I will admit that I am happy that the San Antonio Spurs won the NBA title this year. I have been a Spurs and Tim Duncan fan for many years. Now that I have made all the Heat fans mad, I will explain what a lead in like this had to do with investing?
After the finals ended I heard an interview with Sean Elliott who played for and won a championship with them several years ago. In the course of the interview he was asked what he attributed the success of the Spurs (they have won several titles over the last decade). “Was it their coach or their star player or some combination of both?” His answer is where the relationship between basketball success and investing success come together.
San Antonio’s star player is Tim Duncan (one of the NBA’s all-time greats). Elliott observed that while the coach, Greg Popovich (acknowledged as one of the best in the game right now) is a superb coach, Duncan has given Popovich permission to coach him and that Duncan’s leadership of the team meant that the other players had bought in as well. Now, in an age of “me-ism,” in professional sports (and in life in general), this is something that is highly unusual. Most collegiate and professional “stars” have never seemed to have caught on to the fact that there is no “I” in t-e-a-m!
What is a coach?
When it comes to investing, most investors (even Warren Buffet had a coach—Ben Graham) could benefit from a coaching relationship. However, like Duncan, for the coaching relationship to be a successful one, the individual must give permission for the coach to “coach!” Absent that permission the coaching experience must, of necessity, fail!
A coach, aside from teaching and even re-teaching fundamentals on an ongoing basis (something that is necessary in all coaching relationships) and helping to put it all together for an investor has other important responsibilities to the relationship. Perhaps most importantly a competent investment coach will refuse to allow an investor to execute any strategy that he or she believes is harmful to the investor’s long-term goals.
In other words, the coach will refuse to be an enabler or facilitator of negative behavior and will say NO—as well as provide the necessary discipline to keep the investor on course towards the realization of his or her long-term goals.
Absent this permission to coach, any competent coach will necessarily refuse the engagement and, if already engaged and the investor wishes to change the terms of the relationship, terminate it when the investor becomes “un-coachable!”
Are you coachable?
So the question for all investors is: “Are you in the hands of a competent coach or is your advisor an enabler or facilitator who will allow you to do whatever you wish—even if they know it is harmful and detrimental to your long-term investment success.
Are you coachable and will you give permission to be coached? Are you willing to be an active participant in the coaching process or do you wish to just sit back, passively, and “trust” and “hope” that your adviser is working in your best interests? If it is the latter, you are not coachable!
Will you allow your investment coach to say NO to you when necessary and supply the necessary discipline to enable you to succeed as an investor?
Are you ready to be coached toward attaining a successful, long-term investment experience?
Last, but not least, if you think you don’t need a coach, keep in mind that the best of the best, whether in athletics, entertainment, business or the professions all have coaches to help them reach the highest plateaus of success in their chosen endeavors.
I would like to hear from each of you. Are you coachable?
by Jim Hancock
Comment on this Blog, send me an email: jhancock@proinvestmentcoach.com, or call me at 208-520-4674.