Who is a Coach?

There are 6 people in my life who made a difference….well actually 4 plus 2!

The 1st is my mom who gave me life and who thought me about sacrifices. The 2nd is my aunt who gave my life a meaning by being more a mom to me than my mom!. The 3rd is my mentor, Dr. Edwin Varo who showed me what it takes to be a leader/manager. The 4th is my girlfriend who filled my life with hope and stood by me through thick and thin and finally, my twin daughters who are still showing me what it means to be happy and carefree.

Then, there are 3 other people who have had the greatest impact on my life. These people are what I call ‘gentle souls’ who teach us very sublime things in the quietest of ways.

The first is a 14 year old girl (1992) whose name I do not remember. She was a student in Convent Light Street, Penang where I was undergoing my practical training. On Teacher’s Day that year, she brought a plastic container filled with 2 slices of bread with a thick layer of butter as her gift to me. She said, she could not afford to buy me anything else like the other kids. I suspect, that was her breakfast and probably lunch too. I don’t know what I said or did to deserve that show of pure and innocent magnanimity. I cried on the way back to my campus.

The second is my grandfather who thought me how I should die….with grace and at peace with the world. This is the very same man with whom I had a running battle for almost all my life.
The third is my primary school bus driver; we called him Ah Chai. In the 30 to 40 minutes that it took me and my friends to reach school and another 45 minutes or so to reach back home, he used to entertain us with stories, advise, reprimands and sometimes little gifts of sweets. He was the first person who thought me that when you consistently provide more than what you are paid for; one day you will get paid more than what you deserve. What I loved most about Ah Chai was that, he treated us boys with more respect and love than even some of our teachers.

Why am I sharing these stories here? Well, www.firstcoffee.blogspot.com is not changing its form and content! This is still a business/management blog. I am sharing these stories to illustrate my amazement whenever a man or woman with years of work and life experiences say that they can’t coach or that they don’t have the skills to coach or worst still, that they don't have the time to coach.

Anybody can tell a story right? Everybody has a story to tell!

What is coaching? Take away all the fancy sounding terminologies; coaching is nothing but a calling. It is not a discipline or a process. It is not a job or role. Sure, there are some systems and processes that one can use but these do not make a coach just as Parenting Guide books do not make a parent. It is a calling.

When it is a calling, one will coach from the heart. He will know the stories to tell, he will go out of his way to make an example of himself; both good and bad, he will ensure that the people for whom he is responsible for will know how to do the fishing for themselves and he will reflect all praises back to where it belongs : To his people. With this sense of calling, a coach will take the responsibility of adding value to somebody else’s work or life even if it has no tangible benefit on his own. He will go out of his way to share his experiences and knowledge gained.

Interestingly, almost all coaching gurus that I know mention ‘trust and ‘respect’ as a founding principle for an effective coach. I believe so to but how can a person be trained to have ‘trust and respect’. You just have it or you don’t. I may be able to teach you the various reasons why you should coach; whether it is remedial, developmental, situational or whatever. I may even be able to make you memorize the detailed steps involved in coaching and the 5 stages of coaching BUT can I make you ‘trusting and respectful’ of others. I doubt that.

On the other hand, even if you do not have the so called skills of coaching but you feel that it is your calling to be of value to others, if you feel that you have a responsibility to guide and nurture others; I doubt ‘lack of skills’ is going to stop you from coaching others. In fact, I doubt that you will even realize that you are ‘coaching’.

The people that I have mentioned above have coached me in one way or another. Each had their own ‘methodologies’ and ‘processes’ but they all had one thing in common : they believed in me, they trusted me and they respected me. I learnt different things from each of them and they have influenced me in more ways that they will ever know.

As I always say in my coaching programs, we all know Tiger Woods but do we know his coaches? We all know Sir Edmond Hilary, do we know his coach? How many of us know Nicol David’s coach? The reason why we don't know them is because they were great coaches……who stay in the background while their charges reap the benefits of their wisdom.

There is always ways and time to coach another. We owe that to those around us because that is the only way we can repay those who had coached us.