Nate Baker's Newsletter #89

"The coaching education newsletter for those dedicated to helping their people pursue their potential."

The Culture Rep

Essential Reading for All Developers

Coaching Education Reimagined: Why Every Coach Needs a Coach

October 4, 2024 | Read on my website | Read time: 6-7 minutes

Becoming the coach you never had requires a guide to keep you on your path.

Because coaching is an extremely difficult game to play...

You are asked to create a strong vision that meets the specificity of your people and helps them grow toward their potential. You have to balance 1 million different inputs, create the conditions for learning, manage numerous people within a dynamic ecosystem, and have it all come together on the weekend.

And many times, we are asked to do it alone.

To have a vision is to believe in something only you can completely understand as its creator.

And that is always a lonely place to be.

Especially when your hopes and expectations do not meet the reality of the situation you are in.

When we feel alone on our path, we can lose our way. Like the development of our players, coaching development is an infinite game that requires nothing more than simply staying on our path. Because an inability to stay on our path...

Directly impacts our players staying on theirs.

There’s a lot on the line, but your development doesn’t have to be a burden. You love coaching, but with any infinite game, there is inevitable adversity, challenge, and resistance. It’s in these moments that you can lean on someone with a removed perspective to help you see the forest for the trees.

Not so they can tell you what to do next, but provide helpful guidance and support throughout your journey.

To help you unlock the Developer within you by becoming a version of the coach you never had.

This is where Coaching Education is going.

Instead of a top-down dynamic where pupils are force-fed a curriculum that is not their own and asked to replicate it for a sheet of paper, coaching development should be a mentor-mentee relationship that starts on equal footing, open to different perspectives and built on mutual trust.

This new approach to Coaching Education has the power to elevate any coach by developing the three most crucial skill sets needed to unlock your full coaching potential.

Here are the three most important skills developed when a coach has a second coach by their side.

Awareness

Everything starts with an improved perspective of the moment we are in.

You get in your car after a session that did not go the way you wanted it to. You’re feeling all the emotions of your practice plans not meeting the reality of the situation. If you don’t have the right perspective, this frustration can lead you off path.

Having someone to talk to in this moment allows you to go from being the lead character on stage...

To someone who sees the play from the highest seat in the auditorium.

This second coach can help you work through the emotions in a productive way that doesn’t take you off course. Ego will want you to shift blame onto your players or be self-critical of your own abilities. Both of those are unproductive to keeping you on your path.

Keeping those emotions simmering inside gives the ego an opportunity to lead, whereas being vulnerable enough to share them out loud gives you the opportunity to grow from the situation.

And as you increase your awareness, new learnings and constructive perspectives will continue to flood in. Yes, you’ll see areas you can tweak to improve the session next time, but you’ll also see some of the small wins that you were unable to see before.

There are always small wins providing the fuel to stay on our path, and a second coach allows us to better see those small wins.

All the while, you aren’t so emotionally tight anymore. You have increased your awareness and perspective, which allows you to do take the next best action...

Which keeps a coach on their path.

Having a second coach fosters a culture where vulnerability is met with greater self-awareness, rewarding you with the clarity and energy to keep moving forward.

Artistry

We need to reimagine coaching education by seeing ourselves as a marble slab.

Stay with me.

We do not become better coaches when we collect and add new experiences, licenses, and ideas to what we already are.

We become better coaches when those new experiences, licenses, and ideas help shape us from a slab of marble into some better version of ourselves (our potential).

All of us have a coaching potential inside of us, not unlike Michelangelo’s “David”:

1/ The masterpiece is within us already. We all start as a slab of marble.

2/ Our development toward the masterpiece takes work and time.

3/ And with each step (our next chiseling of the marble), we become better artists than the previous day.

4/ Which means, you are both the artist and the marble. By simply taking the next step, you move closer to your masterpiece, but also, with every chiseling of the marble, you become a better artist. It’s the most powerful coaching development flywheel we have.

