November 30th, 2011
Behind Every Successful Person… There’s a Coach
Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you? Atul Gawande , a surgeon for eight years, poses the question in the New Yorker (October 3, 2011) in an article entitled Personal Best. He writes, it’s not like baseball or pop music, where your best work is often behind you. Jobs that involve the complexities of people seem to take the longest to master.
Coaches are like editors, who have the faculty of giving you confidence in yourself and the book you are writing. Coaching is not like teaching where the presumption is that after a certain point, the student no longer needs instruction. After graduation that’s it. Elite athletes and great musicians are known to have coaches “We refer to them as our ‘outside ears’”, said the great soprano Renee Fleming.
So outside ears and eyes are important for concert-calibre musicians, and Olympic–level athletes. What about the regular professionals, who just want to do what they do as well as they can?
For social workers, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals, the role of the supervisor is traditional. Most people resist exposure and critique, but where the content is emotional and boundaries have to be respected, working with emotionally troubled people can become a burden, and it is recognized that confidential discussion about the dynamics of the interaction, and the development of insight into one’s personal response is vital to remain objective and be of maximum assistance.
This is especially true for Executive Directors and Managers in many not for profit organizations and government positions. Dealing daily with difficult situations can quickly lead to burn out without appropriate support. For a Chief Executive Officer or Executive Director in a not for profit organization,this can be especially true. In this position you cannot talk to the staff who report to you about personal issues and the Board of Directors is the employer, and if you complain about one particularly difficult Board member you risk the possibility of damaging the working relationship with the Board.
This is where a coach that you can trust can be immensely useful. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals can make the difference between feeling isolated and burned out, and giving you the tools and confidence to excel at what you do and leave it behind at the end of the day.
Valerie Elliott Hyman is a Toronto career consultant for Hyman Associates Learn more about Valerie.
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