Great leadership starts with self-awareness. It is the most important capability for leaders to develop and therefore a must-have for coaches.

But, many talented coaches lack self-awareness.

Self-awareness has many benefits. It helps coaches:

• Understand their strengths and weaknesses.

• Be better problem solvers.

• Lean more intentionally into their area of strengths.

• Improve their interpersonal skills.

Successful coaches know where their natural tendencies lie and use this knowledge to boost those tendencies or compensate for them. Effective coaches recognize:

Lack of self-awareness creates problems for the team.

Coaches may claim they have strengths and talents that they don’t actually have. This means they are leaning into areas that are in fact weaknesses. For example, a coach I worked with believed he was an excellent communicator when in fact his team was often in the dark about selections and game plans.

Awareness of your actual strengths allows you to better leverage those natural talents.

As this coach gained a deeper awareness of his strengths he was able to use them to ensure team success. He was a natural strategic thinker. He leveraged that by looking for patterns and issues in games and creating alternative ways to move ahead. He was also more aware of his communication challenges and relied on his assistant coaches and captain to create more open dialogue.

A need to develop areas of weakness rather than growing your areas of strength.

This coach looked to build and area of strength rather than focusing on fixing his weaknesses. And, he was open to receiving feedback instead of being defensive. This was crucial to his growth. You grow further and faster in an area of strength. Simply having an awareness of your weaknesses is part of the solution!

Coaches, self-awareness is the key to your and the team’s success!