The world of corporate coaching has always been very closely related to sports coaching, and watching a championship team perform at an exceptional fashion certainly provides the impetus and inspiration to every manager involved in the pursuit of his or her own corporate aspirations and successes. Examples of great sports coaches are like Phil Jackson (former basketball coach of Chicago Bulls and now with the Los Angeles Lakers), football coaches like Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United Football Club and most recently, Luis Aragones, the Spanish football coach who masterminded, planned and raised the level of its players into championship materials, capturing the 2008 European Cup after a lapse of 44 years!

It has always intrigue me on how these coaches are able to motivate and raise the performance levels of its players year in year out to its highest Championship level, besides working with a totally diverse group of sports personality who are sometimes egocentric, arrogant and indifferent. The ability of these coaches to blend a diverse group of talents around a common goal to achieve results far beyond their individual abilities, and often in the face of challenges that would derail and cause others to give up on the creation of such high performance teams.

Having been working in the corporate hospitality world for the last 20 years, this has lead me to a much deeper search into what makes a great Coach and how can Coaching positively transform lives and create the kind of ‘championship’ level of success in people’s lives both on a personal and professional level. This search has led me to the International Federation of Coaches (USA), which has this coaching philosophy:

“The International Coach Federation adheres to a form of coaching that honours the client as the expert in his/her life and work and believes that every client is creative, resourceful, and whole.”

Standing on this foundation, the coach's responsibility is to:

• Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve
• Encourage client self-discovery

• Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies;
• Hold the client responsible and accountable.

With this coaching philosophy background and a whole journey of personal coaching competencies development, I began introducing and advocating coaching competencies into organisation that I facilitate learning development programs, using the power of coaching as a powerful strategy to create a culture that is more adaptable to change and growth, igniting the mindset to high performance championship teams.

In organisation where the coaching culture is prevalent, the successful leader coach is:

• Committed to help a person seek out his or her own answers, bringing about ownership and empowering the individual greatly.
• Solution-focused and forward moving, helping to make changes more positive oriented
• Honest with feedback and encouragement –recognising and rewarding positive behaviour
• Inspiring and challenges the team members to move from just good to exceptional greatness.

To build and develop a World Class Championship team, the leader COACH should embrace and demonstrate the following Coaching behaviours in your respective area of discipline and organisation:

Be the conductor of your team and create a collaborative culture of learning and trust for the coaching relationship is a collaborative one. This will enable the person coached to feel safe and non-threatened in the collaborative culture of learning and trust.

You will need to work with your team member to identify the performance problem or growth opportunity, set standards and performance objectives, and develop a performance improvement plan. It becomes a matter of how can WE collaboratively solve the problem or raise the performance bar, collectively as a team and individual.

Be a keen observer and highlight areas of undesirable performance-related behaviour that is noticeable, measurable, non-judgmental and changeable, describing the current behaviour including the specific situation and the team member’s actions, or the lack of it. Like all great championship coaches, they are great observers and their team members were coached not only when were under performing or their behaviour was unsatisfactory but on how their potential can be expanded.

Coaching in the business world is now more widely used as part of a strategic tool and means of developing people within an organisation in order that they perform more effectively and in reaching their fullest potential.

Acknowledge team member’s achievements as well as problems, feelings, and concerns. However the acknowledgement of problems or concerns does not mean condoning unacceptable behaviour or performance standards.

Feedback and reinforcement of positive behaviour and performance on the other hand should be recognised and rewarded with incentive programs that are tied to organisational goals and individual performances, which are valued by the team members, be in praise, choices of flexi-time, vacation, gifts, monetary rewards or recognition plaques.

One of the most important behavioural attribute that an effective coach leader must have.

Successful leader coach are effective in the way they ask relevant questions, the way they listen and the way things are phrased and presenting in coaching, evidently very different from daily conversation in addition to providing and receiving feedback, in getting people to come up with their own answers, solutions and responses.

Championship coaches always make habit of success their way of life. As a leader coach, it’s role is to not only coach but help, advise and serve as a resource person in guiding their team members to new level of performance and achievements, both within and outside the organisation.

Managers push, leader coaches pull;
Managers focus on systems and structure, leader coaches focus on people;
Managers control, leader coaches inspire trust;
Managers accept status quo, leader coaches challenge it;
Managers ask how and when, leader coaches ask what and why;
Managers maintain, leader coaches foster and develop commitment;
Managers do things right, the coach leaders do the RIGHT things to cultivate HABITS of SUCCESS and CHAMPIONS!

Therefore, look no further and embrace the power of coaching to build your world-class championship team, NOW! Coaching, in short, is about honouring the past, celebrating the present, and moving towards the future, TODAY!