I’ve got a problem with coaches. Not all coaches mind you, just the ones that set themselves up as motivators, but have no technical knowledge about the subject at hand. This is especially true of the trendy new job of ‘life coach.’ Now a newly published study by Amanda Goodall, Lawrence Kahn, and Andrew Oswald (Opens in PDF) finds that having expert knowledge of the thing you are coaching definitely matters. The Abstract of the report says “We show that a strong predictor of a leader’s success… is that person s own level of attainment, in the underlying activity… Our data come from 15,000 professional basketball games and reveal that former star players make the best coaches. This expert knowledge effect is large.” How Large? The report finds substantial evidence that the difference between having a coach who never played

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