Achieve More As A Leader By Acting Like A Coach

It's football season again! It's my favorite sport because I believe it is the ultimate team sport. What other sport requires half the team to literally sit out and trust the other half to do their job... but I digress.

Even though I am FAR from being an athlete (picture the person always picked last for the team), I find it quite easy to relate corporate teams to sports teams and leadership to being a coach. The thing that first attracted me to football was the head coach. Watching them pace up and down the sidelines, calling in plays and advocating for their team when there was a bad call... I could totally relate that to what leading my teams as a middle manager was like.

There is an underlying truth that persists when you’re a coach - you are recognizing and nurturing individual strengths for the good of the team. You’re balancing team needs, goals and desires with “management” policies and edicts.

Of course, everyone wants to win and will do whatever it takes. But the coach is the crucial element to setting the tone and creating the capacity for achieving those big goals and expectations.

The coach believes their team can do it.

Then that coach transfers their belief to their team.

Great leaders do the same.

You expect the best of your teams, you set the standards, call out the strategy you believe will get the best result, then you encourage, correct and advocate along the way.

Have you ever gotten frustrated with your home football team when it seems like there’s no heart, discipline, or commitment amongst the athletes? When performance is inconsistent? When it seems like they can’t even execute on the fundamentals (can you say false starts and neutral zone infractions?). It boils down to the coaching.

As a leader, I know without a doubt, you have good intentions. You wouldn’t have said yes to the opportunity unless you had belief about what you could accomplish. But what if you don’t have the support you need? Like a head coach who has their hands tied by executive leadership as to resources and personnel. I get it. There’s a lot that’s out of your control.

But you have more control than you think. Acting like a coach is about making the most of what you have and leveraging the full potential of your team.

Here are 3 straightforward ways to take control and raise the bar on yourself so you (and your team) can win more often.

1. Focus on the fundamentals

Just like team members will always rise to the level of expectation, so will you.

That begs the question... Are you expecting and getting the best out of yourself?

When you find yourself going through the motions, when the tyranny of the urgent has taken over instead of being intentional about your activities, that’s a sure sign that you’ve stopped investing in yourself. Your team will follow your example. Take a time out and reset by valuing how much your expectation and belief in yourself as a leader affects team performance.

So how do you continue to achieve new levels of personal excellence as a leader?

Get back to the fundamentals by resetting and realigning your values toward what you want to achieve.

Be introspective for a moment and as yourself these questions:

• What do I believe most about myself?
• What do I value most in life?
• What or who do I desire to become?
• What do my beliefs and values need to be to become the person I need to be to achieve my goals?
• What negative values must I avoid?

The purpose of this exercise is to identify where you are now, what you value and if you need to rearrange your values so you can be the leader you want to be. You’re not giving up your values, but you are being strategic about what you value most so that you can leverage the values most aligned with what it's going to take to move yourself and your team to a new level.

Does your top value need to be empathy?

Do you need to move determination up higher on your value ladder?

What negative values do you need to avoid? Fear, procrastination, skepticism?

Just making the decision to rearrange your values can have a powerful reset effect on your self-esteem which translates to your ability to lead - to be a leader that responds positively to adversity, handles challenges seamlessly.

Be a leader who isn’t afraid of hard things because you know you have always figured it out and can do it over and over again.

Re-evaluating your values works to reset your capacity for achievement because our values and beliefs are often the result of years of conditioning, and unfortunately that conditioning isn’t always of the nature that will keep us reaching for and achieving all our dreams and goals. That’s why we need to be intentional with our thoughts about ourselves.

2. Align your thoughts to desired results

What you think about yourself and your team makes a difference.

What do you think about your capacity? What do you think about your team as individuals and as a group?

Here's what some of the greats have said about the power of our thoughts ::

“Your life is what your thoughts make it.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

“Belief creates the actual fact.” ~ William James, Psychologist

“There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself in to power.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“Whether you can think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” ~ Henry Ford

The truth in all these quotes is that we become like the images we think about. We become what we imagine ourselves to be. It is how we’re designed.

The science of it is this ::

Our brains contain a group of cells that monitor sensory images. This group of cells, called the Reticular Activating System (RAS), goes to work for us, gathering useful information like people, facts, resources, and ideas that will bring about the goal or picture we are focusing on our minds.

Taken a step further, the more we create images internally, and with positive emotion and vividness, our brain doesn’t know the difference between actual experiences and those we imagine. And because your brain like harmony, when the outside reality doesn't match our imagination, it goes to work helping you create an outward reality that matches the one you're living on the inside.

This means, you can intentionally create lasting change from the inside out.

You can be the leader you want to be - achieving your goals and guiding your people to achieve team goals, by letting your thoughts do the heavy lifting.

When you change your thoughts and picture yourself and your team winning, you prepare for and create success and impact because you've rehearsed in your mind first. You set the standard for what winning looks like and feels like.

3. Imagine the best possible outcome

Although all great leaders, coaches and athletes can attribute some of their success to a commitment to ability, discipline, and skill development, your mind is a critical instrument in bringing all those elements together to help you create results, contributions, and accomplishments as a leader in your organization.

Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”

What we visualize is more important than what we know. If we look around, we can see examples all over the place that demonstrate this.

Golfers visualize the stroke.

Pitchers visualize the strike; hitters, the home run.

Runners picture themselves crossing the finish line first.

I suppose defensive ends, defensive tackles, and linebackers visualize themselves sacking the quarterback :)

All athletes have a coach showing the way, helping them visualize success whether it's performing the fundamentals or the achieving the big goals.

• What are you picturing yourself accomplishing today, this month, this year?
• What are you imagining for your team?
• How are you helping your team visualize success in their minds?

When you combine resetting your values, changing your thoughts, and vividly visualizing what you want with the natural brain physiology (RAS) that helps you identify the path to achieving the things you are focusing on, you’re tapping into a powerful resource to create the kind of impact you want to as a leader.

TL;DR

If you’re a leader, you’re also a coach ::

Encourage and cultivate the strengths in each person on your team (including you) with these simple strategies.

Make sure your fundamental values support what you're trying to achieve.

Change your thought life to align with what you want.

Use vivid visualization to picture success.

And always remember, individuals operating in their full capacity as a team with a leader coaching them along the way is a beautiful and powerful thing.

Being a middle manager is hard. But it doesn’t have to mean you have to live in a constant state of overwhelm, frustration and feeling like you’ve been set up to fail. If you are struggling with any piece of the people strategy on your team, I can help you. Reach out now to find out how.

#management #leadership #careers