Bring on a good coach
After a rare disappointing round on the golf course, Tiger Woods will
often take a golf lesson.
When I first heard about this, I asked myself, who could give Tiger
Woods a lesson in golf?
But that was before I ever really understood the value of coaching. The
person who taught me that value was a young business consultant
named Steve Hardison. Hardison taught me this: Tiger takes a lesson not
because his coach is a better player who can give advice and tips, but
because his coach can stand back from Tiger Woods and see him
objectively.
Steve Hardison had created an art form of coming into corporations and
seeing things objectively. In fact, his perception ran deeper than that.
He had near-psychic power to "see what was missing." It was a gift he
could also apply to individuals, but only if they were ready for the rigors
of his coaching.
I used to teasingly call one of his illustrative personal stories "The
Parable of the Mission." As a young missionary for his church in
England, Hardison broke all records for enrolling congregants. He
contrasted his own method with that of the other missionaries.
While the others would rush out and knock on doors all day, Hardison
would spend the first part of each day planning and plotting his
activities. By creating his day before it happened, he was able to
combine visits, economize on travel time, and increase the number of
enrollment conversations in a given day. He also used his creative
planning time to set up intra-neighborhood referrals for himself so that
many of his visits came with a reference.
The other missionaries were very active, but they were focused on the
activity, not the result. They were in the business of knocking on doors
and scurrying about—Steve was in the business of enrolling people into
the church. The records he set for enrollment were no accident. He
planned things that way.
Steve helped me understand something that lives inside of all of us,
something he called "the voice." When you wake up in the morning, the
voice is there right away, telling you that you are too tired to get up or
too sick to go to work. During a sales meeting when you are just about
to say something bold to a client, the voice might tell you to cool it.
"Hold back." "Be careful."
"The trick is," said Steve, "to not ignore or deny the existence of the
voice. Because it's there, in all of us. No one is free of the voice.
However, you don't have to obey the voice. You can talk back to the
voice. And when you really get good, you can even talk trash to the
voice.
Make fun of it. Ridicule it. Point out how stupid it is. And once you get
into that way of debating your own doubts, you start to take back
control of your life."
Many times I'd be in the middle of a large business project and ask to
meet with Steve for an hour. After he listened for a few minutes, he
would almost invariably see right away what was "missing" in my
behavior. Like a great golf teacher watching Tiger Woods' backswing,
he would say, "Are you willing to accept some coaching on this?" And I
would eagerly say yes. Then he would tell me truthfully, sometimes
ruthlessly, what he saw. I didn't always like what he saw, but I always
grew stronger from talking about it.
Hardison's coaching was so jolting that sometimes it reminded me of an
incident that happened to me when I was a boy playing Little League
baseball.
I had injured my knee in a play at third base and when the game was
over the knee was swollen and my entire leg was stiff. As I sat on the
bench with my leg straight out in front of me, a doctor whose son was
on our team was kneeling down by my leg as my father looked on.
"I'd like you to bend your leg now," he said to me as his hands gently
held my swollen knee.
"I can't," I told him.
"You can't?" he asked, looking up at me. "Why can't you?"
"Because I tried, and it really hurts."
The doctor looked at me for a second, and then said simply but gently,
"Then hurt yourself."
I was startled by his request. Hurt myself? On purpose? But then,
without saying anything, I slowly bent my leg. Yes, there was
tremendous pain, but that didn't matter. I was still mesmerized by his
request.
The doctor massaged my knee with his fingers and nodded to my father
that everything would be okay. I'd have to have x-rays and the usual
precautionary exam, but he saw nothing seriously wrong for now.
But I was still aware that something very big had just happened to me.
After a boyhood that was characterized by avoiding pain and discomfort
of any kind, all of a sudden I saw that I could hurt myself if I needed to,
and that I could do it calmly without batting an eye. Perhaps I wasn't
the coward I'd always thought I was. Perhaps there was as much
courage in me as in anyone else, and it was all a matter of being willing
to call on it.
It was a defining incident in my life, and it was not dissimilar to the way
Steve Hardison, as a coach, has required that I call on things inside me
that I didn't know I had.
