Serve Up Success: How Coaching Volleyball Helps You Excel as a Customer Success Manager
- kimberwallace6
- Jan 18
- 5 min read
Leadership is an essential skill for Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Account Directors. In both of these roles, you’re responsible for driving customer satisfaction, guiding teams, and ensuring long-term relationships with clients. But what if the foundation for these leadership skills could come from a completely different field—like coaching high school volleyball?
It may seem like an unlikely connection, but coaching youth sports, particularly at the competitive level, provides invaluable experience that can translate directly into leadership skills needed in customer success and account management careers. In this post, we’ll explore how coaching volleyball at the high school level helps build essential leadership traits that can propel CSMs and Account Directors to success in their professional careers.
1. Team Building: The Foundation of Strong Relationships
In volleyball, as in customer success, everything is built on collaboration. As a coach, you’re tasked with creating a cohesive team where each player knows their role, trusts their teammates, and works together toward a common goal. This mirrors the dynamic between CSMs or Account Directors and their internal teams, as well as the relationship they build with customers.
When coaching a volleyball team, you learn how to:
Foster trust: You need to establish trust between players and yourself, and among the players themselves. Similarly, in a CSM or Account Director role, trust is a cornerstone of client relationships. You build trust by consistently delivering on promises, maintaining open communication, and ensuring clients know you are their advocate.
Promote communication: Effective volleyball teams rely on seamless communication on and off the court. As a coach, you need to ensure that your players understand one another’s signals and anticipate each other’s moves. In customer success, you need to create a communication flow between clients, stakeholders, and your internal teams, making sure everyone is aligned and working toward the same objective.
Create a sense of unity: Just as each volleyball player has a specific role, every member of a customer success or account management team plays a part in delivering value to the client. Learning how to unify people toward a shared goal is an essential leadership skill that translates directly into managing customer accounts and leading a team to success.
2. Problem-Solving and Adaptability
In competitive volleyball, you’re constantly faced with new challenges—whether it’s an unexpected injury, a change in opponent strategy, or a shift in the team's energy. As a coach, you need to quickly assess the situation, adapt your strategy, and make decisions that will keep your team on track. This fast-paced problem-solving experience is invaluable for a CSM or Account Director, where circumstances change constantly, and the ability to think on your feet can determine the outcome of a customer relationship.
Adaptability: Coaching teaches you to adjust strategies based on the team’s performance and external factors, just as you must adjust your approach to meet a client’s evolving needs. Whether you’re troubleshooting issues or pivoting when new obstacles arise, the ability to adapt quickly is crucial in both coaching and customer success.
Real-time problem-solving: On the court, situations develop rapidly, and you have little time to make adjustments. Similarly, when working with clients, issues can arise unexpectedly. Whether it’s addressing a customer concern or mitigating a challenge in the delivery of your service, the ability to solve problems efficiently and effectively is a critical leadership skill that coaching helps you develop.
3. Mentoring and Empowering Others
One of the most rewarding aspects of coaching is helping your players grow both on and off the court. You aren’t just training athletes; you’re mentoring them, encouraging them to push past their limitations, and providing feedback to help them reach their full potential. This mirrors the role of a CSM or Account Director, where guiding and empowering clients, as well as developing internal teams, is central to your job.
Building confidence: Just as you teach players how to believe in their abilities and take risks, you must help customers feel confident in using your product or service. Your role is not just to provide a solution, but to equip your clients with the tools, strategies, and mindset to succeed.
Constructive feedback: In coaching, feedback is essential for growth. You learn how to give feedback that motivates, encourages improvement, and helps players build their skillsets. Similarly, as a CSM or Account Director, providing constructive feedback to both clients and internal teams is vital for continuous improvement and success.
Empowering others: A successful coach understands that the best teams have players who are self-motivated and take ownership of their role. In customer success, empowering your clients to use your solution effectively and fostering autonomy within your team is a key leadership skill.
4. Goal Setting and Accountability
In volleyball, setting clear, measurable goals—whether it’s improving serve accuracy, increasing team coordination, or winning a certain number of matches—is key to progress. As a coach, you learn how to break these goals down into actionable steps, monitor progress, and hold players accountable.
SMART goals: The process of setting Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals is a powerful tool in coaching and can easily be transferred to customer success. For example, you might set a goal for your team to achieve a certain level of customer retention or reduce churn by a specific percentage. Setting these clear expectations with clients and ensuring that progress is tracked are skills that are honed through coaching.
Accountability: Coaches hold their athletes accountable for their performance, and similarly, CSMs and Account Directors must ensure that both their clients and internal teams meet their objectives. Accountability is essential for achieving the desired outcomes and reinforcing the importance of continuous improvement.
5. Conflict Resolution and Emotional Intelligence
Conflict is inevitable in both sports and business. Whether it’s a disagreement between team members or a client’s dissatisfaction, your ability to handle conflict and manage emotions is crucial. Coaching high school volleyball teaches you how to manage conflicts, keep emotions in check, and bring people back to the common goal.
Managing emotions: Volleyball players experience a lot of highs and lows during a match, and as a coach, you must help your team navigate these emotional challenges. Similarly, in customer success, you must manage both your own emotions and those of your clients. Emotional intelligence helps you empathize with clients, manage stressful situations, and remain calm under pressure.
Conflict resolution: Whether it’s resolving a dispute between players or addressing a client’s concerns, effective conflict resolution is a skill that both coaches and CSMs share. The ability to listen, mediate, and find solutions that work for everyone involved is a vital leadership skill that comes from experience on the court.
Conclusion: From Volleyball Court to Boardroom
Coaching high school competitive volleyball is an excellent way to develop the leadership skills that are essential for success as a Customer Success Manager or Account Director. The experience of leading a team, adapting strategies, mentoring others, setting goals, and resolving conflicts provides a solid foundation for building strong relationships, problem-solving, and driving results in your professional career.
So, if you’re a CSM or Account Director with a passion for volleyball or youth sports, consider how these coaching experiences can enhance your leadership skills and help you thrive in your career. Not only will it enrich your personal growth, but it will also make you a more effective leader, driving success for your clients and your team.
Comments