There is no greater or more important person than a coach. And while I often state that everyone is an athlete, but our office is just different, everyone is also a coach.
A coach will impact more people in one year than most will in their entire lifetime. And we can all remember our favorite and least favorite coach. Those coaches that made us believe in how good we could become and sadly, those who showed us how we did NOT want to do things.
When things go bad with people and society as a whole, my belief is that there was not a coach by that person’s side to guide them and point out the blind spots in their life.
Everyone needs a life-changing coach.
A coach is someone who takes you someplace that you want to go. Think of a stagecoach!
Jerry Palmieri received the lifetime achievement award for NFL strength Coaches. He wonderfully represents the select cohort of coaches. He just retired from the Giants and has been in the strength coaching profession since 1983.
He gave an excellent speech and talked about the three things he learned from coaching. It was after he mentioned all of his mentors and proteges in the room that it dawned on me.
This guy has personally coached thousands of athletes and mentored hundreds of other strength coaches. You can safely estimate that the guys he deeply impacted and directly changed their lives just because of his coaching goes across generations.
Then, from the people he directly impacted to the many numbers of people that they themselves impacted gets pretty mind-boggling.
The trickle-down effect from his coaching has to be in the hundreds of thousands.
So, what type of coach are you?
Knowing yourself is key to being an incredible coach. We all have insecurities and strengths as coaches. No one is perfect in all areas of their life and hence there are NO perfect coaches. But the key is: do you as a coach create better people, who in-turn positively impact others?
Do you facilitate a culture of excellence? Because if your presence doesn’t make an impact, then sadly, your absence won’t make a difference. Lou Holtz stated that we are trying to create a culture where you are missed when you are absent.
No matter who you are, someone looks up to you and watches your actions. You make an impact, we just can’t always know the significance.
As coaches, we plant trees that we will never see.
We plant trees whose shade other people will enjoy. If we are fortunate enough we will see the gravity of our coaching, years later, seeing who they developed into as people.
So, the question is will you be that Hinge person in someone’s life? Will you be the person that they look back on saying “you” made the biggest difference in who they became as people?
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology Coach and owner of Always Play On which is a platform designed to fix the parent issue in youth sports.
Click HERE if you’d like a free resource titled Great Sport Parent Checklist.
For related reading on mental training click HERE.
