When Coaching Sucks

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Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, Wytel. This is episode 118 of the Empowered Team Podcast.

Well, hello amazing humans. Today we are talking about the sucky side of coaching. So this is something you may want to listen to. If you have been coached, you are a coach, you're looking for coaching, whether it's in the physical realm, the sport realm, the business realm. This is the sucky side of coaching that you need to know if you have ever had any sort of coaching or if you have been a coach or you're mentoring or coaching anyone else. So even if you're a leader in business, same type of thing, this is the sucky side of coaching. So first of all, there's two ways that I'd like you to think about coaching in this realm and I'll give you some stories along the way. But there's two ways to think about coaching. Number one, there's coaching the way I've done for many years in the gym, which is the strategy, the tactics, the teaching, a lot of the how and that's telling someone exactly what to do. And the second way of coaching is really a guide to self discovery. And this is almost the exact opposite. It's quite literally drawing out that person's own realization with questions and guidance without telling them exactly what to do. Because this discovery part of it has to come from themselves. Otherwise the message or the lesson or the progress just simply won't land. So those are the two ways of coaching that I want you to have in the back of your mind when we go through three different scenarios. Number one is coaching others, number two is getting coached by someone, and number three is coaching yourself. So these are the three ways we're going to explore in the sucky side of coaching. So number one is coaching others. This is an area that I had a lot of lessons that really didn't land for a very long time, but eventually started to land and I started to adapt and adjust. But when I'm in coaching others for so many years, both in the actual telling people what to do and the strategy and tactics and the how and also the guides to self discovery and opening the door for themselves. I was very, especially in the early years of coaching, I was very attached to the outcome or the result. So this is the number one thing that I would say, this is how it is. An awful side of coaching is being so attached the outcome or the result for the person that you are Coaching or the person you are mentoring, what that leads to is quite literally having this attachment and emotional roller coaster to whatever is happening for them. So for instance, you know, I can think of one particular athlete, years and years ago had a career ending, a potentially career ending injury. And this person was on the men's national volleyball team and he had a career altering injury for sure. And it could have been career ending. And I spent a lot of time working with this individual, even though it was a team sport, extra time working with this individual, bringing them back from an ACL reconstruction in their knee, they blew out their acl. And in doing this, this long term, this long term process, eventually we worked together long enough and he got to the point where he was strong enough and rehabbed enough and got him actually ready to be back on court. And he, because he was out for so long, he had to retry out for the national team. He didn't have a secure spot with the national team. And in doing so, you know, I felt personally so connected because it had been so long and so much of a journey to get him back that I was very, very attached to the outcome without fully realizing it until he made the team. So it was a successful result. We got the outcome that he wanted and he made it back with the national team. But that's one of the key points. When I opened my business, I started to quite literally market my business in that I would say things like my client success and my athlete's success is my success. Those results are how I see my success. My success is measured in their results. And that seemed like an amazing thing at the time. And I know that there's probably a lot of businesses and people who might say a similar type of thing, but what happened for me along the way was that when that's the case, then you quite literally are going through what that individual or team is going through all the time. When you coach multiple people and you coach multiple teams and you are going for anything from a client's career result or physical result or a team's physical result, then you're constantly going through this roller coaster and literally thinking that if they failed that you failed too. And the reverse is actually true. Because a lot of times that outcome has so many other outside factors that you have no control over. The only thing that we really have control over is the coaching process. How I am coaching the delivery of that process. And that's the thing that is successful that I can control. I can't control the entire outcome of a tournament or of A qualification for Olympics or of a company acquisition if it was one of my corporate clients. Those simply are not in my realm. And yet I was acting as though they were. So if something went right or something went wrong, that was my success or my failure at the same time. And what that did to me personally was leaving me over, over extended because of going through that constant emotional roller coaster. And I'm sure that that is the case for some of the listeners here in work, in mentoring others in their child's coaching, in maybe attachment, you might have with an outcome that is work related, health related, sport related, whatever it is. So on the second part of when coaching others, the second thing that I found was really a drawback or a sucky side of coaching others. And this was being a mirror for my clients and athletes. And what I mean by that is that as a coach I was always looking to mirror their greatness. I would show them their gifts that they maybe couldn't see in themselves, but I could see in them. So I was mirroring who they really were or who I could see their potential was and showing that to them. And the drawback for that was that there were so many times that they could never see that for themselves. I could see it in them, maybe even others could see it in them, but they couldn't see it in themselves. Or perhaps they couldn't express it in themselves. Now you can see how this would be a double whammy with the first part of being attached to the outcome. Because if not only can the client not see what I can see in them and then I'm also attached to their result, it becomes something that has too great of an attachment to what is potentially possible may never fully come to fruition. So at one point, another, another story here, just in being so committed to what's possible, but then being committed to each and every team or each and every athlete in a way that then it created conflict. Seeing the greatness in one individual, seeing the greatness in the team, but never stopping to truly enjoy the process, enjoy the success. I'll give you an example of this. For over three years, I traveled to Toronto, I traveled to Calgary, I traveled