MM146 - Coaches and Mentors | MM Book Study Pt. 4

Continued with lesson #4 of the Morning Mindset book study. During this segment, we consider Coaches and Mentors. What are the qualities of a good coach and what should we be looking for in a mentor? The two are similar, but not necessarily the same.

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[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Okay, guys, let's go. It's time for another Morning Mindset book study. That's right the Morning Mindset: a 30 Day Plan for a More Positive and Productive Life by Yours Truly, Paul G. Markel. What is chapter 4? Chapter 4, section 4, #4, seek out coaches and mentors. Now, many folks out there think that instructors and teachers are coaches and from a practical standpoint teachers and instructors are not necessarily coaches, because a coach has a personal relationship with you.

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Fitness Coaches Sports coaches those, you know Marksmanship coaches, what have you. Those people have a personal relationship or a professional relationship, but they have a direct relationship to the person that they are teaching. For instance, I betcha that at some point in time in your career, if you have a grown-up career and a grown-up job, at some point in time, your company brought in an instructor or teacher.

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There was some type of mandatory training that you had to go through. Maybe you got a new system for your computer, or maybe you got some new equipment and the manufacturer sent a rep a teacher or an instructor from them, from you know, their headquarters, to you to teach you to teach everyone in the shop how to use the new equipment.

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Maybe that was part of the deal, and if you buy this new equipment, if you buy this new software, if you buy whatever, we will send an instructor, a teacher to show all of your people how to use it. Fantastic, and maybe they did and then they left, right? The person who came to show you how to do how to use the new software or how to use the new equipment out in the shop or the factory or whatever.

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That person doesn't have a relationship with you. They probably didn't sit down with you personally and talk to you about your goals and your abilities and your skills and your need for improvements. Because that wasn't their job, their job was just to deliver information to you, and once they've delivered that information they're done, and they're gone.

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Now the coach has a personal relationship with you, a coach is someone who will give you critiques. The coach will examine your performance, and they'll say “Okay in this area you did really well, and in the following areas you need Improvement.” Now the coach is, it's kind of like the parent-child or teacher-student relationship.

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The coach does not need your approval to be the coach. If you don't like how your football coach teaches how to, you know, receive passes or to make tackles or what have you. Your coaches are showing you how to do and you’re like “Well I don't like that and I don't like how you do it. I don't like your methods”, a coach doesn't really care. Because it's not his job to make you happy. It's his job to help you improve.

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Or her job to help you improve and they have a relationship with you from that standpoint because they examine your performance and often a coat a good coach. What they will do is they will take you from being poor, to mediocre or average, to good, to very good, to maybe even excellent but you got to work with them.

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You need to park your ego, you need to, you know, accept that your coach knows what they're talking about. Now, if you find yourself in a position where you don't like what your coach is telling you, you need to go back to gut-check time again and say “Well do I not like it because it's hard? Do I not like what the coach is telling me because it's going to make me sweat, or it's going to make me work harder? Or did the coach just point out my shortcomings and my ego can't take it when my coach points out my shortcomings.”

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If that's the case, your problem isn't with the coach, the problem was with you. It's not your coach's job or desire to make you feel good about what they're telling you. No good coach ever starts out thinking “Well before I teach this, before I have the team run laps, before I have the team do push-ups and sit-ups, before I have the team run drill after drill after drill until they can't possibly get it wrong, before I do all that. Let me first consider whether or not it will make them feel psychologically comfortable.”

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No, that's not what a good coach does, a good coach will get more out of you than you ever thought that you could give. They see something in you that you may not even see, that is a good coach. Coaches have a personal relationship with you, unlike a basic instructor or teacher or what have you you say.

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Well my teachers, you know, I had some really good teachers when I was in school, and they cared about me and then you know, they helped me to learn and help me to improve, and that's great. But from a strict definition, the teacher or the instructor like from the previous examples, we know their job is to deliver information to you.

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Yours is to receive the information, but their job is not to work with you on a personal one-on-one basis. Let's talk about mentors. Coaches, a good coach, is invaluable. I've had a lot of very, very good coaches in my life for the last 30 to 40 years. I've had some really good coaches, and I've had some really good mentors.

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Now, what is the difference between a mentor and a coach? Can a mentor be a coach? Can a coach be a mentor? Yes, they can, but they're not necessarily the same. Because the coach is the boss, and the student or the athlete is you know, the learner. They're not on an equal plane. They the players on a team are not on the equal plane with the coach.

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It's not the way it ever has been and it's not the way it should be but a mentor. A mentor is someone who has excelled in the area in which you want to Excel or you are attempting to excel whether it's writing or whether it's business or whether it's sports or whether it's music. What have you, you look up to that person because you see that they have achieved a level of success that you someday would like to achieve, and you respect the fact that they have done that.

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You say “Okay, well that could be an idol or someone, you know, or hero”. No, a mentor, they will see you, they will recognize you, they will recognize that you are on the path. You're on the same path that maybe you are on the same path that they were on 10 years earlier or 15 or 20 years earlier and they look at you, and they think “You know, that guy/girl that person right there.”

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There's a lot. Like I was 10-15-20 years ago when I first started out, and a good Mentor will help you they'll reach out their hand to you and they will help you to move forward so that you can get hopefully one day to the same level that they're on or even farther now a mentor will also be your friend. A mentor is someone that reaches back and you can have a reciprocal relationship with because they respect your hard work.

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They respect your passion, they respect your dedication. You will never achieve a good solid productive student-mentor relationship if the mentor does not believe that you are genuine in your desire to improve. Yes, you have to prove to them that you are passionate that you are genuine that you're sincere that you're not just looking for an easy fix. You're not looking for a handout. You're not looking for someone to clear away, you know clear the path for you and make everything easy.

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You're not looking for fairness you're looking for self-improvement and if you do that, and the mentor reaches back to you, that is a relationship that you can cherish your entire life, and I've had that and I've been very, very fortunate to have several mentors who you know, as you know, I look back at it or at the time I thought “man, I cannot believe that this person that I have so much respect for and he was so successful in this, you know, that field would have you is even, you're taking the time to consider me.”

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But have a lot of mentors who respected my passion and my desire and my sincerity and they took me under their wing and they gave me advice and they helped me with some of the pitfalls that they knew were out there. They knew because they had already been through those same exact problems or same exact troubles the same pitfalls that I'm encountering obstacles that I'm encountering today my mentors they like, yeah, I know exactly that and it's kind of amazing.

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Because they'll tell you I've had a couple mentors basically predicted the future to me. I thought wow really and sure enough. They knew exactly what they were talking about because they had been there. They had done that they got the T-shirt. So if you hope to lead a positive and productive life, seek out coaches, seek out mentors and then someday, as part of the circle of life. It'll be your responsibility to be a coach and your responsibility to be a mentor. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, that's it for today. I am your host Paul Markel, thank you for joining me. I'll talk to you again, real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.