Can coaching in sport offer lessons to coaching in business?
Most people would agree the primary purpose of coaching is to improve the performance of an individual or a team of individuals working to a common goal. I went to a thought-provoking presentation this week delivered by Rowly Williams, who has coached at rugby clubs at the highest professional level. (By the way, here’s a plug for Rowly – if you want an entertaining and excellent speaker on coaching and leadership, you should talk to him, care of Bath Rugby Club).
One of the two biggest challenges of sports coaching is to have players REALLY understand their role. They practise and practise, but until the penny drops, performance in a match may not mirror what’s been practised on the training field. The other big challenge, especially now sports have become totally professional and players far better remunerated is coaching people of stellar ability. How do you drill into a character like Ronaldo that this is what he must do for the good of the team? Even Sir Alex was not altogether successful in having him track back and defend when he’d lost the ball!
There’s a great little article in the November 2000 edition of the Harvard Business Review in which Bill Parcells, former Head Coach in the NFL at the New York Giants, New England Patriots and the New York Jets, describes how he transformed the fortunes of each of these teams from failure to success. One of his key strategies was to confront players who were not performing to their potential. Now, if you think about it, these are huge men, mainly with egos to match. However, he requires that a coach does not shirk this responsibility.
OK, what does this have to do with coaching in business, I hear you ask? There’s no doubt that the position of coach at a professional club means that he (or she) can impose their will on players. They are, de facto, line managers. The coach in a business is much more about encouraging, guiding and enlightening rather than enforcing. Nevertheless, you come across real tigers in business – particularly alpha males - whose objective is to succeed pretty much at all costs even if that creates enormous difficulties in the teams they head up or belong to.
If you are coaching one of these individuals, the problems should soon become apparent. So what do you do about it? Leave it, because it’s tough to confront? Tell the individual’s line manager so that somebody else has to deal with it (disastrous for the coaching relationship)? Or address the issue directly with the coachee?
If the latter, how do you go about it without risking a complete upsetting of the famous apple cart? “It seems to me that what you want and what your team wants may not be exactly the same thing. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”
“I don’t think you’re performing to your true potential. Shall we have a chat about things?” I’m sure many of you will have hundreds more examples.
I’m hoping to write a much fuller paper on this topic by Christmas, for publication on the Deep Vision website.
In the meantime, look out for the next blog on Leadership in Sport vs Leadership in Business.
Andy - interesting and thought provoking stuff. Got me thinking about where Roman Abramovitch might stand on these issues given his wide business experience and his first hand experience of football! What was it that got him to where he is now?
Great Post!
It is interesting to look at the relationship between coaching in sport and the impact this has had on coaching in business. With the influence of John Whitmore and Timothy Gallwey ringing so clear in this arena, its now almost impossible to talk of coaching in business without mentioning the G.R.O.W model!
Both business and sport are essentially about maximising performance so it’s not surprising that methods cross between the two disciplines. Just take a look at Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael M Lewis to see how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team used statistical analysis to transform his club, giving him competitive advantage over teams with much larger budgets.
By shirking the conventional wisdom and ignoring the intuitions of his scouts, Beane was able to assemble his team by running his own analysis of player performance. Completely ignoring the conventional wisdom about batting averages and runs scored, Beane assembled his team using pure statistical analysis taken straight from the business world!
Did it work? It certainly did, although since then, Oakland have lost their competitive advantage as sabermetrics, the study of baseball statistics, is now the most successful method for assembling a professional Baseball team available!
Good one, Lee. I’m also really interested in the coaching of individual performers, such as athletes, golfers and boxers. Although these people may be part of a “team” such as at the Olympics, they are surely motivated by individual, personal success. Can successful coaching techniques from these circumstances be applied in business - and what effects would there be on TEAM performance overall? I think that may be my next blog.
Andy