By Harrison Nolan
TLDR:
When you are a coach you care about long term development, not about short term results. Focus on how you can develop others to become their best selves and the rest is easy.
5 things a good coach does ✅
#1 Challenges thinking
When a mentee brings forward a thought, solution or concept, challenge them on their thinking. Even if they are coming to a conclusion that is correct when challenged they will learn how to defend their point of view. They may even find out they learn something more through the conversation.
#2 Uses honesty, is direct and authentic
Sugarcoating helps no one. When you sugarcoat your feedback or advice the mentee gets an unrealistic understanding of their performance. They may leave thinking they actually did and okay job and just need to tighten up a bit, when in reality they were way off course. Reality checks help us get back to high standards thinking and executing.
This doesn't mean being unnecessarily mean or trying to make others feel bad (see what not to do below), it just means being straight up and honest
#3 Inspires others
Enthusiasm, storytelling, excitement, personality and personality all help to drive home good coaching. Bland and unemotional coaching will be more difficult to remember and relate to. This does not mean that coaches are bubbly and happy go lucky but rather they are memorable, authentic and show themselves for who they are in the best way possible!
#4 Makes sure the mentee knows you care
The mentee needs to understand your there to help them grow. It's not about ego.
#5 Tells stories and shares personal experiences
Share stories with your mentee(s) about experiences you've had and how you learned form them. Use stories to help them understand concepts and internalize your advice.
What a good coach does not do 🚫
Helps their mentee hack success
To learn and be successful we need to fail. If we don't fail, we don't learn. When you are having a conversation and give someone a tip which can allow them to succeed their first time without having to understand or learn the process you are doing them a disservice. Let them experience the failure so they can internalize the key learnings.
Example: 🚫 Hacking success: "Hey [mentee] when you do your first presentation make sure you don't use any cue cards and try to just use specific words on your slides to remember what you want to say".
→ This limits the mentees ability to experience this failure in a way that will cement this moment in their memory. It also limits them from fully understanding WHY they should not use cue cards. All they know is presentation = no cue cards, not the fact that they need to be able to engage their audience, seem legit be prepared and speak more clearly, all things associated with not using cue cards.
✅ Coaching: "Hey [mentee] one thing I found in your last presentation is you weren't able to engage the audience very well, what action items can we create together to level up your audience engagement on your next presentation?"
→ This is helping the mentee be intentional without you having to be prescriptive. They will build intuition for themselves while also developing high standards.
Here's a scenario you might get:
🚫 Scenario 1:
Mentee: "What's the best way to get an internship?" Coach: "Write a bunch of articles and share them on LinkedIn and Medium. Add as many people to those networks as possible and then cold messaging some people in my free time who I wanted to work with or for." Mentee: "Okay cool ya I'll try that"
✅ Scenario 2:
Mentee: "What's the best way to get an internship?" Coach: "What do you think?" Mentee: "Well I think it would probably be good to get better at sending cold emails as I feel like you don't get jobs applying on websites anymore." Coach: "Okay what else?" Mentee: "I know I haven't put any new content out for a while so that probably hurts my chances, I should probably be writing more so people can see i'm legit." Coach: "Well what do you think companies are looking for when hiring interns?" Mentee:"Probably..."
The second scenario is less prescriptive, it allows the mentee to learn and causes a lot more discovery and thought versus just trying to deliver information. You'll help them understand the "why" so they can be self-directed.
Don't answer all questions, ASK QUESTIONS. You should find yourself talking less than 30% of the time.
This also offers you the ability to help the mentee fail quickly and often. When they answer your questions with bad answers they will "fail" and you can try and ask more questions to show them the flaws in their arguments to again cement the right ideas in their minds.
ex. Mentee: "What's the best way to get an internship?" Coach: "What do you think?" Mentee: "Well I think I should put in a lot of thought and energy into my applications on a lot of different companies hiring portals on their websites." Coach: "Who else is probably thinking this exact same thing?" Mentee: "Well probably a lot of people, but I can work really hard and put a lot of time into my applications to stand out." Coach: "Who else will have a lot of time on their hands that they can dedicate to putting in high level applications on companies websites?" Mentee: "Okay ya, I get it probably everyone." Coach: "What is a way you could try and get an internship that better reflects your skillset, capabilities and networks? Or better yet how can you also further develop your skillsets, capabilities and networks to help you have a better chance of getting an internship?"
Similarly to not trying to hack success, a good coach also focuses on the long term goal of development versus the short term goal of success in one given area. A good coach will help a mentee build a good relationship with failure.
What does a good relationship with failure look like? When we fail we can have three different reactions:
1) We let the failure emotionally effect us and we feel terrible. We let this feeling then effect how we perform in the future, our confidence level and more.
2) We don't let the failure effect us emotionally or in any way. We look at failure like it doesn't matter but we don't improve because getting over failure is unimportant to us.
3) We let the failure hurt, but just enough to push us forward. We understand that failing is a necessity that we should not accept meaning; we understand we need to fail to learn but once the lesson is learned, we will put all our effort into not letting this specific failure happen again.
A good coach allows their mentees to fail, fail often, and encourages them to fail fast, but also encourages mentees to work hard to correct failure and to learn from it.
Knows when and how to offer advice:
Good mentorship and advice is requested and specific
Requested:
Unsolicited advice will always be received worse than solicited advice. A good coach doesn't offer their opinion when not asked. A good coach knows when someone is asking for advice and when someone is venting.
BUT, sometimes mentees need advice even if they aren't asking. In this moment a good coach asks for permission to give advice or to ask further questions. Asking then helps the mentee buy in and psychologically engages them in the conversation.
Specific:
Avoid Spray and pray | Giving advice to everyone in the same manner in the same forum at the same time.
Try to Targeted approach | Tailoring your thoughts and advice to the specific circumstances as best as you can.
PS. I mainly just want you to think about how you can be a good coach and mentor. These are general concepts to be intentional about, and how/when you employ them will be up to you.