Red Flags of Coaching: What to Avoid & Look for When Choosing a Coach

Andrew provides some helpful frameworks that may be more familiar to listeners: hiring an employee or choosing a contractor or company.

We’re essentially outsourcing a part of our life to someone who should be able to help us move toward our goals. Whether we don’t have the time, bandwidth, expertise, or detachment to coach and program for ourselves, a coach can enhance our physical fitness.

A coach’s values and experience matter here. People can spout platitudes, but a person’s track record is a better predictor of future behavior. Do your values align with the coaches? What athletic experience does the coach have? What types of people does the coach work with, and toward what goals? Does the coach have high turnover or churn?

You may have the ability to do an interview with the coach. If not, you may consider the initial bit of coaching a trial run (and, let’s be honest, even if you’re all-in on a coach or coaching system, it’s probably because you’ve learned about that system or coach over time, through social media, a podcast, or something like that).

Some red flags include:
-high churn (not keeping clients for long periods of time)
-inflexibility or rigidity (my way or the highway)
-not asking about circumstances or situations (e.g. how much time do you have to train, what are your goals?)

It’s important to listen to your intuition here. You’re inevitably being vulnerable to come to a coach, so you should build trust with the coach over time. The coach should not betray that trust. That coach will need to push you into discomfort, but ignoring your feedback, fears, or current abilities is a bad sign.

What should you look for in a coach? Pretty much the reverse of the red flags. A good coach should have a track record of success and longevity with clients and should have principles and beliefs but apply them to a client’s circumstances.