The job of a coach is to come up with ideas, information and actions that help you move your agenda. In the case of public speaking, it might be ways to command a room, grab attention and keep it, or speak without stage fright.

But the coach can also come up with the stuff that you do know… but have overlooked or disregarded. Remember Socrates’ admonition, “We need not so much to learn as to be reminded.” Many leaders know what they should be doing (as we say, “It’s not rocket surgery”), but they are personally unable to gather up the time and effort to put this information into practice. Knowing and doing: two different things. If you don’t know, the coach can tell you; if you are reluctant to do, the coach can lead and motivate you.

“A personal coach is someone you pay to do what you already know perfectly well how to do, but won’t. There is much good in this idea. For one thing, coaches have no agenda of their own. Staff and spouse make admirable sounding boards, but their views are necessarily warped by close contact.

Two, they aren’t shrinks, and don’t want to be. Finding you bogged down in the mud on a country road, a shrink will join you in the car, hand you a box of Kleenex and want to hear all about your childhood. A coach will hand you a shovel.

Coaches are pitting themselves against the granite wall of stubbornness, kinks and enthusiasms that at this stage of life is your character, a wall that has proved impervious to every self-improvement resolution of your own.” (from Adair Lara.)

You should know that:

The coach makes sure that you do.

Carol Fleming, Ph.D., often partners with Larcen to provide public speaking and other business communication training to help clients increase their impact. Visit her website at www.speechtraining.com.