Coaching and Communication

What is it you do?

I run a small private gym

Oh, do you teach classes or is it personal training?

And that’s how most conversations start when I get introduced to new people

But what is it to be Coach?

In a conversation in our closed Facebook group I described our clients as a big family. To which a fellow professional based in the UK asked, “but who’s the Daddy?”

There is only one answer.

I am

Coach is a big word. Its a word people put trust in. To be Coach you are a trainer, a confidante, a friend, a brother, a father figure, a tyrant, a pillar of strength

While it may look like a coaches job is to strut around the floor giving orders. But that is around 50% of our job. The rest, aside from the program writing and reading up on our subject, is reading people.

Reading body language Reading tone of voice

Picking up on non verbal signals And figuring out what to do with them.

From my last career as Doorman and the one before that as Hotel staff. We learn that the words people say account for only about 40% of communication. 60% is non verbal Non verbal from them to me Non verbal from me to them

(Think about this in the context of modern social media communication where all we have are words, we lose all non verbal plus intonations. In written format, words have to make up for up to 80% of the communication tools that are unavailable)

Good Coaching requires not only an encyclopeadic knowledge of the body and training protocols. It requires enough self awareness to be cognizant of the non verbal messages you send out.

And of course picking up on the messages coming in from your clients.

Regards

1. Dave Hedges