High Performance Library: “Second Set of Eyes”

It’s often said, in both academic and practical work, that coaches are performers in their own right. Like athletes, coaches are required to manage their emotions and actions under pressure to deliver the performances their athletes need to then deliver their own exceptional performances. This is even true in the daily performance environments; coaches are required to motivate the athletes they work with while providing feedback and instruction, all of which may require some elements of a performance.

We often feel that asking for help is a sign of weakness, but, instead, it’s a crucial part of developing our performance potential and becoming experts, says @craig100m. Share on X

Similarly, if a coach has a bad day—their mood is low, or they’re tired—their ability to effectively coach (i.e., their performance) will likely suffer. Like any performer, success does not come without practice, and a disciplined approach to developing the knowledge and skills to deliver the required performance, at the required time, is needed to truly deliver high-performance outcomes.

If an athlete came to you and wanted to improve their performance, you’d likely suggesting coaching in some capacity—maybe even your own coaching services. And yet, as coaches, we’re often not open to being coached ourselves. This is somewhat of a paradox: we know that coaching enhances performance, and we know that coaches are performers…and yet coaches very rarely have their own coaches.

Coaching the Coaches

Cody Royle, who views himself as a coach of head coaches, is trying to change this through his most recent book, Second Set of Eyes, which delivers an essential, compelling argument for why coaches need a coach. Royle refers to his coaching practice as a second set of eyes; someone who is focused on the individual’s coaching skills and how effective they are.

Typically, this is more focused on what we might term the “softer” skills of coaching—i.e., the how to coach as opposed to what to coach, such as interpersonal skills and the coach’s own well-being (and I often find it ironic, given all coaches know about human performance, that they often fail to apply this knowledge to themselves). This also includes their overall leadership ability—a crucial, but often under-considered, aspect of coaching. According to Royle, modern coaching—especially at the highest level—is no longer about the Xs and Os, but often focused on leading athletes and staff across the organisation, which requires developing leadership potential, maximising wellbeing, and relentlessly pursuing new knowledge.

As Royle writes in the prologue, “Winning in the current landscape is not about your individual brilliance; it’s derived from your ability to elicit collective greatness from every person within your organisation.” Are you good at this? How do you know? How do you improve? That’s the job of your second set of eyes, your coach.

If an athlete came to you and wanted to improve their performance, you’d likely suggesting coaching... And yet, as coaches, we’re often not open to being coached ourselves, says @craig100m. Share on X

In the first chapter proper of the book, Royle identifies the biggest myth in coaching—essentially, that we can do it all ourselves. We often believe that there is a linear relationship between hard work and success, with more always being better. Royle terms this Chronic Individualism, which is characterised by being a workaholic, things never being good enough, and an endless search for more. We often think that doing these things makes us strong leaders, but we’re not—we’re broken and burnt out, which means we can’t perform to the best of our ability, and we therefore let our athletes down. We think that we’re tough because we demonstrate absolute self-reliance and total availability.

I’d argue, as I’m sure Royle would, that working hard all of the time is paradoxically lazy—it’s easy to work hard, but it takes far more courage to set boundaries, focus on what is actually important, and ensure you can perform at your best. Royle provides the example of Emma Hayes, the incredibly successful soccer coach who only had eight weeks off following the birth of her son (and the stillbirth of his twin) before returning to elite coaching—largely due to the culture of chronic individualism that pervades elite sport. However, since becoming a mother, Hayes has developed a whole new perspective with regards to compassion—both to others and herself. She now better understands that her role as an elite coach is to create an environment that can operate successfully without her—a big shift away from chronic individualism that allows her, and those she works with, to perform at their best.

Part of this myth of coaching is due to what research has identified as the greed of coaching: the duties often associated with being an elite coach are highly demanding, both in terms of time and energy, such that the person can’t dedicate any further time or energy to things outside of work (such as their family, friends, hobbies, or health). It’s common to view what happens inside sport as separate from what happens outside—but, to the individual, they aren’t. Stress at home can lead to underperformance in the job; similarly, spending time building bonds with people in your personal life can make it much easier to build bonds in your professional life. Speaking from experience, I find that being a parent gives you lots of transferable skills to sports coaching—so, the more I can be a present parent, the better I can become at coaching.

So, what’s the solution?

We need to move away from the culture of always working, from individuality and self-reliance, to the opposite poles—protecting time away from work, working as part of a larger group, and sharing the load, says @craig100m. Share on X

Royle highlights that we need to move away from the culture of always working, from individuality, self-reliance, and almost competitive presenteeism (“who can work the longest?”) to the opposite poles—protecting time away from work, working as part of a larger group, and sharing the load. This includes bringing in an additional set of eyes, often as a way of forcing you to make these changes. And by making these changes, you allow the rest of the performance staff to grow, as a true leader should—making it even easier for you to protect your non-work time.

Dedicated Practice and Objective Feedback

In the second chapter of the book, Royle outlines how great coaches actually get coached. He draws on the work of Anders Ericsson, whose pioneering work explored mastery and deliberate practice. Ericsson found that experts have coaches who can provide constructive feedback, who can identify an aspect of performance that requires improvement, and who challenge them to drive to higher levels. Ericsson’s work highlighted the importance of feedback, with experts being hungry to receive feedback as a way of enhancing their growth.

