Matt Vaadi argues that real coaching isn't a screaming boss barking orders, but asking questions that make someone think hard enough their mind buzzes. He recommends a six-hour LinkedIn Learning course on coaching skills, free through most public library cards, and notes that libraries also offer prospecting tools for building contact lists.
We all think about coaching as this thing where, you know, I'm here in South Carolina. I always use this image of Will Muschamp, who was a former football coach here, a pretty terrible one. But he, you know, was kind of known for busting a blood vessel in his head every time he'd be screaming at these poor kids out there playing football. And so I use that image of too often people get coaching hung up as this top-down approach of I'm going to tell you what to do. You're going to listen my way or the highway. Whereas coaching is really about asking questions and unlocking the power and the energy inside of our teammates so that they can be the best version of themselves, and so they can learn, right? So when you leave a conversation after an effective coaching conversation, your head hurts a little bit because you're forced to think. Your leader is asking you powerful and impactful questions that force you to think and not just get answers regurgitated to you. And a couple of good resources for coaching. LinkedIn Learning actually has some really great— I completed about a 6-hour course through LinkedIn Learning last quarter. If you haven't leveraged LinkedIn Learning, I know here in our area, you can actually get a free LinkedIn Learning account with your library card membership, which there are just tens of thousands of really well-produced trainings in there. And it's definitely worth paying for and getting a team membership if you've got the budget. But if not, look into whether or not your local library sponsors free memberships, which I've taken advantage of. I think it's huge, uh, library, huge untapped resource in a bunch of ways. Also, for those of you looking to build out lists, most— our library also offers some prospecting tools as well, uh, for data scraping. So definitely something to look into.
