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GREAT COMMUNICATION SECRETS OF GREAT LEADERS
TEACH ALWAYS
Teaching is fundamental to coaching; providing information and ensuring that
learning occurs is what coaches do. Vince Lombardi, who began his career in
coaching as a high school teacher of math and sciences, was first and foremost
a teacher. With a piece of chalk and a blackboard, he could talk for hours to
players or to fellow coaches at clinics about the Xs and Os of football. Dressed
in a sweatshirt and a baseball cap and with a whistle around his neck, Lom-
bardi was the archetypal image of a football coach of his era. Coaching
instruction can take many forms. It may be explicit: Pointers on how to oper-
ate a piece of machinery, or tips on how to structure a report. Or the instruc-
tion may be implicit, such as a parable or a story that the coach relates. What
is important is that the coach relates the instruction in ways that the individual
can accept and understand.
For this reason, coaches must be active listeners, attentive to communica-
tion clues. Blank stares or bored looks indicate that the lesson has no meaning.
Conversely, head nods and questions mean that the lesson may be getting
through. The coach must work to find methods to engage the employee’s inter-
est and hold it so that learning does occur.
It is no coincidence that many coaches are good storytellers. Stories offer
the opportunity to impart important life lessons in a manner that is accessible
and even enjoyable rather than condescending and preachy. For this reason,
coaches keep a personal inventory of stories intended to evoke the appropriate
emotion for the situation—admiration, inspiration, tears, or laughter. Impor-
tantly, all of these stories contain a pithy message wrapped neatly inside. (See
Chapter 12, “Leader as Storyteller.”)

PROBLEM-SOLVE
Coaches must possess a sixth sense about individual performance as well as
team performance. In basketball, when one team begins a scoring run, the
opposing coach will often call a time-out. He will pull the team together (phys-
ically and mentally) to focus its energies on the task at hand. He will point out
both what the team is doing wrong and what it is capable of doing. Great
coaches can turn around team performance in a matter of minutes. In business,
good coaches have similar abilities. They can rally a team around a goal and
provide direction. When the team encounters an obstacle, the coach finds ways
to overcome or avoid the problem. Specifically, good coaches go around to
each team member and ask what type of help that team member needs: time,
resources, or staff. Coaches then affirm the individual’s value to the project and
provide ongoing encouragement. Jack Welch, a Ph.D. chemist turned manager,
learned early that a successful career in management depended upon an ability
to solve problems. He continued to preach that throughout his career.