Coaching vs. Training
It's all in the words we use isn't it? Selecting the best word to use when communicating helps us to convey our message. People have attachments, beliefs, attitudes, sensitivities about words. Words are one of the tools for communicating. Just one tool, but a very important one.
Take for example the word training. Sounds innocuous enough right? Well, in reality, some people believe that training is what you give a dog to teach them to behave in certain ways. You get the dog to do something you want and then reward the dog with a treat. Pavlov figured it out.
But people are not dogs, and we don't always respond to positive reinforcement. Hopefully, we learn when we make mistakes, then correct course. So, life lessons come in all forms. Some are moments of insight and enlightenment and some are painful lessons that scar our souls.
It may simply be a matter of semantics, the term coaching as opposed to training, but I've decided to take the path of coaching. It's probably because I am an athlete. To me a trainer is someone that shows you how to do something, to execute a task, to condition you, to teach you how to operate a machine or learn a new skill. This is a critical first step, but to be exceptional, to go beyond just exercising the mechanics, human beings need individual attention, they need massaging. To me, a coach is someone that is aware that every human being on the planet is unique, they have specific talents others don't and specific 'areas for improvement' others don't. The best coaches I've had in my life worked with me to determine the optimal way for me to perform the task.
So, if you visit our website, you will see fewer references to 'training' and more references to 'coaching.' Some people are confused by this. They think we are teaching clients how to coach others. While we can do that, and do, our Communication Coaching Programs are designed to go beyond just teaching the mechanics. We are all about helping our clients uniquely prepare, design, deliver and get better results from meetings, presentations and phone calls.
If you or your company is looking for someone to help coach the players on your team to perform at higher levels, we would love to talk with you.
Call me, Scott Hays at 843.301.1768. Or shoot me an email at shays@triviumperformance.com