5/ Finally, unlike Michelangelo, we never create “David” in its final form. Potential–another word for the masterpiece we aspire to create–is an endless horizon that always has room for the next step. Thus, it’s less about reaching your final form (outcome), and more about staying on your path (process).

And this process is greatly benefited by having a second coach by your side.

By having a second coach, they will not tell you what or how to coach. They will help support you in finding the next best solutions that already lie inside you. Even when you learn a new concept from the outside, you are integrating that new knowledge to make it your own.

Coaching is artistry.

To become that special coach you aspire to be, you need to continuously chisel the marble. But the how and what are only learned by staying on the path.

The next step reveals itself.

A second coach can help you become a better artist by helping you work through your next step, your refined understandings, and how it can be applied moving forward. They can help you work through new problems and find new action steps that are uniquely your own.

We are our best coaching selves when we are not just prepared, but intuitive. When we can close the gap between idea and action, our artistry improves. That’s true coaching development.

To become our best selves as coaches, we benefit from a second coach that can help us unlock higher levels of artistry.

Endurance

You win as a coach by simply staying on your path.

If you are directionally correct and take one step at a time, on a long-enough time horizon...

You win everything (including the shiny trophies).

Having a second coach gives you an accountability partner that can always be leaned on. All infinite games have an infinite amount of challenge baked into them. Going it alone isn’t just isolating; it’s far less rewarding.

A second coach can help you better see what’s difficult to see (awareness), unlock higher levels of coaching performance (artistry), but more than anything, they provide connection in a world that promotes separateness.

We aren’t meant to go at it alone.

Yes, sometimes we have to slay the dragons by ourselves, but afterward, you need someone to talk it out with. This reminds me of the famous Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies on adult life and well-being.

Their most important finding:

The quality of relationships—not wealth, fame, or success—was the biggest predictor of happiness and life satisfaction.

Staying on our path helps us pursue our potential, but sharing the journey with someone else adds deeper meaning to it.

This makes more sense when we look back at our times as players. The victories become secondary to the locker room moments, shared camaraderie, and even the tough times endured with your teammates.

Endurance is the most vital piece in realizing one’s potential, and we all benefit by having a second coach along with us on our journey.

Final Words

We all have access to a second coach.

We just need to ask.

Your assistant coaches, a director at your club, another coach within the club, your friend you played with growing up, a coach from another sport, your neighbor who watches soccer on the weekends, or even your significant other...

It does not matter if they coached at a high level or have their A license.

What matters is that they are willing to help you improve in these three areas:

Awareness
Artistry
Endurance

We’ve all had that experience when someone who knows little about the game watches you play or watches you coach a game and provides a perspective so outside your experience that you would have never come to it on your own.

This new perspective opened yours up (awareness), helped you become better (artistry), and gave you a little nudge to take the next step on your path (endurance).

Arguably, the most impactful coach of the past 30 years in world soccer did not become the coach he is today by simply copying and implementing Johan Cruyff’s vision. Pep Guardiola took Cruyff’s vision (and a handful of other inspirations), made them his own, and has yet to wander off his path.

But even for Guardiola to stay on his path, he hired his close friend Manel Estiarte, a world-renowned water polo player, to be on his staff at Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Manchester City and act as his second coach. A person with no background in soccer has helped Guardiola become the best coach in the world.

This is Coaching Education reimagined…

To pursue our potential as coaches, we require the guidance of a second coach.

Injury Time

A Few Items Before the Final Whistle

⚽ The Perfect Compliment: If you enjoyed today's article, you'll also want to read "The 5 Crucial Mistakes Coaching Education Platforms Make." (link).

⚽ Are People Watching MLS?: "The rise and fall of MLS on TV due to increased competition" Written by Kyle Fansler, World Soccer Talk (link)

⚽ Finally, if you were forwarded this newsletter, join our community of Developers and never miss an issue (link)!

Good luck on your next step.

To Development,

Nate Baker

Founder of The Developer’s Way

P.S. Whenever you are ready, there is 1 more way I can help you👇: