This week has been an amazing leadership week for me. Do you ever have weeks where you think, “I got this!”? Yeah, they do happen, and I know there are times where we just feel like we are failing at everything. I’ve felt both the winning and failing this week and the week isn’t even over!
This past Sunday a friend and I got into a wonderful conversation about work. He has been with his company for the past year and recently was transferred to another department. During training, he felt like his trainer was going a million miles a minute and he was trying to capture everything she said. For the most part, he felt pretty confident until she popped by to see if he could do it on his own.
With the pressure standing over his shoulder, he felt paralyzed and made a couple of mistakes. What happened next is where I saw the difference between a great trainer and coach and one who will not be the next person to help someone succeed. She asked him if he took good enough notes.
As a training company, we realize people are going to make mistakes, especially in the days just after training. When a team member isn’t doing well, we take a step back and look to see how we failed in the training process and then coach them on how to do it correctly and be more confident for the future.
His next statement made me realize how important it is to have a trainer and coach. He told me he wants to know what he is doing wrong, how to improve, and what he can do to move up but is scared to ask because he doesn’t want to seem incompetent. Then he hit me with this, “I should know how to do so many things because I learned them in my days as a baseball player but it seems like I can’t implement any of them.”
That’s when it clicked for me. I asked him, “What is the difference between when you played sports and working now? You had a coach to guide you and teach you.”
I’ve written about this many times before. I have spent most of my adult life looking for a mentor or coach. So many of the most successful people in the world have a mentor or coach to guide them and that is why as leaders it’s important for us to take on that mentoring, training, and coaching our team members to be successful.
Imagine if, from day one, my friend’s supervisor went to him and said, “We are excited to have you on the team. We want to make sure you succeed. When you succeed, our team succeeds. I’m here to be your leader and coach.”
Having a coach has been such an amazing blessing for us at Trainertainment. Every week our coach Nancy has an amazing and important part in coaching us leaders about how to run the company. She always asks all the hard and right questions for us to succeed.
Part of what got me riled up during our conversation was that this is what we do! We coach owners, managers, supervisors, leadership teams, and sales team about how to grow their people through coaching and training. I believe every business has the potential to be successful and, with the right coach, I think even more can be extraordinary! Are you ready to become extraordinary? Call us and we will help you get on the path to success.
