The top 6 practices to upgrade your performance through coaching

Being able to perform at a high level is something that many of us strive towards. Whether you're an executive, a successful creative, an athlete, an entrepreneur, or something else, being able to continually improve on where we are is a fundamental human trait. The betterment of ourselves is a core aspect of how humans have flourished from being cave dwellers to where we are today.

Most of this evolution in our existence happened over a long period of time, but there are things we can do within our own lifetime to achieve some performance upgrades.

The 6 ways that coaching can assist in this endeavour include:

• Setting more challenging targets
• Creating accountability
• Revealing limiting beliefs
• Breaking through barriers
• Honest feedback and encouragement
• Structured support

With the right coach that suits an individual's dynamic, these tools will provide the essential requirements for a measurable improvement in performance for any client who commits to doing the work involved.

Let's now look at each area in more detail…

1. Setting targets

Most high-level individuals have only got where they are through their ability to effectively set targets and achieve them close to their expectations. However, these targets could possibly be even more effective through a good coach who will challenge the client to push themselves towards something that might currently feel uncomfortable.

Having a coach can be an ideal sounding board, with an objective point of view, to ensure you're choosing the targets with the most effective outcomes for the client. This could also include testing yourself with targets within an indirect skillset, but with tangential outcomes which may have positive effects on other targets. This might take the form of a relationship-based target that can run alongside a career-based target.

2. Creating accountability

Particularly if you're being challenged to operate outside of your comfort zone, being kept accountable is a great method in order to stay on track.

Having regular check-ins on your progress can ensure that you're still moving in the right direction, as well as giving you the freedom to make adjustments when necessary along the way, without the guilt and self-doubt you may feel if you make these changes yourself.

Instead of losing time worrying about whether you should have stuck to your original path or if the new plan will deliver the desired results, having an accountability partner can significantly speed up this process. This accountability can be created outside of coaching if you have a trustworthy friend, colleague, or family member who will give you the aforementioned support, just agreeing to everything you say.

3. Revealing limiting beliefs

Much of our inability to improve our performance derives from our subconscious mind, which houses our limiting beliefs about what we can't do. Through coaching these limiting beliefs are highlighted and can be directly addressed, so that their stranglehold on our speed of improvement can be reduced or completely removed.

Even in already high achievers, there's likely to be at least one limiting belief that they've so far been able to avoid and work around, although their performance could be even greater without that blockage.

This could be something as straightforward as avoiding some form of travel, like long drives or flights to potentially valuable meetings. Imagine how much more productive someone may be without that factor reducing their possibilities. Whatever your limiting belief might be, a coach can help shine a light on it so that you work together in addressing it.

4. Breaking through barriers

Following on from the identification of your limiting beliefs, being able to develop repeatable strategies to overcome these hurdles is something that coaching can provide. A one-stop quick-fix solution for a specific situation isn't of any use for future scenarios where the barriers reappear in a different guise, as it only works that one time.

Having a flexible method that can be used across many situations where the barrier could turn up is what you need for a long-term solution in consistent performance improvements. A coach can help you develop a bespoke approach you can adapt to any situation, as it's built around who you are and how you prefer to operate in the world.

5. Honest feedback and encouragement

There are many people in your close circle of influence who may be unable to give you unadulterated honesty, due to the significant history you share, including relationships which may stop them from saying something that could cause some level of upset.

This isn't a problem that a coach faces, as they're an unattached and disconnected third party, so they can give you complete and objective honesty without the concerns of potential emotional reactions of others, although still taking your individual sensitivities into account.

This same objectiveness allows for true encouragement when things are going well, although won't be direct encouragement, it's more likely to take a different form such as a reflective question. Although the intent and sincerity should be clear.

6. Structured support

Even though coaching isn't actually teaching or training, the support provided by a coach could still be structured to an extent in order to measure your progress. Instead of being given the answers of exactly how to do something like a teacher or trainer would, a coach will help guide you to discover the answers that are specific for you, because they'll come directly from yourself.

Your own solutions can be structured by your coach into a personal system that works for you, with adjustments made if necessary. Whenever we're looking to improve performance, it's vital that something is being measured so that there's a clear starting point, progression highlights, and a place where you've reached your target.

This target doesn't necessarily have to be the end though. I know when I'm working with a client that these targets could be a point where our coaching relationship comes to an end, but the client still has the tools for continued further performance improvements by themselves.

If you've reached a performance sticking point in your career, then maybe consider coaching to get the boost you need from an objective perspective.