WHY YOU NEED A COACH, 15 REASONS.

Dr Ndambi B. Ndaya
“Everyone needs a coach.” These are the words Bill Gates chose to open his TED Talk with impact.
Interestingly the point he highlights—and the one characteristic common to all high performing
individuals, from executives to athletes—is the fact that they all have a coach. Yet, surprisingly in
business nearly two-thirds of executives outside the leading-edge innovators of the world don’t. In fact
the majority of individuals over 60% are embarrassed to consider, let alone ask for coaching. “Why do
you need coaching? What’s wrong with you?”

In our experience the people that seek coaching aren’t the ones with something wrong with them. To
the contrary, there’s something very right about them — and it’s enabling them to leap ahead.

What Is Coaching?
In speaking with clients, colleagues and friends on the topic of coaching a lot of the hesitancy to work
with a coach comes from a lack of understanding of what coaching actually is. Our industries are
overloaded with ambiguity around coaching’s purpose, its objectives and the results.

Good coaching provides actionable insight and opportunity for growth based on specific areas you wish
to improve; be it better decision-making, problem-solving, or conflict management and negotiation. Its
purpose must be clear and the success criteria are set. But not by a coach, by you.

Coaching is the mechanism to help you achieve the success you define for yourself, the coach is the ally
that helps get you there. But in a world where roles and responsibilities from manager to mentor to
consultant are common day, conflated, and often confused, where does a coach fit in?

Here’s a Way to Look at Defining These Evolving Roles:

 Coaches facilitate the development of personal or professional objectives. The coach doesn’t
provide you with the answers to a challenge or even tell you what to do. Instead the coach acts
as a facilitator to help you ask better questions, and explore your own answers. They serve as a
guide while you create a plan, define outcomes, and experiments to move your thinking
forward. Think “facilitator” and “action-oriented.”
 Mentors give those with less experience advice or assistance in a specific area. For example,
when mentoring someone in product management, we may cover specific techniques and tools
that they’d like to understand better—like Discovery, Story Mapping, user interviews,
etc. Mentors may even advise on the skills needed to move up to the next level in a client’s
career. However, unlike a coach who helps you discover your own answers, a mentor teaches,
sharing their experiences and knowledge on industry related questions and challenges. Also,
mentors are often a voluntary or unpaid role. Think “advisor” and “teacher.”
 Consultants are brought in to answer specific questions or address specific challenges for an
organization. They provide recommendations — based on their own experience, market trends,
research, and many other inputs — and are often asked to be responsible for implementing
those recommendations within the client’s organization. Again, a key distinction from coaches is
that a consultant provides the answer — and maybe even own delivering of it — while a coach
helps you facilitate your own answers. Think “problem solver” and “implementer.”
Breaking The Coaching Taboo
By creating a clearer understanding of what coaching is, and isn’t, we can start to break apart the taboo
that surrounds it. Let’s not kid ourselves, though, changing the way the working world thinks and feels
about coaching isn’t going to be easy. A lot of the stigma is supported by outdated practices and policies
now institutionalized in our organizations and our own mindsets and behaviors.

Working with organizations across sector, size and geography there are a few key assumptions around
coaching that consistently appear and create challenges. Here’s our top two to debunk.

“I Don’t Need A Coach. I Have Years Of Experience!”

The stigma around coaching can exist at any level or in any type of organization. From experience, it
seems the reluctance to embrace coaching can be stronger in those in more senior positions. After all,
with years of experience and a place of responsibility in an organization, there’s a sense of “I don’t need
coaching … What would they know about my industry? … I’m the expert!”

This again is where the confusion around what coaching really is and what benefits it has to offer
exist. A coach is often not an expert in your field. In fact, we constantly tell executives we work with that
we don’t have the same level of expertise they do in their field. But we can help them discover how to
endlessly improve any skill, capability or challenge they want to tackle for themselves. This disarms their
ego and ignites their curiosity.

We set expectations that coaching is there to help them facilitate finding the answers to your own
questions and challenges. Remember a coach is not a mentor – she or he is not there to give you the
answers. You are the expert in your field, the coach is there to help you get to your next level of what
you have identified you wish to achieve.

How? By challenging your thinking, making you considering better questions or different world views,
and helping you understand your own blockers to success. Coaching helps you break through these
barriers, empowering you to be the expert of your own success.

As Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and chairman of Alphabet recounts; the best advice he ever got,
initially resented but now always gives is to have a coach. A great coach is somebody who looks at
something with another set of eyes, they give you perspective, the one thing you can’t give yourself, and
a system to tackle future challenges and succeed.
“Only Underperformers Need Coaches.”
For many others the idea of coaching conjures feelings of failure, punishment and even incompetence.

A good friend was recently promoted to a senior management position in her company. Soon afterward
she was told by her manager that she was not meeting certain requirements for her new role and as
part of her performance improvement program, she would be assigned a coach.

She was embarrassed and ashamed that she had to work with a coach. She had just recently been
promoted and was now being told—and so was the rest of the organization—she wasn’t good enough. It
was the equivalent to being sent to sit in the corner with the dunce hat on.

It’s a common scenario in today’s organizations—coaching is positioned as a performance management

tool for underperformers instead of an opportunity for growth and progression for everyone. If we are
going to break the taboo that surrounds coaching, then decision makers and leaders within
organizations need to rethink how they position coaching: is it a punishment for underperformers or a
benefit to unlock potential? We know which side high-performance organizations and leaders see it.

In the end, she was so happy with the results, and enjoyed the experience so much she is now paying
someone to help her reach and achieve higher career aspirations and goals. It’s her company that may
yet end up the one sitting in the corner wearing in the dunce hat.

