FAQ

The figure of the Mental Coach has become increasingly important, to accompany the athlete in building performance, to support him/her in difficult moments, and to help him/her manage pre-race tension.

At high levels, the pressure of the media and the social context in which one is placedə can generate negative spirals from which it is difficult to escape, as well as create an erroneous self-perception that risks crystallising.

Conversely, an extremely favourable period can similarly generate an unbalanced situation, which leads to lulling oneself on one’s laurels.

A coach helps to look at oneself from the outside, regain one’s focus and acquire the right awareness to aspire to the best performance and to stay in the flow as much as possible (the flow or the zone).

For aə sportsperson of any level, an injury is certainly a nasty blow to absorb. The longer it lasts, the more it brings up negative thoughts, which generate a spiral of demoralisation. Athletes such as Sofia Goggia, Michela Moioli, Bode Miller, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and many others have used the period of forced stop to work on themselves and their mental strength, focusing on their grey areas and unresolved issues. It is intense but extremely rewarding because, by requiring a lot of mental work, it makes one forget about the physical injury. The result is that people often return to activity stronger and more solidly than before, and there are quite a few sportsmen and women who have considered themselves fortunate to have had a period of forced inactivity in order to be able to work on maximising their potential.

Often passionate about solo sports, mental resilience and serenity are crucial to achieving one’s goals while minimising risks. A coach acts as a mirror, allowing the coachee to explore any doubts and strive for the best version of themselvesə, identifying and overcoming the limitations that prevent them from achieving their feats (blockage at km x, fears, recurring pains, etc.).

Life in a very competitive, albeit playful and challenging, environment is often a great source of stress for young people being placed in an adult world. For example, in the case of relocation, the desire to perform, to learn, to enjoy a new and stimulating environment clashes with homesickness for home, friends, and partners. The insecurities typical of youth magnify problems that are actually small. Moments of blockage, of difficulty in learning new techniques, of exclusion from the starting roster, generate a downward spiral that often prevents one’s talent from emerging. Let us remember, however, that Kobe Bryant used to say: “if you don’t have confidence in yourself first, who must have it?”.

On the contrary, distractions resulting from the positive moment or from the praise of those around the young athlete can produce a feeling of complacency, which pushes one not to give one’s best, to reduce one’s commitment in training and competition. A coach can help guide the youngster to put the events of his or her life, both positive and negative, into a broader context, being fully aware of his or her potential, focusing on his or her goals, so that they are clear and turn them into results.

Who has never gone through periods characterised by high peaks of stress and realised it afterwards, or experienced it as a passing period that instead lasts longer than it should, perhaps becoming chronic stress? The first alarm bell is disturbed sleep, frequent nocturnal awakenings with difficulty falling back asleep. It is our unconscious that emerges, that is sending us a signal of difficulty that we cannot grasp when awake. In this case, external help from a coach can make it possible to identify what deep inside us we already know, and which can then be processed and resolved through new awareness.

Perhaps the most discussed topic during coaching sessions, it is the basis of many conversations with many people who have the same common factor, namely the goal of accepting oneself for who one is, letting one’s uniqueness shine through (Nietzsche said that each of us has his own dancing star). The coaching path helps people no longer see their characteristics as weaknesses, but as part of their inner world, which makes each of us so unique.

Naval Ravikant says ‘no one will ever be better at being you than you are’. That is a very good starting point.

If it is true that we are evolving towards a society of centenarians, we must even more than before try to maintain good fitness at all ages. It is one of the demands that are often made on a coach, such as trying to find the ability to train consistently and maintain a healthy diet. The often busy and interlocking work and family rhythms make such goals difficult to achieve, scrolling through instagram and TikTok feeds wastes many hours without realising it, to the detriment of training the body and mind.

A coach helps to identify one’s profound goals, the internal and external resources to be used to achieve them (we are looking for allies!), makes one focus on the image of his or her coachee after a year, usually a congruous period to see the result of so much perseverance and sacrifice. Bringing the end result into focus periodically is a huge help in continuing with consistent training and diet.

A very explanatory saying is: the first step is commitment, but the dream is realised with perseverance (consistency).

Who has never failed? At work, with family, with friends, with a partner, there are many occasions when it has happened to us. However, we are not our failure, which should instead be seen as a way of gaining experience.

