quote Coaching ‘is the teaching of technical skills, but it is not teaching’ quote

Gallwey then applied these principles to the corporate world in The Inner Game of Work, his precept being that there is always an inner game being played in your mind – no matter what outer game you are playing.

Coaching can take numerous forms, the most influential being transformational coaching for business leaders and executives.
What to expect from your coach – Times LIVE.

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.

The inner zone of excellence is a key part of what is known as the “inner game” of business. The concept of the “inner game” was developed by Timothy Gallwey as a way of helping people to achieve excellence in various sports (e.g., tennis, golf, skiing, etc.), music and also business and management training. Fundamental to the inner game is our ability to stay in a high performance state when confronted with difficult circumstances.

via Robert Dilts « Nadine36hypnotherapy’s Blog.

Inner game is what enables you to act. Nothing less, nothing more.

The Longer Answer

Timothy Gallwey first coined the term ‘inner game’ in his book The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. He wrote that “every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game”; where the outer game is fought against another opponent and the inner game is fought against your own inner doubts and fears.

via What is Inner Game?.

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?.

Was reading the above book and wanted to share part of what I have read about his experience gained from being a tennis coach…

Learning takes place within the student. The student makes the choice that ultimately control whether learning takes place or not. He then realised that the student was responsible for the learning choices and the coach was responsible for the quality of the external learning environment. Allowing the student to be more aware of the choices he was making and the reasons behind those choices was an essential part of this learning process. The student felt more in control and as a natural consequence was willing to accept more responsibility, and exercise greater initiative and creativity in achieving their goal.

Experience comes with three principles – awareness, choice and trust. Awareness was about knowing the present situation with clarity. Choice was about moving in a desired direction in the future. Trust was the essential link that enabled that movement.

The greater the external challenges accepted by an individual, team or company, the more important it is that there be a minimum of interference occurring from within. No matter what culture you work in, what kind of work you do, or what your present level of competence is, both inner and outer games are always going on. Progress will always be dependent on both.

They are like two legs of a person; one leg represents the external challenges and the other represents self. As a culture and current situation, we have placed too much emphasis on mastering the outer game and making changes in the external world. With science, technology, and the modern information explosion, we have developed a relatively long outer-game leg. But our understanding and control of the Inner Game has not evolved equally.

We have a profound need to better understand, and learn to make changes in the domain we call ourselves. This will only happen if we change in ways that are in harmony with our true nature, not at war with it.

“Harley managers take to the slopes”
Today started with a morning meeting with twelve Harley Davidson managers interested in improving their rider education program. Location: Crystal Ridge Ski resort. After an hour’s discussion of Inner Game principles of learning from experience through focus of attention, we’re all out on the ski slopes to put principles into practice. The improvements in their skiing (and, I might add: the sheer fun of it all) helped convince them that there was a better way to learn a skill. In the afternoon, we all had a great time inventing “the inner game of motorcycle riding.”

Conclusion: what riders most need to learn is heightened awareness and responsible management of risk.

“Cold outside; warm reception inside”
By evening, it was snowing and below twenty degrees. My escort said the weather may discourage those coming from twelve miles outside of Milwaukee to the book store signing. But, when we arrived, there were already thirty people sitting and waiting. About half of them knew of Inner Game before The Inner Game of Work. I sat on a table and talked about accessing the greater potential with ourselves in tennis, golf, and work.

Questions included: “How do you stop the nagging, bossy conversation in the head? Acknowledging the need for a balance between Outer and Inner Games, which would you say is really more important?” I spent two hours there, signed fifty books, and enjoyed the interactions immensely.

Early on the 20th, I’m on my way to Kansas City, on a clear, crisp (7 degrees F.) morning.

In the afternoon, I spoke with 200+ managers from Arco. Having passed through the turmoil of a planned merger with British Petroleum, they found out yesterday that the Federal Trade Commission was going to try to block the merger. Everyone was on an emotional roller coaster. The possibilities of controlling the variables of the Inner Game when they were clearly so out of control of the external variables was a welcome message – at least after they realized that I wasn’t going to try to sugar coat their dilemma or dignify it with an easy answer. The audience drew a passionate statement out of me: in times of external change we all have to reach for the foundations of our internal stability – which ultimately rests on our core desire. Because their turmoil was so real, they seemed to listen more attentively and from a more genuine place. I was told that some were spotted tearing towards the end of the talk. Afterwards about thirty books were sold.

The person who set up the Arco event, Robert Layfield owns with his wife the Little Professor Bookstore where I will do the signing tonight. He has been greatly responsible for the outstanding response in Dallas. The Mayor of McKinney, Texas introduced the evening and told how he had last seen me ten years ago at Arco headquarters in Santa Barbara. The President of the Chamber of Commerce was there as well – all the efforts of Mr. Layfield. The audience was enthusiastic and I went on for almost an hour – many bought books for themselves and friends.

Then I gave a half-hour Public Radio interview followed by a most unique interview with Brian Malow called “But Seriously.” It was broadcast live on the Internet. A first for me and showed me how easy it is going to be for live video transmission from a home to an Internet site. On the way to the bookstore signing, my escort agreed to take me by my childhood school and home. I filled her in on early family history. Then at the most charming bookstore in Corda Madera – it happened – two of my childhood friends whom I had talked about to my escort were at the signing. I hadn’t seen them in nearly fifty years. They had changed – I had changed – yet we were all the same, very recognizable. Fifty years of life had transpired for each of us and we talked as if we were meeting after school one day. It has been quite a school, and we had all learned a lot.

We talked about self-doubt and how it spawns a variety of “inner games” people play at work which rob us of the energy and awareness needed for work itself. If we weren’t playing the games of “who is the smartest,” or “who has the most influence,” we would find it much easier to cooperate in teams. We would also find that our ability to learn from experience would be greatly enhanced.

“At the Tattered Cover”
An audience of about forty people attended the signing at the Tattered Cover – a huge but charming independent bookstore in downtown Denver. We explored further the focus: putting an end to the self-esteem game at play and at work. Since you are the judge, the jury, and the plaintiff, why not declare yourself the winner of that game? Conclude for yourself that there are better games to play while working and then get on with it. So many of our obstacles at work come from our constant assessment of ourselves in relationship to others we work with. Re-defining the work ethic seemed a topic of interest in this group.