Why You Should Hire a Coach
And Why You Shouldn't
Welcome Players! Hiring a coach could be one of the most impactful decisions you make - if done for the right reasons.
A coach is someone who you can trust to guide your development in a specific art, skill, or task.
While you may be tempted to think that I am only talking about athletic endeavors, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
A coach can be in any discipline, any industry, and regardless of which has the power to make an impact regardless of where they practice.
There are coaches for business, sports, education, dating, even communication. If there is a skill that can be practiced, there is very likely a coach for that.
Today I’m going to be talking about what qualities to look for in a coach, why you should consider one if you’re serious about improvement, and more importantly, why you shouldn’t look for a coach.
Let’s go!
Before you even think about hiring a coach you should be crystal clear on what your goals are and should have already started working to achieve them.
You don’t hire a coach and THEN set a goal. That’s like starting to cook a recipe and looking at the ingredient list after. Just doesn’t make sense.
In the perfect scenario, you don’t even think about hiring a coach until you’ve plateaued on your own accord.
Progression in any skill or art is based upon the internal drive of the participant.
That means that you, and your belief in yourself, is the sole biggest determinant of whether or not you become successful.
Let that sink in for a second…
So before we talk about when it’s the right time to hire a coach, let’s start by going through how to know when you’re not ready to hire a coach.
If you don’t have an identified goal
If you haven’t started practicing on your own yet
If you are steadily progressing without one
If you are not personally invested in your progress or accomplishments
If you think that hiring a coach will be a shortcut to the learning process
If you want to “speed up” your learning curve
Some of these may seem fairly obvious, but you’d be surprise at the ill-intentions some people will seek out a coach for.
For one, and one of the most common ones I see as a coach, you should not be hiring a coach if you believe that through the coach you will be afforded the opportunity to not put in the work and practice required to improve. A perfect plan isn’t perfect without consistency and dedication.
Imagine hiring Lance Armstrong to coach your cycling progress and then telling him you only have 3 hours per week to ride on the bike. He’d laugh in your face!
This is why before even thinking about a coach you must start on your journey yourself.
I know many people have the perspective that they will commit to the journey once they’ve hired a coach, and that having one will hold them accountable, but I’ve seen this approach fail time and time again.
If you do not have the discipline to pursue your goals without a coach, you will not have the discipline to pursue your goals with a coach.
Not only that, but any sensible coach will become very frustrated with your lack of self-sufficiency in pursuit of your goals.
A coach’s primary responsibility is to guide your development, not baby it.
While some coaches may be able to take your hand and walk you step by step through every little detail that you need to do to be successful, the most successful coaches I know (as well as my own approach) is highly dependent on the student having an internal common sense to make decisions for themselves and figure things out on their own.
For example, no coach wants to answer a text from you at 8am saying, “Hey coach, I just finished my workout for this morning. Should I eat 4 eggs or a bowl of oatmeal? How much salt should I use? Is 1 glass of water OK or should I have 2?”
Personally, this would be a huge red flag for someone in my coaching program. You are a fully functioning adult. Use some critical thinking to determine what you think is best and move forward.
Also, you handicap your own progress by not taking accountability for your own actions, even when you do have a coach.
A coach doesn’t do the work for you nor are they responsible for the outcome.
YOU are responsible for the work and YOU are accountable for the results.
I’ll say it again: A coach is a resource who is there to guide your development. They are not the conductor of the train. You are.
The coach is more like the manager that is there to deploy effective strategy, guide long-term direction, and step in if something is about to go terribly wrong. With those principles in place the coach will be much more effective than having to walk you through every little detail of living life.
Ok. Assuming the reasons to not hire a coach are clear, how do you know when you are ready to hire a professional mentor?
For one, when you have progressed beyond your capable knowledge level and access to information is scarce or otherwise inaccessible, a coach is paramount.
For example, if you are an experienced marathon runner who can finish a sub-3 hour marathon and have exhausted all your resources in order to make it happen, yet want to continue progression and invest the time, energy, and effort in order to reach an elite time of 2.5 hours, well, that is an excellent time to employ the expert guidance of a professional running coach.
It’s also advisable to turn to a coach when you simply do not have the knowledge required to progress but have already proven you have the consistency to practice.
Let’s say you take up archery as a hobby, and practice for an hour every day. You love the sport, you’ve learned a lot reading online and watching youtube videos, and are starting to develop a passion for it.
You have a goal of trying to compete in professional archery, but don’t know where to begin to make that jump from recreational hobby to dedicated craft. Well, this is another opportune time to seek out a coach who can streamline that process and tell you exactly what is necessary to make that jump.
