Had a great meeting with Thee Woon Goh from Singapore the other day. Thee Woon took the Masterful Coaching Certification program with me last spring. And we have since struck up a robust relationship which I will share more about in ensuing blogs.
Thee Woon shared a great quote with me that represented several golden nuggets. It involved John Doerr, one of the great venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, suggesting to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, to hire a coach.
John Doerr is known to be a legendary moneyman with a Midas touch. Every time he invests in a company, it seems to turn to gold. That he puts so much stock in coaching really caught my attention. Could this be one of the reasons for his Midas touch?
When Eric Schmidt was asked what the best advice he ever got during his tenure at Google was, he replied that it came from John Doerr in 2001 who said, “My advice to you is to hire a coach.”
Doerr told Schmidt that the coach he should have was Bill Campbell. Schmidt tells how he initially resented the advice… “After all,” he said, “I was a CEO. I was pretty experienced. Why would I need a coach? Am I doing something wrong? My argument was, how could a coach advise me if I’m the best person in the world at this?”
Schmidt went on to discover that that was not what a coach does. “The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. In the business context, a coach is not a repetitious coach. A coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, describes it to you in [his] words, and discusses how to approach the problem.”
Thanks Thee Woon!
[posted 2009-10-24 by Robret Hargrove]
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