Coaching Tips and Techniques.

There are many important skills required to be a successful coach. These skills touch and impact a team's ability to contribute and deliver. Coaches should have a set of basic skills and or techniques that they depend on to deliver positive results. This paper will touch on some of these basic skills.

Definition of a coach from the American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition (page 167): One who trains or directs an individual or team, to train or instruct; teach a team. The primary idea behind coaching is to demonstrate the ability to get the most out of each individual on the team. Motivate and push team members to their greatest potential. In some cases, team members may not have a clue of their true potential. Successful coaches help the team assess and determine an individual or teams level of contribution. These coaches also challenge the individuals on the team and the team as a whole to advance to the next level.

Coach E. and the Boys

Coaches Bill Yoast (center) and Herman Boone (righ...

Coaches Bill Yoast (center) and Herman Boone (righ...

Yet another interesting acronym to help define coach is captured in the book, "The Little Book of Coaching, Motivating People to be Winners" by Ken Blanchard and Don Shula (2001). The acronym breaks down as follows:

Conviction driven: never compromise your beliefs

Overlearning: Practice until it is perfect

Audible-Ready: Know when to change

Consistency: Respond predictably to performance

Honesty-Based: Walk your talk

This acronym with definition demonstrates the many facets of coaching and how incredibly flexible a coach must be to reach his or her overall accomplishments.

An important talent or skill held by winning coaches is vision and a strategy to support this vision. This skill demonstrates to the team a direction and purpose as well as a plan supporting how they will accomplish the task. Communication of vision and strategy to ensure all team members thoroughly understand...