The Triple Test to Know If You're Coach Material

Wondering if you are coach material? This lesson shifts the question from whether coaching helps you to whether you could build a career as a coach, and it hands you a quick self-test to find out. It is for professionals, whether you work in web development, marketing, or graphic design, who feel drawn to teaching and guiding others.

Could you really become a coach?

The first thing you need to accept is that becoming a coach is not a small decision. You might already have a career in user experience or design, and the challenge here is to picture yourself walking a different path, or maybe a parallel one, as an educator and coach.

And here is the part that surprises most people: you will not undertake one path, not two, but three at the same time [00:52].

What are the three careers of a coach?

Becoming a coach means building what the lesson calls a triple career [01:05]. Each one demands its own time, study, and experience:

• Your career as an expert in your domain, the field you are already very good at.
• Your career as an educator, where you study learning processes, motivation, psychology, and pedagogy.
• Your career as a service provider, where the focus stops being about you and becomes about helping others.

The key insight is that all the time you invested in your first career needs to be replicated in the second. Being great at your craft is not enough; you have to learn how people actually learn.

What does it take to become a coach? You need three parallel careers: mastery of your field, skill as an educator who understands how people learn, and the mindset of a service provider focused on helping others rather than yourself.

What does a day in the life of a coach look like?

A real coaching day is far busier than delivering a single class. Behind every session sits hours of invisible work [02:32]. These are the daily activities that fill the schedule:

• Doing research in one of the three areas: technical, educational, or service related.
• Preparing sessions and building the content before teaching.
• Coaching itself, which is the core activity and takes a substantial part of the day.
• Selling and marketing, because every so often you have to explain why someone should invest dollars in your services.
• Demoing, which means performing without charging so people can sample your work [03:59].

That rhythm repeats every single day. Before you decide this is for you, it is worth asking whether you could do all of that for a living, not just the fun part of teaching.

How do you know if you are coach material?

Here comes the practical part: a very simple triple test built around three questions [04:38]. Answering yes to all three does not automatically make you a coach, but it signals you have the potential to develop a coaching career.

The three questions to test your coaching potential

Work through each one honestly and give yourself a check mark for every yes:

1. Have you found yourself giving professional advice to others, and hearing them say "great idea, I hadn't thought about that"?
2. Have you received good, unsolicited feedback, where someone thanks you later for advice that genuinely helped them?
3. Have you found yourself being referred, where people point others to you because you are known for good insight?

Three check marks mean you are coach material, and it also means this course fits you.

What is the coach material test? It is three yes-or-no questions: do you give good advice, do you receive positive unsolicited feedback, and do people refer others to you? Three yes answers mean you have real coaching potential.

Why is unsolicited feedback important for coaches? Because positive feedback nobody asked for is the most honest signal that your advice truly works. When someone stops you in the street to thank you, that reaction proves your guidance has real value.

The next modules move into the skills you need to develop to actually become a coach. For now, run the test on yourself.

Share with the community: are you coach material? Tell us what you reflected on, read what your classmates responded, and let's see how many potential coaches are in the room. Now go and amaze the world.