talking with her about coaches. Academic, sporting, etc. She had the concept that it was only if you were bad that you needed a coach.
“Not true,” said Her Dad, the ever wise, gave her a mental tour of the sporting greats (thank goodness he did because I couldn’t) and how every single one of them required a coach. Take Usain Bolt, for example. His coach Glen Mills may not look like someone able to coach a peak athlete, but over a 42-year period he worked to understand the things that make a high-performance sprinter including identifying talent, anatomy, agility, coordination, even to the biochemical analysis of performance. He has honed his craft through membership in peak sporting bodies. You need a coach, not to go from bad to good, but to help you take your natural talent and turn it into your greatest strengths. You need a coach to:
- Hold you to your vision and the path to reach your goals;
- Ask you the hard questions and call you out when you aren’t being true to yourself;
- Repeatedly measure results, to identify areas of progress and weed out weaknesses;
- Hold you accountable, challenging you to take complete ownership of your actions, your plans, and your purpose;
- Fire you up when you just don’t want to; and
- Ensure you take care of your body, mind and spirit. To plan and ensure you execute good self-care habits with discipline.
A good strengths coach is no different. Your talents and motivations are often unconscious…innate, it’s how you live. Harnessing your talents and turning them into strengths requires practice. That’s where the coach comes in. Knowing about your strengths via the CliftonStrengths assessment is only the start, the magic happens when you are taught to optimally apply them. You bring to the world your best.
That’s why I’m grateful for all my girl’s coaches. They are teaching her to optimally apply her talents. When she is strong, it is a beautiful thing.
That’s why I am dedicating myself to coaching. Helping one person through challenges, to apply their strengths, and to see them living at their best knowing that this in turn impacts the lives of circles of other people, ripples of other people, waves of other people is a worthy pursuit for my life.