Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a Coach

If you were an athlete, which one of the 3 options below would you choose as a coach?

Option 1: Someone who has played competitive sport when he was younger, been through the struggle himself. And as a coach, he will work with you to figure out "how" you can get your gold medal!

Option 2: Someone who has never played competitive sport, he has no lived experience of that struggle, can not begin to comprehend your struggle. And as a coach, all he tells you is: "all you need to do, is to think happy feelings." :-(

Option 3: Someone who doesn't even know the struggle involved in playing competitive sport, can't even bring herself to imagine the struggle involved :-( when you the athlete tell her about your struggles, she gets traumatized herself and needs therapy LOL ...  Yet she is your coach, and as a coach, all she tells you is: "You need to win, my job is to sit on the sofa enjoy ice cream and 'hold you accountable'." :-(

A Coach, cannot coach you, if she has not:

1. Done it herself

2. Done the HARD work of struggle and overcoming

3. Done the DEEP work of reflecting on the struggle and overcoming: her very self, her opponents, and the environment they were in

Sadly, she lacks the lived experience to put herself in your shoes! :-( And here is a concept I learned from President Theodore Roosevelt: "Too often, people who never fought and bled are trying to teach the survivors on how to survive" :-(

A Coach, cannot coach you, if she is not able to figure out:

1. What is it that this person wants to accomplish, where he wants to go

2. What is this gap that he needs to cross? what understanding is he lacking, what insight is he lacking, what is his confusion, that's causing him to not reach his goal

3. How to build a bridge for the gap, so the coaching client can cross the intellectual gap!

4. How to use words, metaphors, analogies, to explain, to teach the coaching client, so the coaching client can make this intellectual leap, and obtain that understanding.

A coach cannot help you, if she has not:

1. Been through the pain herself

2. Reflected on her own struggle AFTER she's succeeded

3. Developed the skill of diagnosing "gaps in understanding"

4. Figured out the right medicine to prescribe, to the particular individual, for the unique situation

5. Mastered not only what medicine to give, but also how to deliver that medicine!

Most coaches, just tell you what you "ought" to accomplish, they don't know the how, they don't know how to figure out the how, and they just bounce it back to you: "So what do you think? What are you going to do about it?" That's not coaching! That is:

1. pay me to listen to you complain

2. tell you what you want to hear not what you need to hear

3. and make you feel better right away - but only temporarily - and you crash :-(

4. not helping you improve at all, not helping you overcome your obstacles at all, not helping you advance at all :-(

5. creating an addiction of "paying me to feel good right away" and crash and come back for more :-(

6. How is that different from smoking? drinking? chocolate addiction? smoking pot?

Most coaches out there:

1. Do not have a degree in Science/Engineering;

2. Do not have experience doing real Engineering/Technical work;

3. Do not have experience fighting in the trenches, in the "corporate jungle", in the world of business, "swimming with sharks";

4. Do not have experience "punching up", above their weight, David vs Goliath;

If you ask them: "What's the biggest obstacle you ever faced?" They might think for a long time, and come back with: "I was bullied, as a teen, because I was too pretty."

Yes, there is a minority of coaches, who did come from engineering background, they have the corporate experience, but:

1. They either lack the "humble origin" and the struggle against invisible obstacles

2. Or they don't know how to explain, how to analyze your situation, how to explain things to you. They do not understand: Knowing something, is NOT the same as being able to teach that thing you know. Being able to teach what you know, is another layer of skill on top!

I've had so many students tell me: "I just realized, my manager has been trying to tell me the same thing, for 2 years now, but the way he explained it? I could never get it! I finally got it, today, because the way you explained it! I should've attended your coaching 2 years ago, it would've saved me, my team, my manager himself, our employer, so much trouble!"

Most mainstream career, business, leadership coaches:

1. Will tell you what you need to accomplish - anyone can read that from the Internet!

2. Won't tell you "How" to accomplish them

3. Don't know "How" to accomplish them

4. Have never managed employees; Have never managed employees as a business owner

5. Have never had a business that's product-based, which needs capital, inventory, process, operations and human employees

6. Have never had a business

7. Some of them have no real-life experience in the "Human-eat-Human" world called "the Corporate Jungle"

8. Some of them have only worked for one giant multinational corporation, which means they have a very narrow perspective

Also, most coaches out there:

1. Grew up in the safety and comfort of a western country, middle class, suburbia...

2. Can only speak one language, cannot comprehend the demand of speaking a 2nd or even 3rd language, at a professional level proficiency with all the business etiquette and nuances

3. Don't understand "visiting a 3rd world country, from a 1st world country, as a tourist" is NOT the same as "moving from a 3rd world country to a 1st world country, as a professional"

4. Spent a lifetime, living within the comfort zone provided by living within a single culture.

5. Spent a lifetime, living with all the creature comforts, provided by a highly industrialized nation

6. Spent a lifetime, living with the social safety net, provided by a western democracy

7. Spent generations, living within the comfort and safety, provided by being the most powerful nation on earth, to the point of arrogance due to ignorance, never under any threat from hostile neighboring countries, shifting geo-political alignment, communist dictatorship preventing people's social upward mobility... 

8. Have no experience, with poverty, hunger, family breakup, civil war, social injustice, communist dictatorship...

The list goes on and on. They simply:

1. Cannot comprehend any of the above

2. Can not imagine any of the above

3. Certainly not to mention "having done the hard work, of advancing themselves, out of such humble beginnings"

4. Therefore, they have not "done the deep work, of reflecting on the deep lessons one can learn from such an experience of advancing oneself out of such humble beginnings

5. They've not thought about deeper questions regarding life, human nature, society, why humans are the way they are

6. Therefore, they cannot help you. Seeking coaching from them, would be like asking a little kid how to drive a real car LOL He can teach you how to play a car racing computer game, but he won't be able to teach you how to drive a real car, in traffic, in snow, in a country that drives on the other side of the road, and your command of the local language does not enable you to comprehend all the road signs, and the signs are all given to you in a measuring system you do not understand. They certainly cannot coach you on:  how to make money as an uber driver, as a truck driver,  and all the resourcefulness and toughness needed, to become a profitable Uber driver, or a truck driver: with a family to feed, yet you are gone for weeks at a time. The little kid can teach you how to play that computer game called "driving a truck", he is very good at it, he thinks it's all easy! And when the computer breaks down, all he needs to do, is to cry, and daddy will buy him a new computer!

7. Compared to your life, your struggles, most of those so called "coaches", have lived a computer game version of real life. You can't learn how to ride a bicycle by reading a book. You can't learn how to swim from someone who's never jumped into the water.