15 REASONS YOU SHOULD USE A COACH

1. You want to maximize your potential. A good coach will help you identify your
weaknesses and strengths, and help bring to the surface the best you. Famed
football coach, Tom Landry, put it this way: “A coach is someone who tells you
what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so
you can be who you have always known you could be.”
2. You want to accomplish your goals and dreams faster. A good coach has been
where you are right now. They know the road ahead and what it takes to get
there. They will help you identify what to avoid, where to turn if you are lost,
and what to do when you are running out of steam. In other words, they will
accelerate your success.
3. You want to have someone walk along side you, who will believe in you,
motivate you toward success and challenge you when you may lose
focus. There are times when we are discouraged and stuff gets in the way of
our dreams. We then easily become sidetracked, lose focus and even give up
on our dreams. A good coach will always believe in you, motivate you and
speak the truth in love when you are not at your best.
4. You want to have someone help you overcome the giants that hinder your
progress. All of us have blind spots, or flaws that hinder us from
accomplishing what we want in life. A good coach can help you identify those
blind spots that work against you, and help you reframe your mind for
progress.
5. You want to remain grounded in your true self even in great success. When
success comes, it’s easy to lose focus on what’s really important in life.
Greed, fueled by unresolved fears and insecurities, will seek to overtake your
agenda. Your false egoic self will overshadow your true self until your real
essence of being is nothing more than a distant memory, or may even be
forgotten. A good coach will help you stay in the flow of unconditional love,
where true happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction, is your real destiny.

6. So get a coach or coaches that will guide you toward success in every area of
your life. If you question whether it’s worth it, ask yourself what it will cost
you to go without. Remember, you deserve to live limitlessly. A good coach
will help to get you there.

7. Your life, business, career, relationship, etc., is already good, but you want it to
be much, much better. Coaching isn't a crisis intervention. Nor is it a
substitute for psychotherapy, or advice from a professional such as an
attorney, accountant, physician, etc. If things are basically good, but you
know they could be a lot better and you're ready for that to happen, that's a
great time for you to hire a coach.
8. You want YOU to be much, much better. Just because most things are going
well, doesn't mean you don't want to improve them and that includes
yourself. Many people hire a coach because they know they are built for
more and they want to reach their full potential sooner, rather than later.
This is different from being insecure. People derive considerable joy from
stepping into their personal greatness. In fact, some people believe this is the
single biggest source of happiness. Great coaches are experts at eliciting their
clients' personal greatness.
9. You're going through a big transition. Change can be difficult, even when it's
what you want. Anytime you go through a big transition such as starting a
new business or career, getting divorced, moving to a new city, going back to
school, etc.; it's a great time to have someone who believes in you and who
can help you make the most crucial choices as smoothly as possible. A good
coach won't take you on unless they truly believe in you.
10. You're a high achiever. This is the type of client I prefer to work with.
High achievers tend to be driven and good at success, but they don't always
create the success they really want. If you're ever wondered, "Is this all there
is?", or "How did I get myself into this and how do I get out?", you could really
benefit from working with a great coach. Everybody has a few blind spots. In
fact, neuroscientists say we are unconscious of 95% of what goes on in our
brains. Think about that! A good coach can see you as you are, without
 judgment, and help you be your best and achieve what you're built to do. Just
ask Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, Who needs a coach?
11. You want more meaning in your life. "Meaning" is what makes your
heart sing. It generally comes from doing what matters most to you. This gets
much easier when you understand what you most value and find cool ways
to express it. If life feels a little shallow, or you don't know why you do what
you do anymore, you could really benefit from working with a great coach.
12. You want to take better care of yourself. Most of us were taught to take
pretty good care of ourselves. That's fine if you want an average life. But
people who accomplish great things often need to upgrade their lives
tremendously before that's even possible. They need clearer boundaries, a
physical environment that's supportive, more organization (or an organized
assistant), enough rest, great stress management, and/or people who
"get" them and who are actively supportive. Otherwise, "death by a thousand
cuts" will slice their dreams to shreds. Good coaches know how to assist their
clients to get the wonderful self care they truly need, to step into the lives
they were built to live.
13. You want to upgrade the people in your life. I don'tknow about you, but
I used to choose my friends according to who I had the most fun with. They
weren't always the nicest or most evolved people. Eventually, I realized I
wanted to upgrade my friendships. Then I realized (gulp), I needed to
upgrade myself in order to attract the people I wanted to spend more time
with. It wasn't that hard, because my coaches helped me do it. I set higher
standards for myself and started living up to them. I found others who lived
up to similar standards and we were naturally attracted to each other. Now
when I choose friends, I find people who are supportive, really supportive.
And they've got a friend for life.
14. You want to make more money. It might seem crass to bring up money
right after talking about meaning, values, high standards and good friends,
but let's face it, a great life or career usually includes enough money,
sometimes lots of it. Many people hire coaches when they want to upgrade
their careers or launch a new business. The funny thing is that values, high
standards, good relationships, etc., tend to make people more successful in
many areas, including finances. One thing a great coach can do is help you get
over any internal blocks (we're back to that unconscious 95%) you may have
about making plenty of money. In fact, eliminating all sorts of internal
blocks is one of the ways good coaches help their clients enjoy success of all
kinds.
15. You're willing to invest in yourself. This is about so much more than
money. Are you prepared to take the time, effort, risk and yes, money, in
order to have the life or business of your dreams? Or are you satisfied playing
small? Are you ready to stop talking about your dreams and start living them?
If you had the right coach in your corner, would you have the courage to step
into your greatness? Only you can answer that.