Eight Essential Coaching Skills for Every Coach

Coaching is a lifelong commitment to learning, to growing and to inspiring change in other people.

It is both an art and a science.

It is the art of inspiring change through emotional connection.

The question is, how do you become a coach – and perhaps inevitably asking a follow up question – how do you become a good coach?

It’s about determining what are the actual coaching skills – the capabilities required to become the coach you’d like to be.

Now, the problem coaches around the world have faced for some time is that most coaching courses do not actually coach you how to coach!

Most coaching courses – you know the ones I mean – the courses conducted by national sporting organizations – seem to be determined to coach you how to do everything EXCEPT actually coach.

If you go to a typical coaching course you learn about sports science.

You discover the concepts and principles of periodization and planning.

You sit through lectures on physiology, biomechanics, sports psychology, skills-acquisition, nutrition and performance analysis.

But for the most part, coaching courses don’t really teach you how to coach.

Think about it for a moment.

When was the last coaching course you attended that actually taught you how to connect, engage and inspire the hearts and minds of athletes?

Can you remember a coaching course which helped you understand how to coach personal skills like commitment, confidence, resilience and leadership?

The problem with most coaching courses is that they don’t teach you the actual coaching skills.

I believe that most of what you really need to know about coaching is already inside you. If you like, you will take out of coaching, what you took into it!

Sports science, periodization and the general content of coaching courses is important – it has a serious place in building your coaching knowledge base.

However, the art of coaching – your ability to build and grow effective relationships with athletes – is already there inside you.

It’s just a matter of being prepared to let others see it.

Wayne Goldsmith