In this sense the use of a coach is both extremely efficient and extremely useful because the coaches strength (knowledge) is your weakness. This has the foundation for a positive coaching relationship that can get you on track quickly.
When else is a great environment to seek a coach?
If you have a finite goal in a limited amount of time and can’t afford to trial-and-error by yourself
If the art/skill you are undertaking has severe consequences if done incorrectly (think diving [free/scuba/sky])
Hiring a coach at the right time in your journey is an important decision. Most people think that it is up to the coach to ensure the students success, but that’s not true.
It’s up to YOU, and by waiting for the right moment to hire a coach you will be taking an important step on to fully achieving your goal. It will make your work with the coach more efficient, it will foster a more positive relationship, and not to be understated it will save you money from wasted efforts before it’s necessary.
Ok. So you know when not to hire a coach, and you understand at what point in your journey a coach will make the biggest difference. The next question is: What should you be looking for in a coach?
The most important thing to understand and something I tell all my clients, that above all there is no ‘best’ coach. There is only the ‘right coach for YOU’.
Coaches aren’t robots, they’re human. And as humans they have personalities, tendencies, and faults just like you. And contrary to popular belief, coaches are people too - they have stuff going on in their personal life that may be challenging as well, which you’ll probably never know about.
Yes; experience, accolades, knowledge all matter when selecting a coach. But the most heralded and respected coach in the world is a terrible fit for you if you don’t have a personality match where you can communicate effectively.
This is something I see often, where people look to hire the “best coach” who has ample experience working with professionals in their field; but never pause to consider the fact that as an amateur, that coach is by far a terrible match for the person seeking coaching.
If the coach is truly wise, they will recognize when it’s not a good fit and decline to provide coaching. It’s nothing personal.
I can speak from experience I have turned away clients because they are not a good fit for my coaching style. This is not a negative statement. This is just saying that the way I coach, and the expectations I have of the people I coach, are bound to clash when certain characteristics are present. The awareness to recognize that saves both the coach and the student in the long run.
It’s very similar to dating in a sense that if partners can’t communicate effectively when disagreements and problems are present - that relationship has a long uphill battle.
It’s better to give yourself the best chance at success by ensuring that you and your coach will be able to work through problems together, and not compete against each other.
So before you start looking for the best coach in the world, rule #1 is:
Prioritize finding a coach that matches your personality and whom you will have positive communication with, even when problems arise.
The next thing you should look for is a coach who has experience coaching your skill level.
This is another often overlooked aspect of coaching.
I see this as well where someone who has never begun practicing the skill tries to hire a coach who has extensive experience with professionals in that skill. They think because they do it at the highest level that it will translate to doing it better at the lowest level. Not true!
For example, let’s say you’ve never swung a golf club in your life. You’re not going to go hire Butch Harmon to teach you how to swing. That would be ludicrous.
For one, Butch wouldn’t even accept you as a student, and two, you’d be paying $1500+ an hour (last I heard) for him to teach you something that literally every and any other instructor could.
It just doesn’t make sense.
If you’re a beginner, you should look for a coach who has ample experience working with beginners.
If you’re intermediate or at a moderate skill level, you should look for a coach who has experience taking you from intermediate to advanced.
And if you’re advanced or at an expert level, well then it makes sense to look for a highly regarded expert-level coach.
What is also overlooked here is you will very likely have to change coaches throughout your skill progression.
I’ve witnessed this myself in my time with players in the NFL/NBA.
A player will be loyal to a strength and conditioning coach who worked with them throughout high school and college, yet when they’ve gotten into the professional league this S&C coach doesn’t have the skills to continue the progression.
They were the perfect match for a high-school/college player, but a very poor fit for the now-professional athlete.
Eventually the player realizes this and will make the switch to a coach more suited for their level, but sometimes they are guilt-ridden by loyalty. I’ve seen players careers be sidetracked by a toxic relationship with a long-time coach who was clearly no longer a best-fit for an athlete. It’s a sad thing to watch.
As a coach I am very mindful of understanding what levels of ability I am most beneficial to, and will not hesitate to recommend another coach when a student is seeking something from me that I am not fit for providing.
On the other hand, as a student you should be aware of this difference in ability level too and should seek out a coach fit for your current level, while also being cognizant that if/when you progress enough, a coaching change is likely the best move.
Prioritize finding a coach who has demonstrated an ability to successfully coach other students that match your current ability level and/or the ability level you want to get to from your current starting point.
I don’t think any of the above points I’ve mentioned, or the points I’m going to mention, are any more important than the others, but these first two are certainly the most overlooked and as such I’ve placed a greater emphasis on. The following are more common criteria that most people consider when hiring a coach.
