We all have our views on what the signs of a good coach are, but I recently saw this Tweet  @BelievePHQ pic.twitter.com/5qznJ4quUZ that really summed it up for me.

It is an infogram of the signs of a good sports coach, but reading through the detail I realised that the attributes listed were just as important for business as they are for sport. Having trained as a rugby coach when my son started playing rugby, I learnt a lot about how to communicate with people who were working in an alien environment and how to get a group of people to adopt new skills and practices.

Emotional Intelligence

Many people have since commented that they believe working with children is very different from working with adults, I disagree, yes children will pick up new skills and knowledge quicker than adults, yes they want to learn new skills where adults can be resistant, but fundamentally they are the same. The most important aspect of any coach, sports or business, is good communication and that means listening as well as speaking. However, it is also important to note that, in my view, coaches by the nature of their role are leaders and leaders need to be able to demonstrate a number of skills as well as showing empathy with their team. Without the ability to show empathy, a coach or leader is at risk of alienating his team. This trait can be classified as “Emotional Intelligence”, an area in business that is gaining more profile as a fundamental skill for all successful leaders.

Within the marketing and communications spectrum we often have to work with teams to engage them in a new direction for an organisation, be this a re-positioning, new brand, new product launch or the implementation of a new system. In all of these cases we have to work with teams to ensure they are fully engaged in the project objectives and benefits to deliver consistency across the organisation. In some cases, there can be resistance and it is important we can recognise, empathise and understand why this is happening in order to persuade that group to fully engage.

To find out more about how we work with team to deliver full engagement contact us, or let me know what you think.