It would seem that winning and success coaching should go hand in hand, right? Well, perhaps, perhaps not. Does winning equal success, or can success be measured in some other way?

If you think of winning as merely a competition against someone else, than winning is success in that one competition. If you cheat to win, do you really win? Once again, perhaps or perhaps not. Did Mark McGwire break the single season home run record. Yes, he did. Did Barry Bonds break McGwire’s record? Yes he did. But, they are both suspected of using steroids and their achievements are now tainted. They won and they lost.

Winning and Success Coaching Go Together…But

Success coaches need to teach winning, so winning and success coaching do go together. But success coaching is about more than winning. It is about being a winner. Being a winner doesn’t mean you beat the other guy; it means you achieved what you set out to do. On the sports field, winning counts; that’s why so many players used steroids. In life, winning is more about achieving your goals and reaching your dreams. A success coach can get you to the mountaintop of your dreams…and help you stay there.

Did Bernie Madoff win because he made so much money? Would his success coach, if he had had a success coach, be proud of him? It is very doubtful. Bernie Madoff left a financial mess in his wake and ruined the lives of many people, including those in his own family. Bernie Madoff sits in jail right now. Not a winner.

Winning and Success Coaches

To be a successful success coach, it is important to have a good understanding of what winning means. You can talk about success, achievements, goals, and dreams all you want, but eventually the word “win” or “winning” or “winner” will come up. You should have your own definition and you should certainly talk about it with each client to find out what a client thinks about winning and success coaching.

Remember Charlie Sheen using the term “winning” while he was getting fired from his popular television show. For him, winning may mean that the show was better with him than it is without him. But, his rants left plenty of collateral damage and if you sum together all of his actions, most people wouldn’t say he won. Yes, it’s true that he has plenty of money, hot women still flock to him, and he has a new television show, but did he come out of it looking like a winner? It is doubtful a good success coach would think so.

Definitions of Winning

Here are a few definitions of winning that are useful in success coaching:

• Setting realistic goals and achieving them through hard work, perseverance, and, and careful planning.
• Making measurable progress toward a goal, whether it be financial, health, career, or life related.
• Understanding that effort is as important as outcome in many situations. Yes, those values you were supposed to learn in youth sports do matter in the adult world.
• Earning respect, admiration, and personal satisfaction in a venture, a job, an undertaking, or a career.

Winning and success coaching can have hundreds of other definitions, and clients may have their own, but most of those can fit somewhere into the four definitions listed above.

The dictionary defines the word “win” as: 1) to achieve victory or finish first in a competition, or 2) to achieve success in an effort or venture. Success coaches would focus on the second one and leave the first one to those in athletic endeavors.

John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, may have provided success coaches with the best definition of winning: “…if you make the effort to do the best of which you are capable, that is success.” That is winning and success coaching in its simplest form.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article…Thank you!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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