These have to do with the technical aspects of coaching experience, knowledge, and skill.
While it’s always great to have a coach who had achieved expert-level status in the skill themself, it’s not always necessary.
Some of the greatest coaches of all-time were poor athletes themselves, and some of the best athletes of all time make terrible coaches.
Bill Belichick, Greg Popovich, and Vince Lombardi are a few stand-out coaches that never played at the level they became famous for coaching.
Wayne Gretzky, Isiah Thomas, and Jason Kidd are a few all-time greats who’s foray into coaching went less than stellar.
We could cherry-pick examples all day, but the point is that achieving personal success at the skill you’re coaching is not a prerequisite. It can certainly help, or it could hurt, so keep that in mind when evaluating a coach.
Whether or not a coach had personal success at the skill they teach should not be a high priority on evaluating their ability as a coach.
With that out of the way, one of the most important things you should look for in your new coach is their track record of success, and who they were successful with.
This is likely where most people start, in that they look for a coach who has demonstrably proven that they can get the results you are looking for because they’ve done it with other people like you.
Of course there will be young coaches with great ability whom will ask you to take a flyer on them, and there’s nothing wrong with that (hell I was once that young coach!), but through and through working with a coach who has achieved success before is a sought-after characteristic and rightfully so.
You should not only look at their history of success, but the context of that success. Similar to figuring out if the coach is a good personality fit, you’ll want to evaluate the people they were successful with and try to gauge whether or not the student was likely to achieve success anyway or if the coach made a tangible difference in their progression.
This means doing a little research, and it’s not even unheard of to reach out to former students and ask them their experience. This is important because of course marketing materials only tell one side of the story, but a truly good coach will become apparent when talking to their students.
You should look for a coach who has a proven ability to achieve success with their students, and the context of their success should be in line with your current situation.
And finally, by far my #1 most important criteria when deciding on a coach:
You need to work with a coach that you trust.
Without trust, the entire coaching relationship is fractured. A coach cannot do their job if you don’t trust them, nor is it right for you to execute the plan of someone whom you don’t trust.
Without a doubt you need to have 100% trust in your coach to get you to where you want to be.
This doesn’t mean you never challenge them, or never ask questions about why you’re doing something or have feedback on how you both could be doing things better.
This just means when push comes to shove, and the coach makes a decision, you need to be able to respect and trust that that decision is in your best interest.
Speaking as a coach, we can be highly demanding of students. We can be tough and hard on you. What is perceived maybe as being rude or stand-offish is quite the opposite.
If a coach is tough on you, it means that they believe in you. It means that they know you can do better, and that they want to see you succeed.
It means that they are using every tactic at their disposal to motivate you and to challenge you, trying their best to bring out the best from you. Every coach has a different style, but when a coach is challenging you to improve, that is a great sign of respect.
If a coach is being hard on you, you should not take it personally. When you should start to worry is if a coach offers limited or no feedback at all. When they just watch you go through the motions. That means they’ve given up on you, and is the saddest outcome in a student-teacher relationship.
This is why trust is so important for both the student and the coach. Trust works both ways.
A coach can’t effectively guide your development if they don’t have the assurance that you are upholding your end of the bargain: putting in the work.
If a coach doubts that you are actually doing what you say you did, or if your effort does not match the requirements for progress, that slowly fractures the trust of the coach in you.
You are seeking out a coach (and paying them) in order to follow their direction. If you don’t do that, the coach thinks, “What the hell am I doing here? Why am I wasting my time with this person who will not do what I ask of them?”
Especially when a student complains of the work being “hard”… it can put a great strain on the relationship. As mentioned in the beginning, hiring a coach doesn’t make the work any easier. Far from it!
So to balk at the idea of hard work when prescribed from your coach, that is ridiculous.
Remember: A coach isn’t giving you difficult tasks to complete because they don’t like you or they want to punish you. However that idea got into the heads of students is beyond me, but it’s just simply not true. When difficult work is required to achieve results, than that is what will be prescribed.
You and your coach are on the same team working towards the same goal. But trust is the backbone of that teamwork and without it nothing else works.
Prioritize a coach you can trust.
Hiring a coach can make a tremendous difference in the outcomes of your journey when you’re dedicated to a craft.
If you pay heed to the things I’ve mentioned you will be best suited to find a coach that truly fits your personality and is equipped to specifically take YOU from your starting point to end point.
Regardless of who you work with, and for what reason, just remember that there is no replacement for hard work, dedication, and perseverance.
Without those there is no coach in the world that can give you what you want.
Good luck.
- Trainer 01
This is on point!