Coaching To Become A Game Changing Leader

There’s lots of talk, workshops and articles written today about coaching and leadership. I’m always interested in what people are saying about coaching and leadership because I’ve been studying both all my life. The importance of leaders who coach is heightened in today’s hyper-competitive job market and rising employee dissatisfaction.

The latest research reveals that only 11%-22% of employees are passionate or fully engaged with their work, 67% of employees think about leaving their job daily, 67% of employees earning $100,000 or more annually are planning to leave their job in the next 6 months and 37% of employees are actively looking for a new job. Exit interviews long ago exposed that employees don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses. This situation is getting worse and developing leaders who can coach, inspire, enlighten and empower people to help them learn, grow and improve is more important than ever. 

I recently heard an interview with Hall of Fame Football Coach Bill Parcells which explained a lot to me about my own life. The interviewer was given Bill Parcells credit for his coaching tree, the coaches that worked for him who have gone on to great head coaching careers, coaches like Bill Belichick and Mike Zimmer. He quickly cut off the interviewer and said it wasn’t so much his influence as it was the fact that he hired coach’s sons. He explained that coach’s sons were raised differently, from a very young age, all they heard about was coaching. They were exposed to inside information and got to watch how coaches worked.

The reason this resonated with me is that I am a coach’s son. I was raised to coach by a very successful High School Football Coach, and in addition, by my Mother who was an outstanding teacher. So, you see education and coaching was all I heard about growing up. I was exposed to the great coaches of the past 70 years. I was fortunate enough to hear many speak and sit in on conversations between coaches about how to coach, build teams and bring out the best in people. My earliest memory of being consciously taught about coaching goes back to when I was 9 years old, but I had already spent several years in my Dad’s coach’s office, film room, locker room and sidelines watching him coach. At the age of 9 however, my father started talking to me about what I was watching. He began to teach me to be a coach.

 44 years ago, I made the choice to forego a career in sports and go into sales and business. I took all the early life lessons and my understanding about coaching into business.  I continued to study coaching and adapt and apply what I had learn to business and sales leadership. I adapted and developed programs that effective created results others were not getting. Make no mistake, business and sales coaching are different than sports coaching, in fact they are harder, and in my keynotes, workshops and coaching session I share the similarities and differences and how to become a real Business Leadership or Sales Leadership Coach. As I began speaking and coaching full time, and after my father passed away, I was blessed to have the legendary Hall of Fame Coach John Wooden spend time with me. He shared his insights and experience freely and we talked about the differences between business, life and sports coaching.

Over the years I’ve seen many great coaches speak about coaching and I’ve heard many business leaders speak about coaching in business, but I always get a sense that they are missing pieces and not connecting all the dots. I am now more aware of why I can hear these missing dots and connect them. looks like an opportunity to coach and create improvement. Improvement, that’s key to coaching. In fact, being obsessed with improvement is one of my 11 Keys To Great Coaching from my ABCs Of Leadership…Always Be Coaching! 

It’s with all that I’ve been exposed to and experienced that I developed my ABCs Of Leadership…Always Be Coaching, keynotes, workshops, leadership development programs and coaching sessions. This includes my 11 Keys to Great Coaching and I’m excited to be doing a Spotlight Session to kick of this year’s International Business Show. On Tuesday February 19, at 9:30am in South 223 I will be sharing my insights to inspire, enlighten and empower leaders to become the coaches who can attract, retain and develop the teams and talent to help them and their companies stand out and be a game changer! 

You see my normal upbringing wasn’t so normal, I was blessed to take an exceptional journey that exposed me to both sports and business coaching up close and personal. In homebuilding we’ve all hear the analogy that if you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail, well I’m a coach and to coaches everything looks like a chance to coach and create improvement. So, if you want to learn the 11 Keys To Great Coaching and always be creating improvement that leads to excellence join me at IBS 2019 and I’ll share why Bill Parcells explained that a coach’s son is just different and how you can be too and how it will change your career and improve your people and company!

By Mike Moore