Mentoring and Coaching – The importance to you of both

With the World Cup days away, most of us when the subject of coaching comes up immediately think of team sports and then individual athletes.

I doubt if any modern Olympic contender has sought a gold medal has done so without some coaching, even if this is not formally acknowledged.

But when it comes to business, we often think only in terms of mentoring, but not coaching. But surely nearly all of us a playing a team game and we want to “win”, we may work as a freelance, but are nearly always part of a larger team game.

Why am I writing this?  well I have just come off the phone to Linda Mattacks. Now I have only known Linda for a couple of weeks, and she was introduced by a long-term friend Andy Ferguson. Now Andy is quite well known and is very much focused on bring the best out of people, buy making them understand what he refers to as there “higher purpose”.

“Higher purpose”, is very much about what you aspire to do in the longer term and I best describe it as what should be the message that comes across in your obituary ( no I am not trying to be morbid just trying to focus your mind!) – it also when discovered helps define you, your aspirations and your reason to get up each morning.

When I first meet Andy my “higher purpose”, did not come across as very lofty – given that we had been speaking about some of the greatest characters of the 20^th century, such as JFK or Gandhi, I simply wanted to work and make a difference in aviation, well six to seven years on I’ve made it? – Or have I?

Now my longer-term higher purpose is to become involved in the transportation of big cats and other endangered species around the globe – because aviation can contribute toward positive elements of the environment and our collective futures, and I still want to make a difference in the wider world of aviation as well.

I mention mentoring in passing, because all of the entrepreneurial training programs such as Doug Richard’s school for startup’s put a lot of emphasis on this and rightly so.    My career thus far has in part been shaped by a couple of good mentors, however you cannot usually substitute a mentor for a coach.

Linda for me is not a mentor, she is a coach – we cannot any of us work in isolation. We need a running mate – somebody who can ensure that we are pushing ourselves to the limit and not just coasting.

To others Linda is able to help them formulate what our higher purpose might be – because in today’s uncertain world the career paths or other things that we may have pursued might be for us personally be the wrong ones.   Also why should you allow others to define what “winning” is.

Coaching requires commitment and that commitment must be both ways.

Now the great thing about being self-employed is that I to a large extent am able to do things as and when I please, but those who know me well know that I more than anybody have a good understanding of how close that obituary might be – so the greatest gift that I have had since discovering my higher purpose, is to be coached.

Please if you are in a rut and want to move forward, my gift to you is that coaching should be an option that you seriously consider – because every body has Olympic potential with the right team around them.

Roy 24th May