3PL Perspectives
Chris Jolly | FREIGHT COACH ENTERPRISES
COACHING IN A professional setting can be viewed in multiple ways. Individuals are either extremely receptive to the idea, or vehemently against it! Some of the biggest hurdles we face in our professional career is the thought of asking for help, as we do not want to show that we are vulnerable to our co-workers, customers, or peers alike.
Having a great coach or mentor is invaluable as you progress throughout your career. There is so much to be learned, and sometimes the best perspective is a fresh perspective. Throughout my life, I can attribute most of the successes I have experienced to coaching. Whether it was through athletics, a college professor, or a co-worker who had forgotten more about the industry than I knew. Those experiences of having that guidance in my most vulnerable moments helped shape me in more ways than I can count!
Why is coaching, or asking for help viewed in a negative light? Most of the people we look up to have a network of coaches that guide them through their days. The way I see it, if Tom Brady or Serena Williams utilize coaches to continuously hone their skills, why do we avoid it in business or sales? If you hire a personal trainer to assist you in achieving your health goals, why not hire a business or a sales coach to help guide you in your professional life?
We need to be in a constant pursuit of improvement, and that comes from surrounding ourselves with people who will push us. As a coach, my job is not to help you maintain who you are today, but to assist you in becoming who you are capable of being tomorrow. Sometimes hearing the hard truths are beneficial to our overall growth. We can all improve and get better; it just takes looking in the mirror and accepting that we need to get better.
There are so many tools at our disposal right now and access to information is at an all-time high! Everyone will look at the cost of a course, or a membership, or even a book! But they never look at the cost of being in the EXACT same place year after year without showing any improvement. What is that worth to you? To me, complacency is the ultimate killer of dreams. Complacency will cost you, in the long run more than anyone knows, until they reach that point in their life where they look back and think to themselves “What if I took that leap of faith and invested in myself?”
Having the outside influence of a coach to push you to your limits is invaluable. Everyone speaks about wanting to improve, and wanting to get better, so why not act upon it? Partnering with the right coach can set your organization on a trajectory that you might not have been able to reach by yourself, and in a shorter timeframe. I would almost guarantee that if you added up all your discretionary spending on quick fixes, it would pale in comparison to what hiring a coach initially would have cost.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone in your corner who wants nothing in return except for you or your organization to succeed? Someone that is at your disposal to work with and bounce ideas off and have nothing but you or your company’s best interests first? That is what comes with working directly with a coach, we succeed when you succeed. Having a coach is a direct extension of your leadership team to tackle the tasks that you might not have on your priority list due to time constraints. Coaches can provide continual training to your staff and implement change strategy after working directly with you. Or, maybe from a leadership perspective, having a coach to help guide through a transitionary period is what is needed. To me, the value of having the right coach working with your organization is invaluable and the possibilities for growth are truly endless! You need to find the right coach for yourself or your organization; one that meshes with the culture and the vision for the future, and not every coach out there will fit that profile.
To me, having a coach that has sat in the seats and has direct experience in the industry they are serving is always going to be a step ahead. The little nuances that they can relate to, and utterly understand what your team is facing through experience, will always supersede theory in my opinion. If you are still not open to the idea of a coach, consider the downside of merely having a conversation with someone who has worked in this industry. Or better yet, what is the downside of not having that conversation. Will it be another year of stagnant growth? Will it be another year of lost time? Or will it be another year of looking back and thinking “What did we actually achieve this year?” These are questions I would be asking myself if I still think coaching is not worth a try.
Chris Jolly has 14+ years of experience within transportation with the bulk of his experience in freight brokerage. He is the founder of Freight Coach Enterprises and the host of “Coffee w/#TheFreightCoach” podcast. His experience within freight brokerage includes operations, sales, and leadership ranging from start-ups to one of the largest brokerages within transportation. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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