Who comes to mind when you think of a coach? A famous coach from the NFL? One of your childhood coaches? Someone you work with now? Coaches come in all shapes and sizes, but the successful ones have one thing in common: they’re direct, but not negative. If you associate coaching with negativity, or with yelling and screaming, it’s time to rethink your definition of a coach.

There’s a time and a place for everything

There’s a time and a place for everything, right? When I’m teaching my cycling classes, my coaching is meant to motivate you, push you, and inspire you. It’s meant to help you see that you’re capable of doing more than you’re doing. But when I’m coaching a client one-on-one, my job is very different. My job isn’t to push them and make them go hard. It’s to support, inform, encourage, and hold them accountable. 

Hiring a coach can be scary because you don’t know what you’re going to get. But the first thing you need to do is figure out what you need in a coach. Do you need someone to push you hard and drive you into the ground, or do you need someone to support you and love you through it?

It can also be nerve wracking to hire a coach because you’re worried that you won’t live up to their expectations and standards. You might even worry that if you don’t, a coach will chastise you or yell at you. You might worry that they’ll criticize you if you make a mistake, or fail.

Is your coaching strategy working?

If that’s what you’re concerned about- negativity, criticism, and judgment- then I would suggest that you’re already doing that to yourself. You’re already beating yourself up for failing and putting pressure on yourself to succeed. You’re already having all kinds of negative thoughts around what you should or shouldn’t be doing. 

You don’t need a coach to tell you what you’re already telling yourself. You need a coach who will do the opposite. That will love you through the process, guide you through it, and encourage you through it. You need a coach who will stop you from beating yourself up.

Because that’s not working.

Do you know what does work? Support, encouragement, and suggestions on how to fail forward. Because we’re all going to fail. After all, we’re human.



Find a coach who understands accountability

The other thing that the right coach can do for you is show you what accountability is. Accountability isn’t meanness. But it does require being direct, honest, and transparent with yourself. A coach can help you do that. 

A coach should also help you get your own results. If you think about the very best coaches in the world, some of them never played the sport at the level they’re coaching. Their gift is disseminating information and empowering their athletes to do it themselves. Coaches aren’t out on the field, they’re on the sidelines with clipboards saying, “If you make this play and adjust your form this way, you’ll win.”

That’s what a coach is supposed to do. Give you the information and the tools to succeed, and then let you do it. A coach gives you encouragement and a support system. They don’t berate you or beat you down when you fail.

How are you coaching yourself? Do you motivate yourself with negativity? That style of coaching can fire you up for a minute, but long term, it’s not a successful strategy. So if that’s what you’re doing to yourself, stop it. Fire your internal coach and give me a call. I’m ready to uplift you, encourage you, and teach you how to hold yourself accountable so that you can be successful.