Using experts to improve our performance

Coaches come in every flavor imaginable. There are sports coaches, mentors, and coaches for musicians, actors, writers, executives and mechanics. What do these coaches have to offer and why are they valuable? And if we can answer these first two questions, perhaps we can answer this next one: can coaching be taught, just like any other skill?

Now, before we go on, you might think we are snobs, but for this piece, we are going to focus on coaching specific skills of a craft. So, life coaches, coaches who are typically associated with wholesale assaults on behavior, are out. By narrowing our review to coaches with expertise in a specific skill, who are coaching people who already have the skill, we can better target the abilities that make a good coach able to coach.

Where might look to learn about coaching? Those interested in how experts bec0me experts is one source of information about coaching. Mentors have written about mentoring and th0se who have been mentored also have something to say about successful and unsuccessful mentoring. I think it is fair to say that all of us have experienced some coaching. I wonder whether parenting can be considered in talking about coaching? I would think so.

I only get accused of not getting to the point, of being long winded.

The mind-brain consortium circulated an article by Atul Gawande that appeared in the October 3, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. The title of his contribution was ‘Personal Best’ and contained his thoughts and experiences about coaching.  Information in Gawande’s article helped underscore our own knowledge and triggered discussion that helped bring us closer to some answers.

What do these coaches have to offer? Why are they valuable?

David Freese was the most valuable player for the 2011 World Series winners, the St. Louis Cardinals. Some years ago he was an average hitter. He asked Mark McGuire, the former St. Louis Cardinal home running hitting phenomenon, to coach (help) him become a better hitter. McGuire was able to get Freese to see better. He taught Freese to pay more detailed attention to every feature of the pitched ball as it hurdles towards the catcher. Better vision improved Freese’s chances of hitting the ball in the cat and mouse game between hitter and pitcher. There is so much to see and so little time to see what is important about a pitched ball. There is spin, webbing, wobble, speed, trajectory, pitcher’s ball release and much more. Freese became a much better batter because of enhanced seeing skills rather than how he swung his bat. He changed his vision of a pitched baseball from an ‘ok’ look to a skilled perception of the object that would meet his swing.

In another example in Gwande’s article, he describes how when attending a conference he took a bit of time off to visit a nearby tennis club. He could not play on the court as non-member, but he was told he could sign-up for a lesson with tennis pro. Gawande loved tennis and was a very skilled player, not quite good enough to make the Stanford University tennis team but almost that good. He shares that the pro he worked with that day noticed that his feet were not in the best position for delivering a killer serve. The pro noticed what Gawande didn’t because while serving, Gawande obviously was not looking at his feet. That foot placement correction made it possible to deliver a serve that was harder and more controlled than even the serves of his youth.

Gawande goes on to describe his hopes of becoming an even better surgeon. He was superb at his surgical craft but had hit a performance plateau. He turned to his old mentor (expert surgeon) to serve as his coach while standing next to him in the operating room. What his surgical coach noted and pointed out to Gawande were little things that made a difference in surgical skills, like the angle of his arm and elbow and how he stood over the operating table. What was noted in the OR or on the tennis court might seem trivial, a placement of a foot, an arm, but having a coach’s vision, ability to perform a task analysis, and communicate observations about what needs to be adjusted, made it possible to escape the skill plateau in the OR and on the tennis court. These coaches provided improvement.

What makes a coach able to coach?

1. First of all they must have expertise. They may even be a less effective performer than the person being coached, but nevertheless they must be intimately familiar with all of the behaviors that make expert performance possible. A piano coach may not be a concert soloist but must know what makes the concert soloist successful.

2. A coach must be able to perform a task analysis. The coach has to be a terrific observer. An effective coach must be able to effectively break down complex behavior into its component parts. That means that the coach must see each component separately and, at the same time put the components together.

3. A coach must have a good sense of what the person he is coaching is aware of and what is outside of awareness.

4. Strategically communicating information gained from observing a client is essential for good coaching. That requires feedback that is delivered in digestible pieces, not too much or too little feedback per interaction.

5. The goals of what a coach can accomplish must be realistic.

6. Those being coached must allow themselves to be coached. This last point is not a simple one. To be coached, you must be able to lay bare all of your performance, no holding back, excuses, covering up, etc. Not everyone can be coached. Perhaps the most skilled are the most coachable.

Knowing the abilities and skills coaches must offer and some of the pre-requisites for success, it becomes worthwhile to determine whether coaching is something that can be taught to benefit all different levels of performance.  For example, coaching freshman teachers using seasoned teachers as coaches is a common practice in education. It is less common for established teachers to ask for and use other teachers to come into their classroom and observe what is going on and then provide feedback that highlights what the observed teacher was unaware of. Not all teachers make good coaches, but when they effectively use the skills outlined above, they can potentially dramatically improve the quality of the teaching in the classroom.

I would think that many of us could use coaching in some facet of lives. After all we can rarely see ourselves performing, and not just anyone observing us can see what we are doing that can be altered and improved.  Perhaps with a better understanding of what coaches bring to the table and why they are valuable, more people can help improve performance.