I just read an article in the New Yorker about a surgeon at his professional peak who enlists the help of a coach to improve his abilities. He talks about the importance of coaches in the careers of top athletes and wonders if other top performers can benefit from the expanded sense of possibility that a coach can offer. He finds a program that provides coaches for teachers, and learns that Itzhak Perlman depends heavily on the external judgement of his coach (who is also his wife). Musicians and actors regularly enlist the help of coaches to hone their crafts and stay relevant so why not surgeons, teachers and anyone else who wants to keep pursuing excellence after they’ve reached their peak?
Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence. The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short. This is tricky. Human beings resist exposure and critique; our brains are well defended. So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
So the question the article poses is: Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?
