From Star Player to Leader Coach

Creating the Leader Coach

A Success Formula

Newly promoted leaders often fail because they don’t make the necessary transition—they forget to embrace their new mental model, which requires them to start thinking like a leader coach.

Becoming a new leader is not only a physical transition from one job to the next, but it must be a mental shift from being the star player to the leader coach.  This is the mistake most successful individual contributors make when they are promoted into a position of leadership.

Highly successful individual contributors thrive on being the star players. They like raising their hands and having the correct answer.  In fact, for many, it is difficult to give up the prestige of being the best in the class.  Organizations fail their star players when they promote them without supporting their mental shift from individual to team.

Without good coaching, star players will most often fail because they will do one of two things: (1) attempt to replicate what they know by attempting to turn the members of their newly appointed team into versions of themselves; or (2) they will ignore their mission altogether as a newly appointed leader coach and attempt to remain the star player. Either scenario is dangerous.

With good coaching, it is possible to help the star player become the leader coach. The first step in this process is to carefully explain what success looks like in a leadership role—set expectations.  The sooner the newly appointed leader understands his new framework, the easier it will be to make the necessary transition.  By focusing on team goals and recognition of others, the shift will become more apparent.

The second step in the transformation from star player to leader coach must be a shift in mindset, which leads to a higher degree of awareness.  The new leader must be coached to become comfortable with an ethos that changes from “how can I stand out” to “how can I help my people become star players”?  This process will most likely not be accomplished in a single conversation.  Remember, it is about helping them to shift the core of what made them successful as individual contributors—it will take time.

A good coach can help with the paradigm shift by asking thought-provoking questions. 

• When you think about your role on the team, what do you take the most pride in?
• What excites you about your professional life?
• What are some of your core values?
• What things, if they were taken away or you couldn’t do them, would make life unbearable?  What makes these things valuable to you in your career?
• When making your most important decisions for the team, what are the fundamentals you base them on?
• What do you look forward to the most when coming to work? 

The third step in this transformation is for the managers of the newly promoted to lead by example.  It is critical to build a relationship with this newly appointed leader so that there is a high-level of comfort with seeking advice.  Building this relationship earns the right to coach and develops a solid foundation of trust.  The manager must also take advantage of teaching moments.  Recognize the leader coach for successful steps in this transformation process and coach him (by asking thought-provoking questions) through the times he retreats back into the star player mindset.  This may especially be necessary in highly stressful situations where the new leader will seek the comfort of the star player mindset as a means of coping.  It is the manager’s responsibility to create a lasting partnership with the leader coach that invites inquiry, learning, and change.

Finally, not everyone can make the transition from star player to leader coach.  If an organization looks to its top individual contributors as a pipeline for future organizational leadership, it must be comfortable with the idea that not 100% of its star players will successfully make the transition to a leader coach and the organization should have a plan for helping those employees return to individual contributor roles.

What is an Inner Coach?

Finding Meaning and Purpose

Leveraging our Inner Coach

Our inner coach is the private voice in our head that guides us on the subconscious level—it is the chief architect of our confidence.  Some people call it intuition or that reliable inner resource oftentimes used as a guide in sometimes unpredictable circumstances.  Others have called it the gut instinct, which we call upon in the uncertainty of the new and novel.  No matter what it is or how we summon it, most of us have experienced the power of its existence.

A properly trained inner coach helps us face challenges with meaning and purpose.  Unfortunately,  the duality of a private voice can either help us out in times of need or break us down when we least expect it.  Knowing the difference is critical to properly leveraging the power of our inner voice.

When our private voice works against us, it becomes our inner critic—breaking down our confidence and steering us toward questioning who we are and what we are capable of accomplishing.  As we give life to this inner critic, we not only work against the environment, our opponent, or the circumstances, but ourselves.

At times, it may feel like our inner coach and inner critic are in constant battle for our attention.  Our inner coach may get derailed by stress, pressure, or anxiety.  Unbalanced emotions which reside in the past or future provide fuel to that inner critic. 

How then can we build our inner coach and silence the inner critic? 

Simple.  Focus on the present.

Focusing on the now helps us to control those things for which we have mastery.  What then can we use to guide us to the present?

GOAL = Result To Which Effort Is Aimed

Change perspective.  Stop for a moment and think about how you frame goal achievement.  Think about a GOAL as the result to which effort is aimed.  By doing so, you may conclude that results are most often outside of your direct control.  If that is the case, then turn your attention on the effort (this is the process), which will help you to achieve the results you seek. 

Does this mean that we should not have goals?  Absolutely not.  Brad Stevens, Coach of the Boston Celtics says, "You can have the goal of a championship, but there's a process to get there and your focus needs to be on that."

I like to teach people that they are interviewing for their next job or professional opportunity every day they engage in their current role.  Excellence is hard to keep quiet.  The truth of the matter is that people talk and if we are focused on the efforts of the job at hand, we are successfully interviewing for our future.  This requires that we stay rooted in the present by focusing on the process which will set-up our inner coach for success.

Begin with the advice of Jim Collins and practice pockets of quietude.  Spend some time looking within to provide valuable insight into yourself.  Next, exercise the deliberate habit of documenting everything you do throughout the day.  Circle the two things you want to improve and challenge yourself with these coaching questions:

• What do I want?
• What's the real challenge here for me?
• What else?
• What am I going to do about it?
• What am I ready to act on right now?

Sometimes the process of calling on our inner coach does not work or we are met with silence.  If that's the case, seek the support of a trusted professional coach who can guide you through a process geared toward helping you achieve your goals.