"Want to get great at something? Get a coach!"

I know nothing about Dr. Atul Gawande's clinical skills, but I do know he is a wonderful writer.  He has been a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and has written four New York Times best-selling books: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal.  He is currently the Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID, which he began in January 2022.  From 2018 to 2020, he was CEO of Haven, the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase healthcare venture.  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all of his articles and books (which I highly recommend).

I recently read an article that he wrote for The New Yorker, which was published on September 26, 2011, "The Coach in the Operating Room".  Dr Gawande also gave a TED talk "Want to get great at something?  Get a coach!" which is related to the article.  He begins the article by referring to the fact that elite-level, professional athletes, singers, and even musicians all have coaches.  These coaches observe and critique their performance, help design their practice sessions, and often teach them better ways to complete their task.  

Dr. Gawande logically concludes that, if experts can benefit from coaching, then why don't physicians have coaches too?  He then tells a story of how he once invited a mentor into the operating room suite to observe and critique his surgical skills and clinical decision-making.  When the surgery was finished, Dr. Gawande thought, "That went very well."  He didn't expect his mentor to have too much to say.  In fact, his "coach" had several pages of notes, offering suggestions on how he positioned the surgical lights and how he positioned his hands and feet.  In other words, he coached Dr. Gawande towards better performance.

If surgeons could benefit from coaching, why not leaders too?  Leadership coaching has become a whole industry in and of itself.  I've had leadership coaches over the years, some good ones and some not so good ones.  But here's the thing - I learned something new from every single one of them.  So, at least in my own personal experience (and studies have confirmed my anecdotal experience), leaders can definitely "train" to become better leaders through coaching.

Where does the term "coach" come from?  As it turns out, the word "coach" comes from the mid 16th century French word "coche" and the Hungarian word "kocsi", both of which refer to a large four-wheeled covered carriage (apparently, these carriages were first designed and built in the small town of Kocs, Hungary).  Fast forward to the 1830's at Oxford University in England, when "coach" referred to a tutor who would "carry" a student through an exam.  Coaches literally carry us through on our journey to high performance!

Coaches became prominent in the sporting world, but it wasn't until a book written by the sports psychologist and college tennis coach W. Timothy Gallwey came out in the 1970's entitled The Inner Game of Tennis that some similar coaching methods were applied to the business world.

Incidentally, Dr. Gawande finishes his article with another story.  As it turns out, he enjoyed having his coach/mentor observe and critique him in the operating room so much, that he invited him back on a regular basis.  One day, one of his patients who was being prepped for surgery asked Dr. Gawande who the other individual with him was, particularly since he had a notebook in hand.  Dr. Gawande responded, "He's a colleague.  I asked him along to observe and see if he saw things I could improve."  He finishes the article with:

"The patient gave me a look that was somewhere between puzzlement and alarm.  'He's like a coach,' I finally said.  She did not seem reassured."