Coaching and Realizing your Full Potential
Author: Irma Gonzalez

Coaching and Realizing your Full Potential
Irma Gonzalez

What is coaching and why do we all need a coach to realize our potential? Before I can answer this I want to tell you about my first coach.

Sometime in 4th grade I found a baseball glove and a bat that my uncle who lived in New York City had brought to my grandfather as a gift. We started playing on Sunday afternoons, it was just me, my sister and my grandfather pretty much just playing ball.

A week later I brought the gear to school and talked some girls in my class into playing ball. Just a few weeks later we had fallen in love with the game!

We came to school every day filled with excitement and eager to play softball at every chance we got!

By the time we were in 6th grade we really had developed into a very cohesive and talented team. As such young age, we had done it all on our own. It is unbelievable how no teacher or adult saw our potential. We were good, really good, I believe we were on our way to becoming Top Talent.

In one of those games I noticed that this boy in my class had developed an interest in ‘coaching’ us without anybody asking him to do it. He had seen our potential and he had an interest in us that practically had no attachment, or benefit to him for that matter.

He would stand by first base, (my base) or third base and coach us. I also noticed that as a team we did a lot better when he would show up and be our coach.

I remember the amazing feeling of looking back and seeing that he believed in us. He would just stand there and give us direction on how to do better. It felt great that someone had total interest and belief in us. He was my first coach and to this day I thank him for those special moments. He saw our potential and what we were really capable of achieving.

So when I saw this quote from Bob Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot, it reminded so much of the feeling I had the day I realized someone was coaching us. Bob Nardelli said “I absolutely believe that people unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities”.

We had developed our interest in the sport as 10 year old children. At that age were totally aware of the joy of playing a game we loved. We had an interest in softball, this was an interest we developed ourselves and was totally in line with our core value of having fun. But we never received enough coaching in order for us to reach our maximum potential.

Actually, what happens when you don’t move forward was proven in our case. Since we were not moving forward, we started to go backwards. Our team eventually disintegrated and we did not played together again. All the ‘work’ we had done training ourselves and playing game after game never really materialized into anything tangible. It felt sometimes like those were wasted years.

Who at your workplace begins the day filled with excitement and eager to begin the day? Check this out the next time you are walking into your workplace first thing in the morning.

According to Gallup polls up to 71% of employees are disengaged from their work which means that they are essentially ‘not there’ they are checked out. These are employees who are really just walking around the office practically in their sleep, but without any energy to do their work.

Coaching is about helping us realize our potential.

Coaching is about developing good people into top talent. Bob Moores, says in his latest book, “Turning Good People into Top Talent “, ‘organizations succeed because they have top talent, who are responsible and willing to become accountable for personal performance”.

What stopped that winning softball team back in 1974 from going forward and become Top Talent? A coach. A coach who would show us our potential. A coach who would help us see our strengths and help us remove the blind spots that kept us stuck in one place.

Don’t let this happen to you…if great sport figures have one, why not you?

If you are a frustrated business leader, hire a business coach that will work with you to take away employee discontent from your workplace!

Hire a business coach who will help you achieve your vision and potential.







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Irma Gonzalez is a Business and Career Coach, writer, seminar leader and speaker. An active listener, she uses a relaxed conversational style to help business leaders explore fresh options, gain clearer insight into their own situations and create valuable solutions that benefit everybody. Reach her at 407-384-7317, 407-497-9930 Irma@IrmaGonzalez.com and www.IrmaGonzalez.com

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