Coaching 4: In Person

coach-tunnellby Jeff Tunnell

My friend Debbie Shuck-Mills was getting married at Duke Chapel and I had the privilege of conducting part of the ceremony.  With the rehearsal completed we traveled to the rehearsal dinner being hosted in a historic North Carolina home.  Debbie was late arriving to the dinner and this became a topic of discussion among her closest friends.  I listened in as they each told a story of when Debbie’s chronic tardiness had affected them in some way or another.

To my surprise and delight the stories all concluded with similar sentiments:  all of her friends were very accepting of her being late because she was “so very present in the moment”.  When she was with you, it was as though you were the only person alive on the planet.  She would not leave you for another appointment until she had a certainty that her relationship with you ‘in the moment’ was as full as possible.  Each one knew that she would only be late because she was pouring herself into the relationship in front of her.

Joel Comiskey’s article here on the website “Friendship: The Simple Secret of Coaching” gives us a similar conclusion from principles in Jesus’ life.  The adage ‘people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care’ is powerful insight for the coaching relationship.

As Joel says, “You must first win the leader through a caring friendship, everything else will flow naturally.”

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