What is Performance Coaching?

I am a performance coach, I am the Studio Director of Acting Coach Scotland, I coach acting at the studio, but for the most part of my job, I am a performance coach. But what is a performance coach, and what is performance coaching?

A performance coach is a coach whose expertise lies in helping people to enhance their ability to do something. And although I mainly coach performing artists, the ‘performance’ in performance coach, relates not to performing, but to the performance of any job, task, sport, project. Due to this, I have worked with HR Managers, Lawyers, Teachers, Doctors, Dentists, Business Leaders – as well as musicians, dancers, actors, directors and writers.

Performance Coaching is a series of conversations or session in which the coachee is encouraged to set achievable goals on the way to larger goals, to develop their self awareness, to identify and overcome any obstacles, to plan and prepare, and (although this is not what all performance coaches would do –  to use the tools available to the sports and performance psychologist to ensure that the coachee can get out of their own way.)

Most performance coaching is non-directive, meaning they do not tell the coachee how or what to do. However, directive performance coaching is always a powerful resource in the back pocket of the performance coach when the coachee may have lost their way or need a knowledge intervention. A knowledge intervention is when the coachee cannot move forwards without become conscious of something that they were previously unaware. They cannot know what they do not know. In my field of performing arts, because I have a performance experience, I can make an intervention, in dentistry, I would require the coachee to find their own best source for a knowledge or skills intervention.

Performance Coaching is NOT giving advice or being the expert in the individual’s field. It is not counselling, although there may always be some small elements that are similar when dealing with the human being holistically, it isn’t fixing people, or doing their task for them.  Performance coaching is not teaching, it is usually helping the coachee find their way to the best level of performance possible.