One time I was having a hard time enrolling people into seminars and
doing my prospecting calls on the phone. Steve grabbed the phone and
started calling people and signing them up. Then he accidentally dialed
a wrong number and reached some mechanic at a car repair garage.
Most people would have apologized at that point and hung up and
dialed again. But rather than waste the call, Steve introduced himself
and then stayed on the phone—until the mechanic had signed up for a
seminar.
Hardison is a gifted and courageous public speaker, a resourceful and
relentless salesperson, a talented athlete and a committed family man
and church member. The kind of guy who used to make me sick!
I could write an entire book about Steve Hardison's remarkable work in
coaching and consulting, and someday I just might. Examples of ways
that he coached me to higher levels of performance are plentiful. But I
think
the greatest thing he has taught me is the value of coaching itself.
Once you open yourself up to being coached, you begin to receive the
same advantages enjoyed by great actors and athletes everywhere.
When you open yourself up to coaching, you don't become
weaker—you grow stronger. You become more responsible for
changing yourself.
In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck writes, "The problem of
distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this
life is one of the greatest problems of human existence...we must
possess the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual
self-examination."
The best coaches show us how to examine ourselves. It takes courage to
ask for coaching, but the rewards can be great. The best moments come
when your coach helps you do something you have previously been
afraid to do. When Hardison would recommend that I do something I
was afraid to do I'd say, "I don't know if I could do that."
"So don't be you," he would say. "If you can't do that, then be someone
else. Be someone who could do it. Be DeNiro, be Bruce Lee, be
anybody, I don't care, as long as you do it."
Coaching's contribution to my life is illustrated in these words by French
philosopher Guillaume Apollinaire:
" 'Come to the edge,' he said.
They said, 'We are afraid.'
'Come to the edge,' he said.
They came.
He pushed them.
And they flew."
You can get coaching anytime. If coaching is appropriate for your golf
or tennis game, it is even more appropriate for the game of life. Ask
someone to be honest with you and coach you for a while. Let them
check your "swing." Let them tell you what they see. It's a courageous
thing to do, and it will always lead to more self-motivation and growth.
After a rare disappointing round on the golf course, Tiger Woods will
often take a golf lesson.
When I first heard about this, I asked myself, who could give Tiger
Woods a lesson in golf?
But that was before I ever really understood the value of coaching. The
person who taught me that value was a young business consultant
named Steve Hardison. Hardison taught me this: Tiger takes a lesson not
because his coach is a better player who can give advice and tips, but
because his coach can stand back from Tiger Woods and see him
objectively.
Steve Hardison had created an art form of coming into corporations and
seeing things objectively. In fact, his perception ran deeper than that.
He had near-psychic power to "see what was missing." It was a gift he
could also apply to individuals, but only if they were ready for the rigors
of his coaching.
I used to teasingly call one of his illustrative personal stories "The
Parable of the Mission." As a young missionary for his church in
England, Hardison broke all records for enrolling congregants. He
contrasted his own method with that of the other missionaries.
While the others would rush out and knock on doors all day, Hardison
would spend the first part of each day planning and plotting his
activities. By creating his day before it happened, he was able to
combine visits, economize on travel time, and increase the number of
enrollment conversations in a given day. He also used his creative
planning time to set up intra-neighborhood referrals for himself so that
many of his visits came with a reference.
The other missionaries were very active, but they were focused on the
activity, not the result. They were in the business of knocking on doors
and scurrying about—Steve was in the business of enrolling people into
the church. The records he set for enrollment were no accident. He
planned things that way.
Steve helped me understand something that lives inside of all of us,
something he called "the voice." When you wake up in the morning, the
voice is there right away, telling you that you are too tired to get up or
too sick to go to work. During a sales meeting when you are just about
to say something bold to a client, the voice might tell you to cool it.
"Hold back." "Be careful."
"The trick is," said Steve, "to not ignore or deny the existence of the
voice. Because it's there, in all of us. No one is free of the voice.
However, you don't have to obey the voice. You can talk back to the
voice. And when you really get good, you can even talk trash to the
voice.
Make fun of it. Ridicule it. Point out how stupid it is. And once you get
into that way of debating your own doubts, you start to take back
control of your life."