The issue for head coaches is that, by virtue of the job title, people already believe they are experts. They believe you don’t have self-doubt or performance anxiety, and that you don’t need feedback, says @craig100m. Share on X

The issue for head coaches, however, is that, by virtue of the job title, people already believe they are experts. They believe you don’t have self-doubt or performance anxiety, and that you don’t need feedback (or, at least, that it’s not their job to provide feedback). This can make it hard for head coaches to develop their own expertise—they actually can’t get the constructive feedback they need to improve. This is why it is crucial to have a person—a second set of eyes—who can seek out and provide the feedback needed in a format you’re most likely to listen to. But it’s also crucial that the coach is open to receive the feedback and deliberately carves out the space and time to actively work on themselves. This is another reason why the myth of being able to do everything ourselves is harmful—it reduces the time and energy we can dedicate to our own development. As Royle writes in this chapter, the best player development is coach development. By developing ourselves, we can better drive our team to success.

In a later chapter, Royle then moves on to what the primary skills of a second set of eyes are. The most common way that coaches, including head coaches, seek to improve their performance is through developing their technical skills via traditional learning methods—a course or a seminar, for example, focused on, say, training session design. However, to truly develop a high-performance coach, Royle believes it’s far more effective to understand—and therefore develop—the human qualities required to be an exceptional coach.

Royle describes elite coaching as “high performance knowledge work” (“knowledge work” being the term developed by management guru Peter Drucker to describe how a person’s work expands the knowledge available to a given organisation). Essentially, as a head coach, your ability to think provides the most value to your team. This is similar to research from coaching science experts Andrew Abrahams and Dave Collins, who wrote in a 2011 paper that a key skill for coaches is in their decision-making ability. This decision making can either be classical (termed CDM – classical decision making), in which we have time to weigh various options, or naturalistic (NDM – naturalistic decision making), which is about using intuition and heuristics to make decisions quickly with imperfect information. This requires a variety of mental skills and abilities, such as attentional capacity and control, pattern recognition, memory, intuition, creativity, and self-regulation (of both emotions and behaviours). It also requires us to communicate effectively and be very self-aware.

Anyone who is a parent will tell you that, when your kids get tired, their self-regulation goes out of the window. And the same is true for adults, including coaches—the more tired we are, the worse we are at making decisions. Decision making is what makes us good at our jobs, and yet we consistently allow ourselves to be placed in environments that degrade our ability to make those decisions well. Taking time to work on yourself and having the self-discipline to be healthy and happy seem selfish, but by not doing this, you are harming your own performance. By proxy, you’re harming those you’re tasked with developing and leading. We need to start viewing the coach as a performer, and, as result, set aside time to improve our performance through dedicated practice. We often feel that asking for help is a sign of weakness, but, instead, it’s a crucial part of developing our performance potential and becoming experts.

Working hard all of the time is paradoxically lazy—it’s easy to work hard, but it takes far more courage to set boundaries, focus on what’s actually important, and ensure you can perform at your best, says @craig100m. Share on X

This is what a second set of eyes can do. They can provide you with an objective assessment and perspective on what good looks like, where you are now relative to that, and how to improve. This can include how to optimise your self-awareness, communication, and decision making, which allows you to create better coaching sessions (and, as a result, spend less time working because you’re more effective with the time you do have). Meanwhile, this also ensuring your wellbeing is optimised to support your coaching performance, which, in turn, allows your success to be sustained. You’re far less likely to experience burnout and/or mental ill-health—aspects that we’re quick to protect our athletes from, but not ourselves.

Performance Equals Potential Minus Interference

In the final two chapters, Royle introduces Gallwey’s Equation (from the book The Inner Game of Tennis):

Performance = Potential – Interference

The role of the second set of eyes, for Royle, is to guide the coach in eliminating—or at least reducing—interference. This, in turn, places the coach in a state where they can achieve peak performance. This involves developing intuition (the NDM I mentioned earlier), which better prepares coaches to read people, and, ultimately, teams. The coach themselves may also be the interference, as reflected in a quote by Danny Kerry:

“The thing that often gets in the way of performance is the coach. The coach will do an awful lot to prepare the team, but often they’re the handbrake or the glass ceiling.”

Again, elite coaches can use a second set of eyes—their own coach—to ensure they’re not the issue that limits the performance of the athlete or team they work with.

Elite coaches can use a second set of eyes—their own coach—to ensure they’re not the issue that limits the performance of the athlete or team they work with, says @craig100m. Share on X

Overall, Royle’s latest book really resonated with me. I’ve been working with my own coach for over two years now, to better prepare me for my two key roles, one as a team leader and one as a lead coach. Through the process, I’ve undertaken a 360 feedback process, which enabled me to better hone in on my strengths and understand my weaknesses. I’ve become better at dealing with difficult situations and managing complexity.

Alongside my main coach, I’ve utilised a secondary coach to build my capability to design and deliver training sessions that work towards the end goal that I’m trying to achieve. This coaching has been incredibly useful to me—I don’t think I’d be where I am today without it. As a result, I am in full agreement with Royle regarding the need for a second set of eyes. For me, every high performance coach should actively be working on their own development, but, crucially, this development rarely needs to be technical in nature (or at least not solely). I’d recommend that everyone involved in sport read this book, reflect on the core messages, and then take steps to improve their own performance. Coaches are, after all, performers in their own right—it’s about time we treated ourselves as such.

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