3 Ways a Coach Can Help Boost Your Performance

Time is such a precious and finite commodity.
Are you spending it in the most effective way possible?

Do I Need a Coach?

My direction in life was radically and permanently changed by the enlisting of a coach to help me build a better me.

I have almost 28 years as a Navy SEAL (12 years Enlisted and 15 as an Officer), a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership with a concentration in Leadership Coaching, and have been a professional certified coach for a little more than five years, but until recently have not experienced having a personal coach.

I thought I could navigate this world on my own with my existing knowledge and experience.

A desire for constant improvement inspired me to engage a coach who was able to help me discover greater potential and solutions to life’s challenges. It was incredibly empowering and freeing to know my coach’s only agenda was to come alongside me and focus on my story.

His ability to listen without judgment and ask powerful questions helped me shape a plan to get from where I was at to a destination that would be the man I wanted to be for my bride, my daughter, and those around me.

In my heart I knew a better me would maximize the time I have to spend as a husband, father, leader, teammate, and friend.

Having a coach as a passenger for a time helps me live the most fulfilling life.

This quote sums it up well for me:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”

– Hunter S. Thompson

A Coach is a Guide on Your Journey

Along my life’s journey, like most people, I have faced valleys and plateaus in leadership, management, following, teaming, performance, relationships, and effective communication with others.

If we take a truthful, introspective look in the mirror, we can all fill in the blank with something.

Inviting a coach to come alongside me as a guide helped me discover greater potential and journey through some of life’s challenges.

It allowed me to move to a place of greater performance and significance while making the peaks higher and life more fulfilling.

I see coaching as having someone come alongside you to help you move from where you are to where you would like to be.

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

The ICF has been conducting ongoing research as to the importance and benefits of coaching and how coaching improves performance, self-perception, relationships, and overall communication.

3 Ways a Coach Can Help You

There are three notable ways a coach can help you move from where you are to where you would like to be. A coach will facilitate your self-discovery, help develop your plan to move forward, and hold you accountable.

01. A Coach Will Facilitate Your Self-Discovery

Coaching is a way to realize greater potential in a particular aspect of our journey or develop solutions to challenge areas through facilitated self-discovery. Our greater potential and solutions to many of our challenges reside within us and only need to be intentionally discovered and unlocked.

A coach will use discernment and powerful questions to help you discover the answers to your challenges.

My coach was and still is very careful to allow me to discover and create my own solutions. He knows that if I take ownership of the solutions, I am more likely to follow through with them.

He introduced me to the concept of living from left to right:
Core Beliefs > Behaviors > Feelings

His powerful questions revealed that in some aspects of my pursuit of performance I was living right to left and avoiding deeply held core beliefs. I was allowing feelings to shape behaviors, which often led to getting on the crazy train of only being as good as my last performance.

His most significant impact in my transformation was helping me discover and realize where I was sabotaging my own efforts to build a better me.

02. A Coach Will Help You Develop a Plan

The plan to move from current reality to a desired destination is co-created with a coach, but then acted upon by you. It will involve the development of prioritized values, goals, a desired picture of the future, and even a life plan with specific life accounts.

My coach helped me craft a personalized plan to move in the direction towards the destination I said I wanted to go. We crafted specific life adjustments, landed on some prescribed reading I needed to do, and some intentional actions like active listening I had to commit to.

The approach was very holistic and touched on the physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual angles.

03. A Coach Will Hold You Accountable

The brilliance of having a coach is in giving someone who has your best interests and your success in mind the permission to hold you accountable.

Your coach will hold you to the tasks and goals developed in the plan.

I will be engaging in a coaching session in the near future that will place me in a position to account for my actions to change.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

– Proverbs 27:17

Build a Better You

There are numerous benefits of having a coach to realize greater potential and navigate life’s valleys or plateaus. You will have someone in your corner to help facilitate your self-discovery, develop a plan to move forward, and hold you accountable along the way.

Coaching by definition is designed to help you build a better you. I encourage you to invite a coach to come alongside you on your journey.