Many times I'd be in the middle of a large business project and ask to
meet with Steve for an hour. After he listened for a few minutes, he
would almost invariably see right away what was "missing" in my
behavior. Like a great golf teacher watching Tiger Woods' backswing,
he would say, "Are you willing to accept some coaching on this?" And I
would eagerly say yes. Then he would tell me truthfully, sometimes
ruthlessly, what he saw. I didn't always like what he saw, but I always
grew stronger from talking about it.
Hardison's coaching was so jolting that sometimes it reminded me of an
incident that happened to me when I was a boy playing Little League
baseball.
I had injured my knee in a play at third base and when the game was
over the knee was swollen and my entire leg was stiff. As I sat on the
bench with my leg straight out in front of me, a doctor whose son was
on our team was kneeling down by my leg as my father looked on.
"I'd like you to bend your leg now," he said to me as his hands gently
held my swollen knee.
"I can't," I told him.
"You can't?" he asked, looking up at me. "Why can't you?"
"Because I tried, and it really hurts."
The doctor looked at me for a second, and then said simply but gently,
"Then hurt yourself."
I was startled by his request. Hurt myself? On purpose? But then,
without saying anything, I slowly bent my leg. Yes, there was
tremendous pain, but that didn't matter. I was still mesmerized by his
request.
The doctor massaged my knee with his fingers and nodded to my father
that everything would be okay. I'd have to have x-rays and the usual
precautionary exam, but he saw nothing seriously wrong for now.
But I was still aware that something very big had just happened to me.
After a boyhood that was characterized by avoiding pain and discomfort
of any kind, all of a sudden I saw that I could hurt myself if I needed to,
and that I could do it calmly without batting an eye. Perhaps I wasn't
the coward I'd always thought I was. Perhaps there was as much
courage in me as in anyone else, and it was all a matter of being willing
to call on it.
It was a defining incident in my life, and it was not dissimilar to the way
Steve Hardison, as a coach, has required that I call on things inside me
that I didn't know I had.
One time I was having a hard time enrolling people into seminars and
doing my prospecting calls on the phone. Steve grabbed the phone and
started calling people and signing them up. Then he accidentally dialed
a wrong number and reached some mechanic at a car repair garage.
Most people would have apologized at that point and hung up and
dialed again. But rather than waste the call, Steve introduced himself
and then stayed on the phone—until the mechanic had signed up for a
seminar.
Hardison is a gifted and courageous public speaker, a resourceful and
relentless salesperson, a talented athlete and a committed family man
and church member. The kind of guy who used to make me sick!
I could write an entire book about Steve Hardison's remarkable work in
coaching and consulting, and someday I just might. Examples of ways
that he coached me to higher levels of performance are plentiful. But I
think
the greatest thing he has taught me is the value of coaching itself.
Once you open yourself up to being coached, you begin to receive the
same advantages enjoyed by great actors and athletes everywhere.
When you open yourself up to coaching, you don't become
weaker—you grow stronger. You become more responsible for
changing yourself.
In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck writes, "The problem of
distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this
life is one of the greatest problems of human existence...we must
possess the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual
self-examination."
The best coaches show us how to examine ourselves. It takes courage to
ask for coaching, but the rewards can be great. The best moments come
when your coach helps you do something you have previously been
afraid to do. When Hardison would recommend that I do something I
was afraid to do I'd say, "I don't know if I could do that."
"So don't be you," he would say. "If you can't do that, then be someone
else. Be someone who could do it. Be DeNiro, be Bruce Lee, be
anybody, I don't care, as long as you do it."
Coaching's contribution to my life is illustrated in these words by French
philosopher Guillaume Apollinaire:
" 'Come to the edge,' he said.
They said, 'We are afraid.'
'Come to the edge,' he said.
They came.
He pushed them.
And they flew."
You can get coaching anytime. If coaching is appropriate for your golf
or tennis game, it is even more appropriate for the game of life. Ask
someone to be honest with you and coach you for a while. Let them
check your "swing." Let them tell you what they see. It's a courageous
thing to do, and it will always lead to more self-motivation and growth.
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