About

Hi everyone, my name is Kevin Foley and I will be writing this page under the screen name Coach/Manager.  I am a senior, graduating in the spring of 2016, at a state university majoring in business administration.  Preparing for a job in the business world has taught me how important being more than a manager is to the success of an organization.  Growing up my teachers and classmates always called me a leader, but what exactly does that mean.  I was not usually first in line for things, why were they calling me a leader, but as I grew older, it made more sense what they were talking about.  Being a leader is partly innate, but also takes practice and learning just like any other skill, talent, or ability.  Harnessing the leadership potential and learning from my experiences have led me to be a manager of a team of employees at a young age.  I spent time learning leadership techniques and ideas to differentiate myself from other job seekers.  This, along with the curriculum for my degree, encompasses my educational background.

          Leadership is just part of the title of my page, another part is coaching.  My father is a high school coach and has been for over 20 years so I grew up around the profession.  I started coaching when I was a junior in high school working with 5^th and 6^th graders as a basketball coach.  Over the last six years, I have coached athletes from 5^th to 12^th grade in football, basketball, and baseball, coaching at least one season of each sport for the last 3 years.  The more I studied leadership and the more I involved myself with coaching the more evident it became that the two were very closely related.  In most environments, a good coach is a good leader and a good leader is a good coach.  My quest became to get better at both as it seemed the two would be synergistic and not just summative. 

          I became a manager at a grocery store recently mostly based on hard work, which is how most people get promoted.  I wanted to be more than just a manager though; I wanted to be a coach and a leader for my team.  This dynamic is an interesting one, as half of my coworkers are older than me while the other half is obviously younger.  Managing people across different age groups can be hard enough, but I wanted to be their leader. 

Many young people find themselves getting promoted to being managers based on their exceptional performance, only to find that being a manager is hard work if you are not prepared.  This blog will examine some of the resources I have used to advance in my learning, along with reviewing some of my experiences, both good and bad.  Using my experiences and my insight as a young manager myself, I hope to provide answers to some of the questions young managers like myself have when taking that next step in their career.

Please visit my Contact page if you wish to get in touch with me.