Forgo Coaching at Your Own Peril

I now wonder how anyone learns to scale across the craggy cliffs of work and career without a guide. Sure you can go it alone...but to your own peril.

I spent last weekend in the Rocky Mountains with a group of eager but uninformed weekend-warrior friends.  Standing high on a windy precipice, bracing against the wind, straining to hear what our guide had to say, I stared transfixed far down below at the most logical resting spot for my body should I fall. We were learning to scramble. 

If you’ve never scrambled before, it’s somewhere between extreme hiking and elementary rock climbing. At times I felt foolishly over-prepared as trail runners zipped by clad only in shorts and t-shirts. I was wearing a bright orange helmet that made my head look like a melon and a very restrictive and unflattering harness that was…well...awkward. However, there were other times when I was completely terrified, trying to find my next foothold, clinging to the side of the rockface, groping with my foot, desperately seeking a solid spot to put both my foot and my trust to prevent me from falling to the valley floor below. It was in those moments, when every distracted glance injected another dose of adrenaline-infused terror that I was grateful for the voice above me saying “move your foot to the left”. At that moment, I understood the value of a guide.

It became clear that we all need someone to help us find our next foothold. 

It was then that it dawned on me. I saw the essence of my career in perfect clarity. I felt the gravity (quite literally) of my contribution on this earth. I saw my purpose! 

I’m a team coach. 

My life’s work is to help leaders and teams find their next step. And I saw, no I felt, in the white knuckle grip of my fingers, in the straining of my calf muscles and the beating of my heart in my ears the value I bring to the world. It became clear that we all need someone to help us find our next foothold. 

The guide we hired was a seasoned climber. He was full of useful information, more than I could absorb. He educated us on extreme weather survival tactics and taught us how to read topographic maps. He instructed us on route-finding and wilderness first-aid tips. But that all but evaporated when I was desperately searching for my next foothold. At that moment I experienced the power of coaching. 

Coaching is simply helping someone find their next foothold. It’s not training, or education, it’s not sharing old war stories or learning from another’s experience. Coaching is in the moment, on the side of the cliff, real time instruction focused on helping you find your next step. The value a coach brings to the situation is perspective and advice. From a new angle and different vantage point they can see both the peril and the possibility and then guide you to the latter. Your travel through your career is equally as dangerous, if not more so than my Saturday in the Rockies, just with different consequences. 

To translate to the corporate world, hiring a coach may save you time and money finding the shortest route to realize your goals, it may help you navigate the corporate political minefield or it might save you from a fatal career-limiting blunder. 

Most professionals, both individually and as teams, choose to go it alone. Perhaps ego prevents us from asking for help. Perhaps our frugality prevents the potential payoff. I suspect we see coaching as an unnecessary expense or an executive luxury. Either way, ultimately we do so at our own peril. As with investing in a good coach there is a cost for going it alone.You may be missing opportunities or overlooking potential hazards. Coaching will certainly open your eyes to unseen danger and help you place your foot firmly in the next step. 

After scrambling in the Rockies, I have a new appreciation for working with someone who can give me practical guidance on my next move. This was both life-saving and life-changing. The exhilaration of the challenge and accomplishment I experienced through the help of a qualified guide has changed me. It was more than just a new experience, it was a new step in my personal journey and development toward both confidence and competence. I found a new part of me that I didn’t know was there. 

If you come to the place of wisdom to see both your need and the opportunity in hiring a good coach or guide, then allow me to share three key traits that are essential in the selection that became clear to me on the mountainside. Here are three things you need to look for in your next coach: 

1. Experience: Anyone can give you advice, at any price, but you need someone who’s been there and done that. Until you’ve mastered the skills to scale the rockwall yourself, you can’t instruct someone else. Check your coaches credentials, have they led a team, built a strategy and navigated the corporate mountain?
2. Discernment: In the heat of the moment, you need someone to see your situation in full context of the landscape around you. Harkening back to point #1, you want to find someone with an objective perspective who can survey the entire rockface and see multiple possibilities. Another climber in peril (aka someone else in your team or organization) likely has their own hands full to be of any value to you. Find someone who can synthesize all you say and focus it on a single solution. It’s a rare skill unfortunately. Ask your prospective coach for an example of how they brought clarity to a situation of ambiguity.
3. Bold communication: My guide was able to articulate exactly where to move my feet, how to shift my weight and how my body needed to adjust to the mountain. A few, timely words of instruction could save your life, or your career. Find someone who listens well but isn’t afraid to speak the truth to you. After all, it's your neck they’re trying to save, not their own. 

I now wonder how anyone learns to scale across the craggy cliffs of work and career without a guide. Sure you can go it alone...but to your own peril. I could have saved hundreds of dollars and trusted my luck to get from point A to point B, and perhaps I would have, but at what cost or risk was I willing to assume? Or maybe I would have found an easier way, or turned back. But I would have missed some spectacular views and a few thrilling moments that I will never forget. 

The bottom line is this, downclimbing was terrifying. Gravity and the inability to see my feet was a life-threatening handicap. What I didn’t need was someone guessing or surmising what I should do. I didn’t need someone telling me the answer was within. I needed someone to see and understand exactly where I was and what my options were and how to make my next move. I needed my situation to be no big deal to the guide. I needed the confidence that came from both their experience and perspective and then I needed to hear that calm and confident voice helping me make a very practical and tactical decision, one step at a time. Coaching and guiding is focused on the one thing that matters...the next step. Without it, I might still be out on the mountain. Remember though, they can’t do it for you. A good coach will instruct you where to move your feet to take the next step and move forward, but you must find the confidence to do it for yourself. 

The next time you’ve got a big move to make, one that will cost you dearly, even fatally if you get it wrong, don’t go it alone. Don’t underestimate the risk, don’t overestimate your ability, and don’t cheap out at your and your team’s expense. Get some extra help and find your next foothold so you can keep moving.