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Mr. Spencer

Guest post by: James Simone

Article Overview: Corporate performance can be enhanced by improving the coaching ability of the leaders, managers, and supervisors of the firm. This article presents five behaviors of effective coaches in a corporate context.

Mr. Spencer

I am a huge hockey fan...have been all of my life.

When I was a kid, I played organized hockey for a few years, and loved every minute of it. As every other kid, I had the fantasy of one day making the pros. When I was not at the rink, I was skating on a frozen river in our backyard. I lived for chasing frozen pucks - and thought I was terrific at it - until Mr. Spencer came into the picture and corrected that notion.

Mr. Spencer was the coach of my hockey team, the Mustangs, when I was 11 and 12 years old.

He inherited a bunch of smart-ass kids who each thought they were destined for the pros. He shaped this rag-tag group into legitimate winners, by instilling group-wide values of respect, humility, humor, willingness to learn, and team-above-self.

...now, when I think of coaching excellence, I always default to Mr. Spencer as my go-to case.

So, in a corporate performance improvement context, what makes a great coach?

Here is a list of effective coaching behaviors:

1. Communication Skill - a great coach is a great communicator. She has the ability to distill sometimes painful feedback so that the message will be heard by the coachee and actioned.

2. Courage - a great coach is nott afraid to confront their coachee with sometimes painful data or feedback, sometimes persistently.

3. Adaptability and Empathy - a great coach should have a strong base-line level of knowledge related to the job of the coachee. The coach does not have to perform the job, but should have an understanding of how the job is done, and the ability to project herself into that position, and the complexity of the relationships that the coachee encounters.

4. Discreet and Trusted - a blabbermouth coach is a bad coach.

5. Inspiring and Organizationally Savvy - a great coach is one who acknowledges success, is not shy with a figurative high five and has the ability to make things happen politically (discreetly) for the coachee.

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Article Tags: coaching



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