So, I spent the long weekend to work on a homework from my sales coach (yes, that's you Vishal). The homework was to watch this movie titled "Chakde! India" starred by Shahrukh Khan and to read a book by Max Landsberg called "The Tao of Coaching".
Started out with the movie first. It was a good one. Tells u a story of Kabir Khan a former Indian National hockey team player who got blamed for the loss of his team during the Hockey world cup (always liked Shahrukh's way of exposing that he's a muslim). How he tried to pay off by bringing the underestimated Indian women national team to become the champion of Women's Hockey World Cup. As you can predict, the whole plot tells you how he coached the team with its multi-characters and multi-attitudes. Then, I continued with the book.
Coaching probably is something new to us. Why we need to coach anyway? We don't have this sport team that needs to be coached, right? Wrong. Just found out that you can use this coaching skill in all aspects of your life. Not just in your work but perhaps your personal. Well, I'll just start from the work part. If you happen to lead (or manage) a team, I bet there are occassions where these guys just give you headache (I had that). There are times (or most of the times probably) that you just can't rely on these guys. You just have to do it by yourself, or everything will just fall apart. Then you find yourself juggling with so many tasks and to do's (trust me, I know how it feels). Would it be good if you can trust your team and suddenly everything's done and you find yourself relaxing because you have so much spare time now. Well that's when coaching comes in. Okay, I'm not going to write a book here. Next time you stop by at a bookshop just look for this coaching books. Or you can try Max Landsberg's "The Tao of Coaching" it's a good one (at least that's what i think).
Back to the movie. I admired the way this Kabir character overcoming the reluctance of being coached (this was one of the book's chapter by the way). And how he builds up the team spirit among them. And of course how he diagnose the individuals different styles, and apply the appropriate approach. It inspired me to apply a couple of these techniques at work.
And what I learned from the book is that coaching is not about developing others, but it's also developing yourself. It's a balance and harmony just like yin and yang. And probably divine justice really do exist.
So, I already have some plans for my team this coming week. I'll let you know how it went.
Before I realized how important all of this coaching thing was. A couple of months ago, one of my subordinates got promoted. He came to me one day and thanked me for helping him develop himself. There's an undescribeable satisfaction there. And I got some good recognition too.. :-) I'll do it better this time.
So, I've done my homework Vishal. Man, I still think I'm getting too Indian these days... Hahahaha...