to bc. I traveled all these areas to work with the women's national hockey team. And I worked with their under 18 program. I worked with her under 21 program and I worked with her senior program. So I was doing a lot of different camps at various times. Now my family at that time was in a high need position from me as well. So the traveling was pretty challenging. Because I was away from them for extended periods of time. I was away in the summer for almost a full month for senior camp in Calgary. And this whole process was incredibly rewarding, being with the women's national team, working at the highest level of hockey in Canada, and going through all of the tough challenges that come with that. But at the same time, I was also very committed to my business, my personal clients, and my family. And when you're that committed to that many things, then inevitably you feel really pulled in multiple directions, possibly spread thin depending on how the time is being planned out. And ultimately, it can lead to not having the best of anything because there's the attempt of trying to do everything. And it finally came to the point In February, in 2014, when it was the gold medal match, Canada versus the U.S. it was one of the most exciting hockey games of the Olympics. This game was unbelievably intense. It was back and forth. There was no real dominant side. There was just lots of excitement, lots of just back and forth. It was incredible to watch, but I wasn't watching it live. Now, there's two reasons for this. Number one, as a strength and conditioning professional, typically not with every team, but for most teams, by the time you've worked with a team for however long, you're usually not going with them on the Olympic Games. Now, in this particular instance, I was the assistant strength coach, so the head strength coach was going. He was there. But I wasn't able to travel with them, although I would have loved to. But in the game and the event coming live, I was really excited for the event. However, I was also really committed to my clients and my business. And the ironic thing was, is that I was so committed to also other individuals and their outcomes that I missed the live version of the game. I was playing out of Russia. It was the middle of the day, and I had a client that I felt very committed to that I would never be so irresponsible not to show up. I wouldn't change the appointment booking. And what was so brutal about it was not only did I miss the live game and the winning of the gold medal is that this client that I was coaching owned multiple businesses. And I had learned and found out from other people that at those businesses, they had the game on. And all these people were cheering on at the. At their work because it was such an exciting, exciting game. Now, of course, I watched the replay and of course, I went through all the emotions and, you know, I cried when I. When I saw the win and learned about the win, because it had been such a long journey to go through that. And I was. I was so excited for all the people and the connections and just the final outcome that everybody had worked so, so hard for. But I looked at that and I thought, wow, I didn't watch it live. I didn't carve the time out for myself because I was still so committed to someone else's outcome instead of watching the fruit of my labors that was culminating in a gold medal game after three years of process, four years of a quad of a process to get there. And that is just a story I'm telling because what can happen to us as individuals is being so wrapped up in needing to be there for someone else is that we forget some of the reasons why we're doing it and forget that it's the process, it's the actual transformation, it's the. The individual moment, the individual moment after moment after moment that we're in. If we can't be present to those moments and really absorb them and we keep focusing on someone else's outcomes, then sometimes we forget that we have our own outcomes. And my own outcome in that situation would have been enjoying that final match because that was part of my outcome in that process. So that's part of the trap of being so attached to other people's outcomes in a coaching process and being able to train yourself to be more attached to the process and going through the step by step and being present in that, because that is really where the greatest beauty lies. So the next part is getting coached. Now, this, you can imagine, is a tough spot. So there's two points I have here. Number one, when you're getting coached, it's hearing the hard truth, hearing the really hard truth about whether it's your testing results, whether it's the state of your business, whether it's the state of your life or your health, really understanding where things are at and what it's going to take to get to your next level. And a really good coach is going to explain that this is what it looks like to go where you want to go and have someone really be prepared for what it's going to take to get there and be able to take them through that process. So hearing the hard truth is one of the most challenging things. I remember being coached in a program at one point, and I had a really tough scenario, and I'd been carrying on to this, carrying this story on for the majority of my life about my mother. And I went head to head with this coach who I was telling this coach how awful my mother was. I was telling this coach how awful certain things were in my upbringing. And this coach basically stood there and held their ground and told me back that I was making this story and I was carrying this with me the whole time. Now, that was hard to hear because what most people, when I would tell the stories or the story to most other people, they would agree with me as to how awful that was and how awful something else was. And this coach just held their ground and told me that I was responsible for the direction that things would go. And I was making meaning out of it and I was carrying it with me. And I did not like hearing that. And that was a really sucky moment. And at the same time, it was the catalyst to open so much freedom for my future growth. And it was all about something that was caring for so long. But it all came down to someone being very honest and forthright with me. And that's part of the hard thing about getting coached is that a coach isn't there to massage your ego. A coach isn't there to hold your hand and make you feel good. A coach is there to be a stand for your best self, no matter what, from a place of respect and love. A coach is there to help guide you and not tolerate the crap that you bring to that situation. Because we all do it. So the number two point of getting coached and how it can suck is when you're coached. Whether you're hiring a coach for business, whether you're hiring a coach to get you the best physicality, whether you're trying to make a new personal best in your physical performance, your career performance, your family relationships, whatever it is, that person is there to take you into a new direction. And that alone, any sort of change is going to stretch your limits. And that means getting uncomfortable. And for all of us, doesn't matter what kind of goal you're