Coaching In Dr. Gawande's Story, Personal Best

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Coaching is an integral part of helping achieve one’s maximum abilities. Dr. Gawande (2013) explains that, “Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy” (p. 3). It is difficult to say what is the exact function of a coach, however, they help bring forth another point of view different from our own and they also help bring about the right mindset in order to subdue a weakness.

Coaching. Unleash your Potential Dr. Gawande’s own story, Personal Best (2013), describes the event in which people tend to reach a plateau and perceive to be in a state in which people have nothing more to learn. As a highly educated surgeon, he measures his level of success based on his low rates of complication after surgery in comparison to those of his peers at the national scale. Dr. Gawande never considered the benefit or the idea of having a coach up to this point. Early on, he is unaware of the potential that can be reached with the assistance of a coach. This is soon realized during a medical meeting while playing tennis. From get-go Dr. Gawande felt that he himself had mastered his serve, describing it as being the very best part of his game. His skills had even hit a plateau at the age of …show more content…

The more we use our brain, the “stronger” it becomes. “Scientists have found that the brain grows more when people learn something new and less when they practice things they already know” (Health & Science, n.d.). In this sense, Dr. Osteen opened up a new world for Dr. Gawande to over come his plateau and to observe his practice from another point of view apart from his usual routine surgeries. His feeling that there was nothing more to learn was merely because his practice involved the same routine and same techniques which didn’t allow for

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