By Shawn McQueen, Mentor for Two-Brain Group Coaching Course
This is the fourth post in our ongoing series covering the differences between good and bad coaches. If you want to catch up on the other parts of this story, do so here:
Remember how bad coach oftentimes wouldn’t write a lesson plan? He’d be “winging” it on the floor. His classes were inconsistent at best. Sometimes they’d run short whereas other times they’d run over. His transitions were choppy and lacked fluidity and it just felt a bit artificial and disingenuous while in his class. But more obvious to me was his lack of preparation that had him constantly “thinking” while on the floor versus being proactive, 10 steps ahead and knowing why and where he was going next. Those moments are when he’d get stifled as he wouldn’t know where he wanted to go next, or what his plan or progression was for each individual. Members could feel it too and his classes over time started to lose a sense of structure and control.
Good coach knew members crave, and thrive with, structure. He constantly worked at refining his lesson plans. If he had what he felt was a 4 out of 5 class (not his best performance), he’d immediately write down the things he needed to improve upon. He possessed the constant and never ending mentality to improve and would seek feedback from his peers, as well as his own self. He held high standards for himself and was able to truly step into his confidence and charisma because he was prepared, which gave him a level of certainty in what he was doing! He was genuine, authentic and clearly always improving his craft and members loved him and his classes for that.
There were times when bad coach would try to use good coach’s lesson plan from earlier in the day. Seeing how the good coach’s performance was truly taking off, and yet the bad coach’s performance was still subpar at best even when he did this. It wasn’t his. He didn’t own it. He would stumble over his words and appear unconfident in his delivery. He used it more as a checklist than a map.
It felt and looked like he was just checking a box. And members easily picked up on that. What developed from this was unfortunate. Bad coach would skimp on critically important steps like an effective and coach directed general warm up. Then he’d gloss over a weighted warm up, missing ample opportunities to improve movement patterns, drill technique and reinforce good positions (as well as prepare the body even further).
But the most sad thing for me was to see him get comfortable skipping the specific coaching progressions.
Good coach saw bad coach cutting corners and because they were friends decided to have a heart to heart talk with him.
It was obvious that there was some tension between these two after the conversation and unfortunately, bad coach would go on to get worse…
Stay tuned for Part 5.