looking for, for all of us, we want to stay exactly where we are. Even if we know how tantalizing that other place looks, our brain wants to hold us in the current place it is now. Again, even if that other place is better than where we currently are, and even if we don't like where we currently are, we're still comfortable with it and we don't want to get uncomfortable. When I say we, I mean our brains. So another example of this would be I was, I had a coach and this was a Tony Robbins coach. So a very well practiced coach in business and mindset. And I was being coached by this person. I had just done a presentation for a bank in Toronto, and I had, you know, prepared all this material. I had taken the train to Toronto. I had scheduled off my other clients in order to do this presentation. And my coach was coaching me on this after the fact. And she said to me, well, what were your results? And I said, well, my results are. I went and did the presentation and I was very well received. She said, no, what were your metrics? What were your results? You should know your results before you went there. I said, well, I wanted to have a really good presentation. I think I did that. She said, no, you're trying to grow a business. Did you want to. Did you want to introduce them to. In your podcast? Did you want to bring them into your coaching products? What did you look to have? Did you want to bring them onto your email? And I said, well, I really wasn't thinking of that going in there. I just wanted to make sure they had some good, valuable information. And she basically said to me that I was being an action or, sorry, a manager of actions and not a manager of. Of results. And in order for me to go into that position or into that presentation, I needed to know exactly what I wanted my results to be before I went. And I wasn't doing that. And that's why I was spending a lot of time managing my own actions, but not creating and managing the results that I was looking to have. And that really landed with me because I was so annoyed hearing that from her, because all I wanted was, you know, acknowledgement that I did a good job in this presentation, that I reached out and had this, landed this bank presentation, and, you know, all these things, got paid for it, all the stuff. And instead of getting acknowledged, acknowledged, she showed me where I was simply not measuring up to the success I wanted to create for helping others. And that was hard to hear, but it was hard because it made me very uncomfortable. And so getting coached really stretches your limit. It stretches your edge. It has you play with a new place, going to a new area that you may not have explored before. And that is not what our brains want to do. Our brains want to hold us into that very cozy, comfortable spot where it currently is now. The last part is coaching yourself as you get more aware, as you learn more about where you want to go and what it's going to take. We all come up against bad days, thoughts that don't serve us, bad moods, states that are just not going to be conducive to our best performance, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's mental, whatever area it is. There's plenty of times where we might have to coach ourselves because we learn more about where we want to go and because we know we need to manage our own brain. So number one in coaching ourselves is, and this is where it really bites, is that we think we know what's right. We tend, our brains tend to be fairly self righteous, but we're the least objective with ourselves. It doesn't matter what it is. We tend to have a really hard time being objective with ourselves. And that's where it really becomes challenging for us to see what we're really doing. Because there's usually an ulterior motive for our brain to hold us in the same spot. And that's what makes it hard to see what's happening objectively. That's why having an outside coach or having an outside person who's not just going to act like the friend and you know, agree with everything you say but actually call you out on what you're doing. So number one, it sucks coaching yourself because we're our least objective with ourselves. And number two, because once we become aware of what we're actually doing, say we've actually done that hurdle, we've gotten over that obstacle of seeing what we're really doing, we've gotten some level of objectivity and we become aware and then we just start beating ourselves up for what we did. And that's not what an outside coach would do, but that's what we ourselves, when we're coaching ourselves, we tend to do, oh, I didn't follow the eating protocol or I missed my workout or I handled that work situation poorly. Once you realize and you can self reflect and understand how your performance was in a certain scenario or what your responses were and you realize it may not, you have the awareness to see that it may not have been your best, it may not have been what you intended, it may not have had the impact that you wanted it to. And then you start in on yourself, well, I should have done this or I should have done that or that was so brutal. And what we're really doing is just beating ourselves up. And that's the second sucky thing about coaching yourself is that usually once we step into coaching ourselves and we start to see what we've done that we don't like, then we start telling ourselves how awful we are for doing that thing that we really don't like and that doesn't serve us. So that's the thing that can hold ourselves back from where we really want to go. So ultimately I'm sharing these things with you. Coaching what it's like kind of couple downsides of coaching others, getting coached and coaching yourself. Because when you understand what's there, you can be prepared in a way that's powerful. When you know what's coming, when you know what to expect, then you're less likely to succumb to that sucky part of being coached or coaching someone else or coaching yourself. And really when you're a high performer, when you're achiever, when you really care about growing yourself in your mindset, your emotional well being, in your performance at work, your physical health and your physical performance, when you really care about growing those things, then you have to be prepared for what it's going to take to grow and getting coached in some form or another. Whether it's coaching yourself or getting coached from someone else. This is part of what goes with it, along with the most incredible growth that you can ever imagine. That would never happen unless you are willing to get coached or unless you're willing to step into that mentor role and coach others. So that's why I wanted to share with you the sucky side of coaching today. I hope this serves you in a way that can have you mentor others powerfully. It can have you be compassionate for yourself when you're giving yourself feedback, and also have you really be able to receive coaching in a way that has your best growth and plays with your edge in a way that allows transformation and growth like you've never had before. So have a beautiful rest of your day. Keep growing, keep going and keep sharing your best with others.

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