30 Insightful Quotes about Continuous Improvement Coaching

The practice of Continuous Improvement coaching has increased in popularity over the last decade, partly because of its clear connection with achieving superior business results. However, many managers still command action from their people, mistakenly believing they are coaching. There are many stark differences between coaching and commanding; the most significant of which being that coaching is designed to develop talent and autonomy while commanding stunts growth and develops greater dependency.

Here is a list of 30 insightful coaching quotes to give you some ideas for increasing your Continuous Improvement coaching capability:

1. “I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum potential” – Bob Nardelli
2. “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you” – Fred Devito
3. “The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable, and comfort the troubled” -Ric Charlesworth
4. “A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.” – Bobby Knight
5. “It is not what the coach knows; it is what his players have learned” – Anonymous
6. “An evolutionary coach needs to instill five qualities in their clients to support them on the journey to full self-realisation – adaptability, emergent learning, the ability to bond, the ability to cooperate and the ability to manage complexity” – Richard Barrett
7. “People thrive on positive reinforcement. They can take only a certain amount of criticism and you may lose them altogether if you criticize them in a personal way… you can make a point without being personal. Don’t insult or belittle your people. Instead of getting more out of them you will get less” – Bill Walsh
8. “The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important” – Bobby Knight
9. “You don’t win with X’s and O’s. What you win with is people” – Joe Gibbs
10. “Don’t ever ask a person to do something they doesn’t have the ability to do. They’ll just question your ability as a coach, not theirs as a performer” – Lou Holtz
11. “Leaders empower individuals by building trust and coaching competence in their job roles and networking skills” – Kenneth H. Blanchard
12. “Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else” – Pat Conroy
13. “What I learned is that if a coach lacks sufficient persistence, he will be unable to complete the critical task of finding growth opportunities out of adversity” – Seth Davis
14. “All coaching is, is taking a player where he can’t take himself” – Bill McCartney
15. “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment” – John Wooden
16. “Part therapist, part consultant, part motivational expert, part professional organizer, part friend, part nag – the personal coach seeks to do for your life what a personal trainer does for your body” – Kim Palmer
17. “A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are” – Ara Parasheghian
18. “Coaching is a unique process of human development, one that works to change a person’s life for the better and help him/her achieve a number of specific objectives” – Ian Berry
19. “The power of coaching is this – you are expected to give people the path to find answers, not the answers” – Tom Mahalo
20. “The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization’s valuable resources.” – Harvard Business Review
21. “As their coach, your job is to set the bar high, inspire them to reach this bar, encourage them, and most of all, guide them in the best possible manner and in the most supportive environment” – John Popovich
22. “In a coaching role, you ask the questions and rely more on your staff, who become the experts, to provide the information” –  Byron and Catherine Pulsifer
23. “The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
24. “Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer” – Phil Dixon
25. “The test of a good coach is that when they leave, others will carry on successfully” – Author Unknown
26. “You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within” – Bob Nelson
27. “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It’s helping them to learn rather than teaching them” – Tim Gallwey
28. “The best coaches really care about people. They have a sincere interest in people” – Byron & Catherine Pulsifer
29. “I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable” – John Russell
30. “Coaching is about helping clients unlock the treasure-chest of their lives – worth bearing in mind then that diamonds are made from coal under pressure and it’s the grit in the oyster which creates the pearls” –  Sarah Durrant

You can probably detect a pattern emerging regarding what it takes to be a great Continuous Improvement coach. The key is that the knowledge, capability, skills, ultimately get transferred to the performer (or coachee). The coach doesn’t need to have all the answers, but needs to facilitate the process of helping the performer discover the answer. The result is that the performer learns how to learn, setting them on a path unlock their true potential. Coaches are then capable of applying their time and talent toward other value-added activity; while the performer autonomously continues their own growth and works to successfully overcome increasingly greater challenges. Just remember that in a command-and-control environment, the team’s effectiveness is limited to what the leader knows and understands. In a Continuous Improvement coaching environment, the team’s effectiveness is only limited to the speed at which learning can be achieved; and that limit is being exceeded everyday.