Effective Coaching
Is a Custom Job
The impulse to challenge each other to improve is often a symptom of healthy investment in teamwork and winning together. If you and I are truly allies, I can ultimately only benefit from your wins, and if I have mustard on my chin it only detracts from all of our successes for no one to mention it to me.
However, one surprising thing I’ve learned witnessing the most masterful coaches over the years is that occasionally the dab of mustard is an “imperfection” that nevertheless serves an essential role. The founder who isn’t a particularly good public speaker actually fund-raises better with many tech VCs because good public speakers are suspect as “too smooth”. Challenging that founder to take speaking classes might inadvertently have them less effective!
The lead engineer who doesn’t hesitate to call out a “stupid suggestion” might be a nightmare as a manager, yet among engineers who trust their pure intentions that same caustic behavior often plays a healthy role towards higher team energy as well as a uniquely candid and direct way of communicating. My only coaching for that engineer was a simple high five after he proactively told his team “Hey, it’s probably important you all know my wife is very clear I fit the bill for aspergers”, with the same absence of shame he brought to his ruthless critiques of every idea.
As you encounter opportunities to challenge and be challenged, remember to balance the conviction to continually strive for perfection with the humility of not being the ultimate authority on what perfection is. Consider the classic example: a European friend who botches certain American expressions in ways that are often so hilarious or at least so adorable you not only never want them to change you don’t even want to point out what the mistake was for fear they start saying it “the right way”.
By balancing conviction and humility in this way, we not only become more masterful coaches for each other, we set the stage for “perfection” to become something we continually discover as we succeed and fail and learn and begin again, together.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agriculture.
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