What John Wright would have told to Sachin Tendulkar?

I have been an ardent lover of cricket from childhood. 

During the 2000s, John Wright, a New Zealand Cricketer, was appointed as the coach of the  Indian cricket team. John’s appointment was special, because he was the first foreign national to take that role. He  and  the then captain Sourav Ganguly had an amazing chemistry between them. Results were evident, which started off with India winning the historical Eden Garden test against Australia after being asked to follow on. The VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid’s record-breaking partnership happened during the follow-on and rest as they say is history. Subsequently, Indian cricket has gone through an amazing transformation,  with the  grooming a lot of raw talent into world-class players. Virendra Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh are some names who eventually became champions of the game. 

As a college student, I used to wonder about the role of a coach in a team. For example, what will John Wright be telling to star players like Sachin Tendulkar? Will he tell him to improve his straight drive, which was already a gold standard at international level? Or what kind of conversations will he be having with other champion players in the 15 member squad who were picked up from a country of 1.3 billion population? These questions and my curiosity remained unanswered for a long period of time. 

On the professional side, I moved on and started growing in my corporate career. When I started taking up leadership roles, I slowly started  realizing the importance of coaching. My journey as an entrepreneur has further amplified that view.  Having been coached by amazing mentors at different timelines, I somehow started getting answers to a bunch of questions about Cricket and John Wright. Here are my top-3 learnings as a coachee. 

L1: Thought Clarity

Often as leaders, we get less time to pause and reflect. Getting buried into day-to-day responsibilities leaves us overwhelmed – with never ending meetings, handling customer escalations, team conflicts and tracking a bunch of projects. This makes us focus more on the what and how aspect, often forgetting the most important why aspect. The why is all about bigger vision or deeper purpose for which we execute things on a daily basis. By deep diving into why  brings amazing thought clarity. This eventually reinstates the fuel inside leaders, which often runs out due to execution pressure. 

As Leaders, we most often get tied up with day-to-day How aspects, missing the bigger Why aspect

In most of my coaching sessions, my mentors always dig deep into this why aspect. I am sure they  are also aware that I will as always figure out the what and how aspect by myself. I also felt such discussions often put me out of my comfort zone. The more I was pushed out of my comfort zone, it always resulted in something better for me and my whole team,  for example- better team performance. As a leader, having thought clarity is supercritical, for which my coaching sessions immensely helped me. 

Cutting back to Cricket, I am pretty sure John Wright most likely would have focused on this aspect, resulting in multiple benefits which we get to see as a spectator and fan. 

L2: Tools and Techniques

My second learning from coaching is about getting tools, techniques and resources from the coach, which is working for them already. Here is the list I got from my coaches in the recent past:

1. A set of books to read, recent examples include:
   1. The New Earth
   2. The Power of Now 
   3. Speed of Trust
   4. EQ from the inside out 
2. Videos are quick and very effective tool. Here is a couple of them:
   1. How great leaders inspire actions
   2. Objectives and Key Results (OKR Framework)
   3. How Vulnerability makes you a good leader
3. White papers:
   1. Jumpstart your why
   2. Succinct, Specific and Generous

In a world that is overflowing with information, having such specific and helpful resources builds  a healthy habit of continuous learning. This also helped me develop a growth mindset. 

L3: Questions, Questions and more Questions

This is my favorite when it comes to coaching. In most of my discussions with coaches, they end up talking less but ask sharp questions. The best part is, they don’t expect answers immediately, rather leave  it to the coachees to figure them out by themselves. In fact, the coach himself may not have answers. In one of my coaching discussions, my coach asked me a set of questions about EdTech, whereas he comes from a software development background. This works as a blessing, thereby making the  coaching process a win-win exercise for both the coach and coachee. 

Questioning opens up tons of possibilities for the future, especially the ones which doesn’t have immediate answers

As leaders, we may not have all the answers in a VUCA world. Only by applying constant thinking followed by execution can make things happen. Coaching comes as an important aspect, which helps leaders to cut through the noise and make it a rejuvenating experience. Being ready to get coached and coach others in the team has become an integral element of VUCA leadership.  Being a coachee has been an incredibly humbling, retrospective and a learning experience for me, I hope to start my journey as a coach for my team soon. 

I still might not have 100% answers about John Wright and what he might have done inside the dressing room with champions like Sachin Tendulkar and other players. But I have a fair idea about how he made talented players produce results at international level. We as leaders are always measured by how well our team is performing and delivering results, for which coaching acts as a fuel. 

Are you ready to get coached and coach others? 

PS: As I write this blog, I am in the process of reading the book ‘Coaching the Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership’ by Ruchira Chaudhary. It has given more insights into coaching, will write a post on that shortly.