Coaching, Mentoring and Managing: A Coach Guidebook

Exercise Analysis

Notice in the example that none of these positive attributes is

exceptionally noteworthy. There may be no mention of job

achievements or professional skills. Many of the qualities you find

to compliment in your own team members may fall into similar

categories. But track the process for a few months and you’ll

begin to find new positive things to say as your team responds to

your affirmation! As with any skill, practice, and remember what

Vince Lombardi cautioned, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect

practice makes perfect.” Affirming your people is perfect practice

for causing great results. When you have trust and clear

expectations of roles, you can never affirm and compliment too

much. Everything you recognize will be received as truthful and

focused.

The Coach’s Role in Motivating and Inspiring

A fourth accountability in the coaching process is helping

your people become and stay energized. It means pumping up

your people from the outside until they gradually begin energizing

themselves from the inside. Coaching does have cheerleading in it.

When you are involved with your people, you earn their trust by

being real, by respecting their points of view, by keeping the lines

of communication clear, and by affirming their efforts to be the

best they can be. This is motivation, and this is where their

inspiration to greater performance can come from. It isn’t what

you do to them, it’s what you do around them that lets them do it

to themselves.

In short, motivation and inspiration are the logical outgrowths

of everything you have read in this chapter up to this point.

Logical, but not automatic. As coach, you still provide the vision

— a focus and direction. While a manager creates the team’s

vision, the coach gets personal. Your inspiration is for people to

feel about their vision, their goals, the direction they are taking.

That is why StaffCoaching™ is not about what you do, but about

what they do. You provide the challenge to look beyond the tasks

at hand to new horizons.

Coaching, Mentoring and Managing

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