Coachees often ask how to rebuild what a failure has destroyed, or how to get out of a spiral in which one after another is triggered, pushing them into a vortex of negativity.

Objective work on oneselfə and on the context that led to that failure helps to rework it, and to understand the root causes that made it possible, in order to depart from those patterns and to trigger a virtuous circle, making that experience a precious treasure.

Let us not forget that Charles Darwin did not graduate, changed faculties and dropped out again; he boarded the Beagle, travelled the world, discovered new species and became Charles Darwin.

Who has never started scrolling through a feed on Instagram or TikTok or other social networking sites, suddenly realising that two hours had passed? And maybe the same thing had happened in the morning! Or the frantic real-time messaging in WhatsApp, which also creates so many misunderstandings due to the non-verbal? How many things could we do in that time? How can we manage this compulsiveness, which now seems to be part of our times?

In reality, the algorithm of each social network is very powerful, and is programmed to suggest content that each of us finds interesting, to keep us from leaving the screen, but we can become aware of this and establish new, well-defined routines, to have defined goals and take time away from the smartphone (e.g. sports, reading, documentaries, studying a new language, and why not? aperitifs with friends).

During the various career levels, one faces increasing complexities, which often lead to emphasising certain problems that until the time of promotion, or the fateful change of boss, one had managed to manage. Personal/work life balance, boss management, conflicts with certain colleagues, team management are just some of the issues that those working in an organisation have to manage and reconcile.

Working with a coach makes one reflect on what tools to use or awareness to activate in order to manage a balanced and happy life. It is a space totally available to the executive, to be able to reflect together with a professional on himself and the situations he experiences.

Never before have Einstein’s words, according to which it is folly to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, been so true.

During one’s career, one is promoted, one changes companies, one takes on transversal responsibilities. It is a very delicate period in which you are extremely at risk, and you need to make an assesment as soon as possible of the situation you are in, the quality of the team you lead, possible allies and non-allies, the best type of relationship to establish with your boss, and so on, in order to be able to share these assessments as soon as possible with your manager, possibly after one month, then three and finally six.

A coach can support the coachee in this process, helping him/her to remain objective and observe the different spheres of the company’s reality in the most agile way possible, stimulating his/her capacity for analysis and self-assessment.

One of the most important awarenesses to awaken is that of ‘promoting oneself’, i.e. detaching oneself from the old role and immersing oneself in the new one as soon as possible. It is not certain that the skills that served for promotion will also serve in the new role.

In this case it might be effective to adopt Coaching together with Mentoring, carefully separating the two activities.

According to Il Sole 24 Ore, only 25% of companies survive to the second generation of entrepreneurs, and only 13% to the third. One of the main difficulties entrepreneurs face is related to managing effective and structured plans for passing on the business to their children. The initial idea is to involve them in day-to-day activities in order to let them experience the business world from the inside, often working alongside experienced managers.

While this approach is very effective, it also resembles the ‘one size fits all’, or one-size-fits-all, approach. It does not take into account the children’s inclinations, relying instead on a pragmatic approach imposed by the parent, which often conflicts with their aspirations.

A coach can accompany the entrepreneur to focus on the characteristics of each son/daughter and to map out the various areas of the business in a very clear way, so as to understand which ones will best fit the characteristics of each one.

Once the right pieces of the jigsaw puzzle have been identified, a strategy can be identified that is based on the task that best suits the individual characteristics, so as to exponentially increase the chances of success, and to make the heirs work in harmony, each at ease with his or her own Ikigai (a Japanese term for raison d’être).

After clarifying who is best suited to do what, the entrepreneur could create a map of people in the company who can support the children/children in their growth.

It is crucial here to work on oneselfə as if in front of a mirror, to understand what is best for one’s heirs, not the entrepreneur. For a person accustomed to making decisions, this may seem a little destabilising at first, but after understanding the succession plan in its entirety and witnessing the first successes, the realisation that they have done what is best for the company will be created.

Anyone who has experienced an emergency situation in a company knows this. No matter how much we may have plans for dealing with emergencies, something unexpected always happens. In extremely complicated moments it is very difficult to think clearly, and it is even more difficult to deal with the people around us if they are panicking.

