Challenges stimulate champions but managing them creatively may turn an ordinary potential into a super hero, irrespective of your trade or profession. Granted that there are different problem solving methods, one of the easiest ways to get to the top quickly is to secure a coach or mentor. Who is a coach or mentor?
He is that rare gem who believes in you and your potential. He or she is willing to accept or offer to nurture you into a promise-fulfilled. He is the experienced player in any field who is ready make the sacrifices (time, energy and comfort) to help the protégé or mentee become a super performer. His greatest tool being the experience he has in the field or area of endeavour which you are interested in. On classic example of what can happen between the protégé and his coach or mentor is that between Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric bulb and Henry Ford the founder of the Ford Motor Corporation.
BETWEEN FORD & EDISON
Gerald Ford was an admirer of Edison. While he was working on his gasoline powered car, people mocked him and made mockery of his efforts. They said he was wasting his time on gasoline energy because Edison's electricity was the only future to energy for cars. Ford, not discouraged, decided to ask Edison himself whether there was a future for gasoline cars.
Here is Edison's reply to the future of the gasoline engine:
"Yes, there is a big future for any light-weight engine, that can develop a high horsepower and be self-contained. No one kind of motive power is ever going to do all the work of the country. We do not know what electricity can do, but I take for granted that it cannot do everything. Keep on with your engine. If you can get what you are after, I can see a great future. (Ford, My Life and Work, pp. 234-235). "Yes, there is a big future for any light-weight engine, that can develop a high horsepower and be self-contained. No one kind of motive power is ever going to do all the work of the country. We do not know what electricity can do, but I take for granted that it cannot do everything. Keep on with your engine. If you can get what you are after, I can see a great future."
This reply from the greatest expert on energy of the time made Ford develop confidence in his invention and kept his eyes focused on his activities. Perhaps without this encounter, Ford may have given up.
The story is also told of a mathematician who had cracked a centuries old problem without knowing it. It was the view of his mentor that led to his publication of a theory that went on to change history of mathematics significantly.
Speaking on the importance of having a coach, Ryan Giggs, the most decorated player in English football says this of his coach, Alex Ferguson: he "has been the best thing to happen to my career. I have met him since I was 13 years and he (the coach/mentor), has helped me to get this far. I don't think I would have had such an awesome career without him". Incidentally, some of the greatest footballers of our time have passed through Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. So why is a coach so important?
Your coach/mentor helps you to learn more about your values, clarify your vision, and reduce your learning curve by more than half. Goal identification is another reason for wanting a coach. Many people with high potentials end up with half fulfilled aspirations. The reason is that they were not well guided. If you have not identified your goals in life, it seems inevitable that you would need the services of a mentor/coach. He would help in identifying your strengths and weaknesses, creating a winning strategy for turning strengths into giant performance and weaknesses into strengths. As we saw in the case of Ford, he needed endorsement or encouragement that he was on the right tract and that comment by the greatest inventor of his time gave him a good dose of confidence to continue. Again it is Thomas Edison who said: "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." See what would have happened if Ford had given up?
Who Needs a Coach?
We often seem to believe that only young people need coaches. This is erroneous. Coaches are so by experience in a particular area. A coach in one situation could be the expert in another. So when ever one desires to learn a new thing, he automatically becomes the mentee or protégé. So the protégé is one who s willing to learn and obey instructions and one with a humble heart to appreciate and commend the efforts of the coach. Remember that the Bible says: "a soft tongue breaketh the bone". (Prov. 25:15).
In Which Areas of Life do we need a Coach?
In every area-professional, social, career, sports, business etc. There are no exceptions. You are your own advisor in this matter. Thorough examining yourself and see in which areas of your life you need the most help. Get a coach. You could have more than more than one coach at the same time but more than one in a life time. Usually, life is segmented into phases, and the life coach you select should be one that can help with your current level of development e.g. career, academics, post-school development etc.
Where to Get a Coach?
You can get a coach from amongst family members, school teachers, lectures, or from the church. However, career guidance services are available at Counseling offices or from related service providers.
The above mentors are visible but we have invisible coaches and mentors too. Invisible mentoring can take place through televisions, internet, books, audio and video Cd's etc. Reading articles and books of successful authors can help you become better at doing everything you set out to do.
What You Would Benefit from Coaches
1. Experience: No amount of money can buy experience for you
2. Hands-on know-how or tricks of the trade that help you to outsmart your opponents in the office or the open contest
3. Puts you through a rehearsal or training that improves your potentials and skills
4. They provide you with energy that drives your goals and visions
5. They assist in crystallizing goals and help in fulfilling them
6. They could connect you to life transforming knowledge, processes, information and institutions
Conclusions
The fable of Albert Einstein turning places with his driver helps to close this topic. The legend holds that Einstein for one reason or the other could not deliver a speech and had consented to his driver of many years delivering the speech. In the process, the driver was said to have done the assignment so well that the audience did not notice the difference.
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