What I Learned From A Golf Pro

In the last 15 years of working with sales coaches, I consistently see a fundamental gap in their coaching process - a step so critical to change, that if you skip it, your coaching investment will yield little to no results. This was brought to mind when I recently signed up for a personal coaching session and experienced firsthand the difference in working with a mediocre coach and a pro – a coach who really understood how to change behavior.I shank the golf ball. If you play golf, I just sent a shiver down your spine. There is nothing worse in the golfing world, and maybe in all of sports, than hitting the ball on the hosel of the club – the unmistakable feeling of barely making contact and sending the ball dead right (usually followed by a four letter word….”FORE”). It seems impossible to do. How can you hit the ball on this tiny shaft when you are working so hard to hit it on a club face 3 times the size of the ball? But for several years, before giving up the game completely, I hit the ball on the shaft almost every time I swung the club.

A golfless decade followed until something stirred in me last year when planning a trip to Scottsdale (the golf Mecca). Maybe I could recapture the days of my youth when I had a respectable handicap. Maybe I’m not too old to enjoy the game. That’s when it hit me. I could take a lesson. I could hire a coach. Someone who makes a living by fixing broken golf swings. I’m brilliant! So I call the pro shop at the resort to schedule a lesson. They quickly explained that the expensive guy is pretty booked but the cheap guy is available. I said I’ll take the cheap guy. It’s not like I’m trying to go pro.

After hitting the ball a few times in front of my new best friend, he sized me up in minutes. He removed the mystery that had puzzled me, literally, for at least 15 years. He said there are two reasons you shank the ball. Without boring you with the technicalities of golf, he basically explained I fit into the second category. Simply, I should be hitting the ball like a baseball (this worked for me because I played baseball) and that my lack of follow through is what was causing me to shank. Stay with me because this is where it gets interesting for those of us that coach sales reps. He even proved it to me. He had me put the ball on a hill, above my feet, where it would be easier to hit the ball like a baseball. I hit it straight every time. It was much easier for me to snap my wrist through the ball at impact when it felt like I was hitting a baseball. So with this new understanding I must be fixed. So I put the ball on level ground to exercise my new found knowledge and guess what? I shanked the ball.

He continued to work with me and reinforce the message, “hit it like a baseball.” But I couldn’t translate this new information into a new swing until I met another coach. I’ll call him Coach #2. He understood how to truly change behavior.

He agreed that my problem had been properly diagnosed but to improve I had to practice a new swing. He instructed me to put my left foot back about six inches when addressing the ball and this would change how I rotated through the ball, bringing the club square at impact. I instantly got better and began to learn and feel comfortable with the new swing. I now had a solution. I knew how to practice on improving my swing until a new behavior was formed. I now not only understood my problem, but I knew what to do to fix my problem. I instantly went from hating golf and being unmotivated to work on my game, to loving golf and being dedicated to building a new skill.

So as coaches what can we learn from this experience? I learned two truths I can relate to sales coaching.

First, when multiple skills are required to succeed, the student needs the coach to diagnose the problem. The current philosophy is that coaching is a collaborative approach where we guide the learner to discover their own problem. I agree with the spirit of the collaborative approach and the learning environment it creates but what if the student really doesn’t understand the cause of the problem. Sometimes coaches need to be more like a doctor and tell the patient why they limp versus helping the patient determine the cause. They sometimes need the help of a coach who can reveal the source of their “shank.”

Secondly, great coaches have a solution to the problem. In other words, they are able to create a developmental activity for every skill gap or behavior that is keeping the rep from achieving their goal. They understand that to just identify the gap is only a small step toward change. To be an effective coach and drive change they must end every coaching session with an assignment, a prescription that matches the diagnoses. Without that crucial step, you’re more like a movie critic than a coach. You make a living off critiquing other’s work.