A sad but not uncommon emergency is the sudden death of the entrepreneur. In such a difficult situation, heirs often do not have the lucidity to deal with the many decisions that have to be made very quickly, and several individuals end up taking advantage of this. There are many successful companies that have closed their doors or changed hands after such an event, without proper remuneration for the successors.

A coach can serve to allow the emergency event to settle in as soon as possible, and to be able to focus on the steps needed to get out of it, without being crushed by the many urgencies typical of such events. The use of a mentor to manage the first phase may also work well.

The most frequent discussions among colleagues in the company are related to work/life balance and, if when you start your career you usually plan to make sacrifices to get promotions or to look good to your boss, even when you become CFO, CSO or CEO you are often crushed by your responsibilities and the myriad demands, inevitably ending up sacrificing your private life, weekends and nights included.

I have personally witnessed situations in which the boss was a very early riser, and asked his staff to have meetings very early, even at 7 am. We are talking about top-level executives, who in some cases had to cancel days off to attend meetings that were not even strategic after all.

There are probably several reasons behind this continuous sacrifice of one’s private sphere, such as a strong sense of self-denial, an imbalance between the two spheres of private/work life, a situation of prolonged stress that makes one lose lucidity, in some cases even an identification of the corporate world as a family (very wrong).

Discussing this with one’s coach can bring out the motivations behind so much time spent working, gaining the right awareness and in some cases realising how far one has gone. But also by identifying the best strategies for living a fuller life, being able to understand how to say those no’s that at the beginning the coachee experiences with guilt, but which after a focused path are experienced as a simple affirmation of one’s own boundaries to be respected.

A focus: in this regard, the attempt to limit Smart Working by some top management also generates a lot of frustration and limits the possibility that this tool gives to regain possession of one’s own time and space. It usually stems from a desire for control over resources, but even in this case, targeted conversations with one’s coach can make it possible to fully enjoy the spaces available, and to acquire the right peace of mind to demand smart working policies that are consistent with the needs of employees, avoiding harmful conflicts. I.e. make explicit the benefits for the company if the coachee works in Smart.

I am often contacted by young entrepreneurs who ask me for advice or to meet with me to figure out how to give structure to their startup, which until then was founded on an idea, passion, and a group of people who shaped a more or less brilliant intuition.

Aside from giving some advice based on basic rules, I always explain that there are no business theorems applicable to all businesses, but that every organization has its own DNA, unwritten rules to be codified, and that the first step is to do a self-analysis, so that the entrepreneur understands for himself what he needs, what he feels is not working, what notes he perceives as out of tune, and whether he has an image in mind to strive for.

A coach can be useful to walk this path together, to create these awarenesses and identify weaknesses and strengths, to make sure that the structure to be set up is solid and perfectly adaptable to the reality on which it will rest, like a second skin that will be accepted easily by the whole organization.

In my opinion, such coaching activity can achieve the best results when combined with Mentoring and giving final shape to the start-up as a structured organization through targeted strategic and management consulting, taking care to separate the three activities well.

In this period, outsourcing or outsourcing are the key to avoid fixed costs, usually the bane of many start-ups.

Some data: recent studies curated by Startup Genome have shown that innovative startups have a mortality rate at 18 months after birth of about 92 percent-meaning that only 8 out of 100 survive.

Sales Representatives have to learn how to communicate key offers to the customer, handle any objections, and finally close deals.

Managers often try to do coaching in 1:1 or group sessions, but what they really do is give feedback based on observation of recent performance or customer feedback.

To do real coaching, managers need to receive it themselves, based primarily not on sales techniques, but on the behaviours and characteristics that will enable them to get the best out of their teams, exploiting their full potential. This is called Sales Coaching.

Given the constant difficulties Sales Executives experience, one often sees a fallout on their cognitive agility and emotionality, resulting in stress that cascades to their team members, who are often burned out.

Managers are often seen managing negotiations themselves, often focusing on individual deals, at the expense of the Sales Representatives’ credibility or otherwise not helping them to build the set of attitudes necessary for their business development.

There is therefore a clear need for coaching Sales Mgr’s, working on the mindsets and behaviours that lead to high performance, to make them flourish in their working lives.

From an ROI perspective, the good news is that such an investment in coaching usually shows a quick return, based on a clear increase in Sales.