Two business owners in the past week have both said, “once we get (insert challenge here) wrapped up, then we will be ready for coaching.”

It sounds like a fore-thoughtful thing to say, and yet we know deep down it is likely not true.  

We know that time typically breeds the soil for distraction to set in, for busy-ness to compound, for mis-aligned interruptions to continue unmitigated, and we wake up in six months in greater chaos and numbness than we are in right now.

A man in his seventies was recently reflecting on life and was asked a thoughtful question, “looking back, what do you wish for?”

His response, “a simpler time”.  

Although we tend to look in retrospect with the tinted lenses of simple, easy, and wholesome; a tour of the history books will remind us that world history is peppered with moments we would rather forget.

Complexity is on the increase.

In his research-rich book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again, author Johann Hari.

One study that Hari discusses shows that the majority of office workers “never get a whole hour uninterrupted on a normal day…the average American worker is distracted roughly once every three minutes”.  

Business owners are longing to build a team of people that will commit to the same desire and focus that they have given to get the business started.  

Unfortunately, most people live under the presumption that they can multitask.

Hari explains that multitasking was a term devoted to technology that was capable of doing more than one task at a time because the scientists were able to install additional processors (think of it as multiple brains in one technological body); it was never intended to be a description of human capability because humans are essentially incapable of legitimate multitasking.  

Compounding these two basic realities, people are constantly distracted from meaningful work, and the work they are doing is so fragmented because of the myth of multitasking, and you get a cocktail that is ripe for frustration and a fragmented mission.

Why is coaching important in the workplace? 

It begs to ask the broader question, why is coaching important at all?

A coach provides at least five values that the player cannot provide for herself.

First, a coach provides perspective and clarity.  In its most simplest concept, the coach brings perspective the player cannot, simply because the coach is not the player. 

The coach is living life outside the day to day of the player.  A player is always at her altitude, pitch, speed, and angle.  A coach can adjust angles when needed in order to gain a different perspective of the same issue.

A good coach is one who simply relays what they see and then converts that information into something actionable.

This leads to the second tool in a coaches toolbelt, time to gameplan.  Armed with perspective and unique information, a coach will then go into deep focused time to gameplan what they see, think, and hear and contrast it with.  A game plan not only dives deep into what the competitor is planning but also navigates all of the factors influencing the game or the mission.  

A good coach, armed with perspective and insight, builds a game plan and then readies themselves for the hardest challenge of all.

Third, the coach shows up to practice even when the player doesn’t want to.  An NBA scout once showed the contrast between the preparation-loving Kobe Bryant and his rival, the showtime-loving Allen Iverson saying, “Iverson loved to play the game when the lights came on, Kobe loved to play the game before the lights came on.”

The repetition of practice is a direct influencer on the success of the game.  The consistency of each game is a mirror of the consistency of practice.  

Without coaches, practices would be far less frequent, and far less effective.

The fourth value of a coach is in their ability to lend courage.  

We were almost seven years into our business and I knew a change was needed.  I was essentially working two full-time jobs in the same business and my fuel tank was running on reserve.  

My mastermind group was meeting in Nashville for a long weekend to dig into each other’s world and situation.  

The verdict from my group of 10 guys was clear and unrelenting, “cut your time in half and double your rates…no exceptions.”

For years I was undervaluing my rates and overdelivering on my time in front of people.  It was an unsustainable mix.

But I was scared and my mind was flooded with what if scenarios that ultimately led to a place of grief and terminal conclusion.

I needed courage, the will to stare fear in the face, and methodically walk through it.  I did.  And I didn’t die.  In fact, the business didn’t die either… it grew because I now had more time to devote to the health and nurture of our team.

A coach, an outside team of advisors, lend courage.

When all of the values of a coach have been installed, the culmination of those efforts requires reflective monitoring to adjust for overages or underages.

Without monitoring, we don’t know where we need to make adjustments and modifications.  

Why is coaching important in the workplace?  Because coaching is important in life, and work is where we will spend a significant portion of our life. 

Everyone needs a coach because everyone is distracted thinking that later will be the best time not realizing that later is here right now.