Teaching chess to executives / professionals

Hello there!

I have been a chess coach for a while, but most of my experience is with elementary school students; I have never coached adults.

Recently, the opportunity to teach chess in the corporate world presented itself, and I'm wondering about it.

So, let me ask you, Chess.com forums...

1. Do you have any advise on how to do this?

2. Could you suggest some books / resources / curriculum that may be interesting for executives and professionals?

Thank you so very much for all your help.

-AV

I've never taught such people chess, but I'll bet the following book would be of high interest to them:

Kasparov, Garry, and Mig Greengard. 2007. How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, From the Board to the Boardroom. New York, NY: Bloomsbury USA.

It's not at all a how-to-play-better-chess type book, so you wouldn't want to use it as a textbook for practical play, but it is exactly the kind of general background knowledge that businessmen, politicians, and military personnel could use, and my guess is that many of them are learning chess merely to learn what general lessons of life chess has to offer them that relate to their own careers. Therefore my guess as to one very good strategy to teach such career people would be to start with general principles, at least in some lessons, and give specific examples from games, openings, and moves that demonstrate those principles. Note that this is the opposite direction in which children are typically taught.

----------

(p. 16)

   The distinction between tactics and strategy will be important to us

throughout this section. Whereas strategy is abstract and based on long-

term goals, tactics are concrete and based on finding the best move right

now. Tactics are conditional and opportunistic, all about threat and

defense. No matter what pursuit you're engaged in--chess, business, the

military, managing a sports team--it takes both good tactics and wise

strategy to be successful. As Sun Tzu wrote centuries ago, "Strategy

without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is

the noise before defeat."

Kasparov, Garry, and Mig Greengard. 2007. How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, From the Board to the Boardroom. New York, NY: Bloomsbury USA.

i dont think it would be much different to be honest - only difference is that younger people are more open to changing their ways and are less worried about how they are perceived by others - they can be honest

older people care a lot about how others perceive them, even to the point where they will be scared to ask questions that will help them improve - so i think trying to create a less competitive environment (work envionrment is usually petty) and encourage people to understand that its okay to not be a champ day one is key

I don't pay much attention to ratings, and the last chess tutoring company at which I worked required only a 1200 rating for their instuctors, so it's quite believable to me that a low-rated player could have been hired by someone to teach chess to executives, maybe based on the instructor's other personal attributes or personal connections that we don't know about. Maybe some of what you say is true, but I'm just answering the OP's question without prying into someone's personal business. The idea is of teaching executives chess is a very interesting one, and this thread has got me wondering if I could organize something like this on my own for a little side income. It's a very interesting thread and idea, regardless.

You are right, Sqod, there is more to the story than just my rating here, in chess.com. As the leader of my organization, chess has been instrumental for me to navigate some very important changes that came our way.  That is what got me the idea, in the first place, to teach other leaders the fundamentals of chess. Because of my personal connections, I asked around about this idea and there seems to be, at least on the surface, a real interest.

Thanks for the book recommendation. I'll look into it.

Great point! And considering that these would be leaders withing their organizations, this may become an issue (the fear to show some weakness in public, specially if there are subordinates in the same group). 

I guess this is something the HR person and I would have to talk about.

The following is a list of instructive chess books suitable for ANY player who has yet to add "Master" to their chess title.

You may discover some titles which would be helpful resources in your tutoring efforts, whether for children or adults.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

Good luck in your endeavors!