Roger Federer is considered by many to be the greatest tennis player in the history of the sport. Winner of 17 Grand Slam events, including a record eight Wimbledon titles, the Swiss native is renowned not only for his unsurpassed technique but for his grace under pressure. No matter the circumstances, Federer is the master of cool and impossible to rattle. Yet it wasn’t always that way.

Early in his career, Roger Federer was a temperamental nightmare. Confronted by either a blown point or what he considered to be a bad call by the line judge, Federer would consistently lose his poise, glare, curse, even throw his racket. The result was a string of lost matches and rising frustration.

Asked about his youthful antics, the tennis star said: “It was bad. My parents told me to stop it or they wouldn’t come along with me to my tournaments anymore. I had to calm down but that was an extremely long process. I believe I was looking for perfection too early. Back then I wanted to show everybody what I was capable of, the difficult strokes I had mastered.”

Searching for a solution to his problem, Roger Federer looked to Peter Carter. The Australian-born Carter was a former player who had turned to coaching. Like all good coaches, Carter immediately recognized that Federer’s difficulties were not in his stroke but in his head. For all his bravado, the young star was at heart insecure, more focused on showing the tennis world that he belonged than on winning the next point.

Carter’s first step was to get Federer to understand that a men’s tennis match is a grueling, five-set event won not by fancy shots but by patience and control. He also exposed his protégé to a mindset that psychologists today refer to as imposter syndrome: a belief that you don’t really deserve your prestige and success and that you will ultimately be found out. Early on, Peter Carter realized that it was Federer’s fear of being embarrassed in front of his friends and family that was causing him to tense up at critical moments in a match. Together, the two men worked at replacing this fear with a confidence earned by hard work and the determination to win.

Today, when asked about his former coach (Carter died in a car crash in 2002) Federer lauds Peter Carter for instilling in him the work ethic for which he has become well-known. “Having a strong work ethic is very important for Australians, so I think I profited a lot from that and early on for me Peter Carter was a very important man just overall for my character.”

Stories like Roger Federer’s are common in the world of sports. Think of great athletes and, more often than not, you associate them with the coach who helped them attain their full potential: Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson. Lawrence Taylor and Bill Parcells. Joe Torre and Derek Jeter. What’s surprising is that stories of great coaching are far less common in the world of business even though an executive coach is equally, if not more, critical to the success of a CEO or company.

The view from the C-Suite

One of the prevailing myths in business is that of the solo entrepreneur; the masterful individual who possesses not only a unique and singular vision, but also the temperament, insight and people skills to make that vision a reality. Rather than the norm, such individuals are outliers.

The truth is that the majority of Presidents and CEOs come up through the ranks. Some gain their acumen through business school, others via frontline experience. While many are well-rounded, few possess all of the attributes necessary to run a company. Like every successful athlete, CEOs need to both refine and enhance their skills as they grow into the role. Which is why, like every successful athlete, every CEO needs an executive coach.

What exactly is an executive coach? One way to define such an individual is a professional who helps you move from where you are to where you want to be, and does so by focusing on your goals. The problem with such a definition is that many CEOs are uncertain as to what their goals should be. Not because they lack confidence, but because the skills that paved their way into the C-Suite aren’t the same skills necessary to run the business.

Consider the employee benefits industry. Chief executives come up through the ranks, usually through sales. Yet success in sales is rarely the sole barometer for success at the corporate level. Running a company requires multiple perspectives, many of which are outside either the experience or education of the CEO. An executive coach enables you to expand you views, thereby gaining the perspective you need to succeed. An executive also helps the CEO look inward. Only by understanding who you are — your beliefs and principles — can you hope to understand and inspire all of your company stakeholders.

Moving beyond the mission statement

Some think that executive coach’s primary role is to help the CEO craft the company’s mission statement. While this may be one of the tasks to be accomplished, it’s important to note that a mission statement is just words. And words mean nothing without the beliefs that put them into action. Not simply the beliefs of the CEO, but the shared beliefs of the company’s managers and employees. Otherwise the words, no matter how elegant or uplifting, will ring hollow to even the most receptive ears.

How does an executive coach help the CEO not only create a company culture of shared beliefs, but also put those beliefs into action? By enabling the CEO to gain focus.

Understanding what matters

For most of us, focus is a challenge. For a CEO, it can be near to impossible. Pulled from every side, far too many CEOs spend their days down in the trenches, either in endless meetings or putting out fires. One of the roles of an executive coach is to get the CEO to recognize that such activities are of secondary importance and better tasked to others.

The position of CEO is like no other job in the organization. The challenge faced by an executive coach is to get the CEO to embrace the unique nature of the job by focusing on the CEO’s three most important responsibilities: Setting the company’s overall vision and strategy and communicating it to all stakeholders; recruiting, hiring, and retaining the very best talent; and making sure that the company’s key performance indicators (KPIs) are transparent, understood and accepted by all managers and employees.

Each of these three areas is represented by a single word: Culture. People. Numbers. Every day, every task undertaken by the CEO should be directly related to improving one of the pillars of this trinity. A properly focused CEO does these three things and nothing else. Anything that distracts the CEO from these areas is delegated to someone else.

Think back to Roger Federer. From the moment he steps onto the court, he’s confronted by a cacophony of mental and physical distractions — from the thousands of fans cheering in the surrounding stadium to the countless expectations of his friends, family, business managers and sponsors. Only by embracing the true nature of his role, is he able to find the inner calm that enables him to block out the distractions and focus on what really matters — winning.

The same holds true for the CEO, who is confronted each day by a similar array of distractions. By working closely with an executive coach, a CEO is able to develop strategies for delegating the dozens of secondary activities that vie for his attention and focus on the three things that matters most: Culture, people and the numbers.

Trey is the Chief Executive Officer of Taylor Insurance Services, Managing Director of trinity | blue, an executive coaching consultancy, and the Founding Partner of Ascend Partners, an equity investment vehicle focused on the Employee Benefits space.

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Why every CEO needs an executive coach

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