Are You Coachable? Is Your Team Coachable?

But it's not just watching the games and cheering on my teams, I'm a student of sport.

Because I know there's so many lessons, insights and great ideas from sport which can be implemented into every small business; I'm all over listening to coaches and players in their press conferences and interviews and reading articles to see how they deal with:

• Momentum changes
• Injuries
• Riding the highs and lows
• The unexpected
• Implementing the game plan
• Knowing when to stay the course and when to change the game plan
• Providing emotional support
• Building resilience
• Playing their role and ultimately
• Providing the Strategy and Solutions for Success

And whilst the context is different, these are all circumstances which small business owners have to deal with and manage every single day.

This is why I believe not only do you need to be the Coach for your small business team; BUT you also need a Coach to help you and your small business.

Now I know you may be thinking: 'Tamara you're just saying that because you're a business coach so this is just a sales pitch.'

And you're entitled to think that.

BUT I've seen too many businesses improve their productivity, profitability and performance once they got the RIGHT COACH to not believe this is missing ingredient for long term financial viability and success.

Read or listen to any successful small business owner or entrepreneur and it's ALWAYS one of the reasons they acknowledge as key to their success.

In this blog, I'll share my thoughts about being coachable by drawing inspiration from my wonderful Hawthorn Football Club as one of the best examples of embracing the value of coaching, implementing what's needed and improving each and every week.

So I hope you'll keep reading - whether you like Hawthorn or not or even like sport or not - to see why you and your team have to be coachable to succeed.

Being coachable isn't about accepting every idea and comment as gospel, nor is it following procedures without question.

Being coachable means you and your team ....

✅ Want to understand and learn from the wisdom of someone who's been there, done yet

✅ Accept you can't know everything or be good at everything

✅ Respectfully question the status quo to not only understand but with a desire to get better, make things easier and simpler for everyone

✅ Want to share the Good, the Bad and the Ugly so things can actually improve

✅ Want to go on this journey together and have bought into the future (Vision), accept where you're at (Reality Check) and understand what's needed to get there (Strategy and Systems)

✅ Are willing to change when things aren't working

✅ Understand it won't always go to plan and sometimes it'll feel like 2 steps forward, 5 steps back

✅ Understand you have to set high standards of performance to achieve success

✅ Are willing to do the work to achieve success

✅ Keep people accountable to agreed standards and performance

✅ Willing to have hard conversations when performance and behaviour drops belong agreed expectations

✅ Want to simply get better every single day

So I hope you'll spend a few moments to watch this video from the Hawthorn Football Club as they shared some of their post game conversations between Sam Mitchell (Coach) and the players.

This video is extremely poignant because it starts when Hawthorn had lost the first 5 games of the season and were playing the worst football from this group in a long time.

Players and coaches all decided that enough was enough – they weren't going to accept performances like that any more so there were very honest conversations about what needed to change, why and how to turn that into reality.

And what I love most about this is it wasn't the coach talking to players about what they needed to do.

There was honesty as Sam and his coaches acknowledged the times they got it wrong in the box.  So they didn't put all the blame on the players – the coaching staff owned their mistakes as well - they were a team and all in it together.

And Sam has a number of assistant coaches to help him with the game plan, opposition analysis, the three key groups (backs, forwards and mids) and many other duties – all to bring out the best in everybody so their strengths are enhanced to give the Club the best chance of success.

The result is each week, I've seen this group of players and coaching staff grow and improve week upon week so much so that we've come from 16th on the ladder to now being one win away from playing finals for the first time in years.

Hawthorn has shown me throughout this season - both on the field and in the box - just how 'coachable' they are by how quickly they've rectified mistakes from previous games.  Which means they've learnt and shows how the players and coaches are willing to make changes mid game to address what the opposition are throwing at them.

They don't always get it right but they're learning and willing to change and adapt every single week AND put the work in on the training track – simply to get better and build a game plan and brand which stands up in the pressure of finals footy and hopefully brings the ultimate success of that elusive Premiership Cup.

So my question to you is this:

If elite sporting teams, players and coaches all have coaches as a key piece in their business model - to guide and support them, show them better ways of doing things, holding them accountable and having tough and honest conversations when needed; then why doesn't every small business owner?

For some of you, this will be food for thought.

For others, it will be a ringing endorsement about why you're already ahead of the game.

💡 Are you the Coach to your small business team – providing them with the tools they need for success (Vision, Strategy, Systems, Training Support and Solutions)?

💡 Have you outlined the standards and expected performance and behaviour in order for your small business to be successful?

If yes, are you holding yourself and your team to these standards or has this slipped into complacency and needs to be reset?

If not, why not?

💡 Do you learn from mistakes or simply keep making them using excuses like 'too busy to deal with that now'?

If it's the latter, it means you're happy to spend valuable time fixing mistakes and troubleshooting.

💡 Do you regularly look at your business' performance to see how it can be improved?

💡 Do you and your team embody the philosophy of 'we do everything we can to get better every single day'?

💡 How are you drawing inspiration from the wisdom of others to improve yourself, your team and your small business?

If the answer is no, then why not?