TJL #55: Be more coachable (Daily productivity #30)

Productivity tips that work for me and might work for you

Jan 18, 2021

Daily Productivity Tip #30

Today’s tip: Be more coachable.

Today’s tip comes from Atul Gawande. Atul Gawande is an accomplished surgeon and has written a several books, one of which is about checklists, appropriately called the Checklist Manifesto (in the bottom left corner).

Atul Gawande 4 Paperback Books Set- Being Mortal Better Checklist Manifest for sale online | eBay

I recently came across this great long-form article, by Atul Gawande, which was about coaching. He was wondering why all stars athletes and top business executives had coaches, but surgeons didn’t. He came to the conclusion that coaching is extremely powerful, but comes at a price: exposure.

For society, too, there are uncomfortable difficulties: we may not be ready to accept—or pay for—a cadre of people who identify the flaws in the professionals upon whom we rely, and yet hold in confidence what they see.
Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance. Yet the allegiance of coaches is to the people they work with; their success depends on it. And the existence of a coach requires an acknowledgment that even expert practitioners have significant room for improvement. Are we ready to confront this fact when we’re in their care?

I wanted to lift out another set of paragraphs from the article which I found interesting. Atul argues that coaching was the reason that Yale was dominating Harvard in the early 1900s in sports:

What we think of as coaching was, sports historians say, a distinctly American development. During the nineteenth century, Britain had the more avid sporting culture; its leisure classes went in for games like cricket, golf, and soccer. But the aristocratic origins produced an ethos of amateurism: you didn’t want to seem to be trying too hard. For the Brits, coaching, even practicing, was, well, unsporting. In America, a more competitive and entrepreneurial spirit took hold. In 1875, Harvard and Yale played one of the nation’s first American-rules football games. Yale soon employed a head coach for the team, the legendary Walter Camp. He established position coaches for individual player development, maintained detailed performance records for each player, and pre-planned every game. Harvard preferred the British approach to sports. In those first three decades, it beat Yale only four times.

And that the definition of a coach is rather slippery and difficult to pin down.

Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy. They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.

Elite performers must engage in deliberate practice and can use a coach to guide them.

Élite performers, researchers say, must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at. In theory, people can do this themselves. But most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.

Coaches help us improve performance by being an “outside ear”. What we perceive to be performing is most likely not what the audience is experiencing.

The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short. This is tricky. Human beings resist exposure and critique; our brains are well defended. So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.

Coach… or mentor

If this post feels a bit disjointed and incoherent. I take all responsibility. All I want to say is that it sometimes makes sense to have someone look at our performance. If you don’t have someone who is regularly checking in with you and trying to up your game, then go out there and find someone who is willing to help you!

I did this unofficially at my work. I found a colleague that I respected and I asked him whether he could give me some tips. This turned into regular coffee and kind of an unofficial mentorship. I still speak and ask him for advice every now and then. Go out there and get a coach for yourself! Become great!

Thank you for reading!

That was today’s issue of the Daily productivity Newsletter 🚀

Daily Productivity is a newsletter in which I share practical and effective tips on how to become more productive.

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As always, you can find me on my website janmeppe.com or on Twitter at @janmeppe.

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