1 – Increased Clarity and Focus

Sometimes we are just too involved, too close and cannot see the wood for the trees. The fact that your coach had no experience in the area in which you work can be a real bonus. It requires you to explain everything to the coach clearly and simply which actually helps you increase your own understanding. It may seem painfully slow at first, but the more questions the coach asks, the more, you realize that you were busy but not necessarily productive. You may lack focus because you had just dived in and didn’t fully understand, but now with your increased understanding of the situation, you could focus on what was important.

Sometimes the coach may play dumb to help increase your clarity, focus, and ultimately your Effectiveness.

2 – Increased Accountability

It’s so easy to make excuses to yourself to get out of doing things that you know you should do, or persuade yourself that if you let it slip to next week, it will be okay. Having a coach act as 

an accountability partner helps to make you keep your commitments, because when you think about making those excuses to your coach you can hear how weak they are., which then negates them.

3 – Increased Confidence

Your negative self-talk is one of the biggest inhibitors to your success. It’s so easy to see all of the problems, the pitfalls, and reasons why failure awaits you, so much so that it can actually stop you from even trying. Good coaches will help you picture success, help you put in place a plan or strategy that will help build confidence, and eliminate doubts. Confidence is critical to success, but it can be difficult to build your own self-confidence.

4 – Better Ideas

It can be difficult to know whether an idea is good or bad, madness or genius, and talking them

through can help you to understand better in which of those categories and ideas might end up. Try to count the times you have discounted a good idea because you have either talked yourself out of it or decided that a lesser idea would be a better option. Ideas need to be prodded and challenged as this helps to improve them or to realize that there are better solutions available.

5 – Better Decision Making

We all have our prejudices, preconceived notions, or beliefs about people or situations that can

actually be detrimental to our performance and decision making, by clouding our judgment.

Having that unbiased view, someone who can help us differentiate reality from perception will help us to see things as they really are and help us make better choices.

Make coaching a part of your annual development plan. You can read all the books you want, attend training courses, seminars, and conferences but the real progress comes when you have a coach, as they can help you improve focus, hold you accountable, build your confidence, help you shape your ideas and give you a different perspective which we all need from time to time.