High-Performance Coaching

• Long-range career or life planning – While some people may prefer not to have a "life plan," there's robust evidence that shows that people who have clear plans and goals are more likely to be successful in the long term.
• Navigating career change points – An example of a career change point could be the transition from being primarily seen as a manager to being seen as a leader – someone who offers clear guidance and genuine inspiration. Coaching can help people navigate these change points more successfully.
• Making fundamental changes to performance or behavior – This involves the equivalent of athletes breaking bad habits in their game, and relearning basic skills the right way.
• Handling major life setbacks – High-performance coaching can help people recover from major business or personal setbacks. In particular, it can help people address work-life imbalances, or deal with major episodes of stress or burnout.

High-Performance Coaching Skills and Tools

Here is a useful checklist of things that you should do when helping others to be their best:

• Be respectful of the coachee as an individual.
• Be respectful of the coachee's skills and goals in life.
• Be honest in providing constructive and challenging feedback, and set high goals that the coachee is likely to achieve.
• Be aware of your own ego and agenda, so that these don't get in the coachee's way.
• Be comfortable with a variety of tools that help you explore the coachee's perspective. Examples include the GROW Model, the Flow Model, and a simple formula drawn from one of the most valuable books in coaching, "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey. The formula is:
  Performance = Potential - Interference
  We'll look at this formula, and the Flow Model, in more detail below.
  

The Flow Model

The Flow Model was introduced by positive psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his 1990 book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience."

This model shows the emotional state that we're likely to experience when trying to complete a task, depending on the perceived difficulty of the challenge, and our perceptions of our skill levels.

Part of the job of the high-performance coach is to help coachees acquire and be confident with the skills they need to achieve their goals. The coach then helps the coachee match these skills to the task at hand, setting "stretch goals" – goals that are challenging, but which are possible to achieve.

Emotional Interference

Remember Gallwey's simple formula:

Performance = Potential - Interference

Here, "interference" generally means emotional interference. We may understand our true potential, but our performance suffers because our emotions get in the way. Some of the interfering emotions are fear, guilt, and worry.

Let's look at these more closely:

• Fear – The most obvious and most inhibiting emotion is fear. While some fear has a basis in reality, many of our fears are unfounded. Our minds play negative tricks on us to keep us safe, but also keep us unchallenged and, probably, unfulfilled.
  It may take time to deal with a coachee's fear of a situation, event, or action, but it's hugely beneficial to do so. Once you identify and discuss people's fears, you weaken the power of those fears to hold back future activity and performance.
  Likewise, it can be useful to anticipate some worst-case scenarios – such as losing an important sales contract or even losing your job – because it lets you see what other options are available. Perhaps the sales contract wasn't as profitable as other contracts you could pursue if you had time to spend with new customers. Perhaps losing a job is the first step toward a new career, even within your current organization. Dealing with self-doubt and fear of failure is one of the most valuable areas to explore with a coachee.
  
• Guilt – This is one of the key emotions driving inappropriate work-life balance. If someone routinely works later than other people, it's often evidence of not being able to say no – which, in turn, is typically based on some form of guilt for not having accomplished what was asked for.
• Worry – This is another key emotion that gets in the way of good performance. Some people seem to worry about everything, including the fact that they're worrying! Worry can lead to physical problems such as poor sleep, bad eating habits, and ultimately, exhaustion. We can't be effective for very long if we have these problems.

Coaches can help coachees see their true potential and eliminate the effect of interfering emotions. Talking about emotions during coaching will help. Also, try these tips:

• Think of coachees as athletes who want to move to the next level in their game. Half of the coaching job is listening and understanding what drives people, and appreciating what emotions they're feeling. The other half of the job is working with coachees to stretch their performance and explore the skills they need to be their very best.
• Remember that high-performance coaching can and should be fun. So look for issues, and help people imagine what could be possible, as part of the process.