It all goes back to Timothy Gallwey. Before Gallwey, coaches were people who wore whistles around their necks.

Coaches helped people get better at physical tasks. That meant they mostly dealt with sweaty people, except for swim coaches who dealt mostly with chlorine-blind people.

That changed in 1974, the year Gallwey published The Inner Game of Tennis. He shifted the focus from what was happening on the outside, to what was happening in the mind of the tennis player.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Gallwey tells the story of the Inner Game on his web site. It’s compelling, but it won’t answer the question about whether you should hire a coach.

What’s important about the Gallwey story is that The Inner Game was the faint beginning of what is now a hot field: coaching. Now there are coaches for all kinds of things that don’t involve sweaty physical activities or even whistles.

via Three Star Leadership Blog: Leadership Development: When to hire a coach.

What is stopping us maximising our performance?

To answer that question, you should look at the work by Timothy Gallwey, called the Inner Game. The Inner Game as developed by Gallwey in 1974 builds on the notion of “Potential” and “Performance”. There is a gap between potential and performance which Gallwey describes as the thoughts which you have when going about an activity. These thoughts can be better described as “Interference”. Interference then is the self doubting thoughts you have that get in the way of your potential and reduce your resulting performance.

As Gallwey proposes, our performance is limited by interference caused by our thoughts. In a typical work place, that is not the only place interference comes from.

via Simply Organised: Maximise your performance by minimising your interference?.

Timothy Gallwey quotes
Gallwey is the acknowledged master of the performance coaches. He is surprisingly light on goals and his book (1975/1986) is full of remarks such as, ‘simply involved in the exploration of his latent capacities’ (p110); ‘time competition is identical with true co-operation’ (p112). Gallwey focuses on dealing with ‘freak-outs’, of which, he says, ‘there are three kinds: regret about past events; fear or uncertainty about the future; and dislike of a present event or situation’ (p116).

You can read the entire article, “Should Performance Coaches Focus on Performance?” here.

Finally, for people interested in a different approach to coaching, I recommend Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Work. Not only does this book apply Gallwey’s inner game theories to the workplace, but it also includes a personal analysis tool in which he suggests that you think like the CEO of your own life. How many shares have you given away?