What is coaching?
Where does your compass point?
The question stretches across countless spheres: onboarding a new employee, teaching applied maths in a lecture theatre, or coaching a high-board diver to overcome fear before twisting their body through impossible positions and entering the water like a knife through butter.
But really, what is it?
Late last year, I sat down with the coaching staff at Geelong Cricket Club. The brief was simple: check in, ask questions, bat around the answers, and hopefully find a few hooks to carry into the month before the Christmas break. It was coach focused, not player performance driven.
I thought it went well—always too long—but it seemed most people took something from it. I closed with what I believed was an important question: ‘What is your coaching philosophy?’ Not the club’s—yours.
It was the only line I’d properly parboiled beforehand. Walking home, I realised I didn’t really have an answer for the very question I’d asked.
Circling back to the original question: what is coaching? How can I answer or explain it when I wasn’t able to define my own philosophy?
That night, I sat at the kitchen table and thought long and hard. I looked through old notes and eventually came up with a sentence that, at least for now, best defines my method.
I'll keep it to myself for now—only to say it became evident that I'm probably closer to a teacher than a coach.
For you—sit down and try to define your own method in one sentence. Whatever it is you do in daily life. If nothing else, I promise it’ll be reassuring, and might surprise.
Nick
