In college and professional athletics, Assistant Coaches serve in an apprentice role for Head Coaches. They develop their talents and skills under the tutelage and guidance of a successful coach as they learn the ropes about how to someday guide their own team.
If the head coach is an effective developer of talent, they push assistants to take the next level-job at another school or team. The best of these assistants become head coaches themselves and start the process all over with their own group of assistants.
The Coaching Tree of a Head Coach is exactly what it sounds like — a visual illustration of who they have mentored and where those folks are now serving as successful head coaches. Those head coaches then have their own branches. And so on.
In the world of athletics, the coaches with a superlative Coaching Tree are considered the best of the best. Not only can they succeed with their own teams, but they can transfer their knowledge and skills to others.
Great leaders outside of athletics would be smart to consider their own Coaching Trees. A clear sign of a special leader is the track record of those they have mentored and developed, whether those mentees go on to great success elsewhere or inside the original organization.
Charting out the leaders you have developed and learning where they are now can be an illuminating exercise. Visualizing the impact you have had on others can reinforce the importance of developing others. It can even underscore why you do this work in the first place.
A leader’s true legacy is in the relationships they touch directly and indirectly for years to come.
Your Coaching Tree displays this legacy, so you know where you stand. How healthy is your tree? Is the labor of your leadership bearing enough fruit?
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
