Business Coaching Can Take You to the Top of Your Game
Succeeding in business gets tougher every day. The increasing pace of technological change, punishing workloads and evermore ferocious global competition are just some of the challenges that require business people to be at the top of their game.
To help develop the necessary leadership and functional skills, more and more owners and executives are turning to business coaching.
While business coaching has been popular with Fortune 1000 executives for years, only recently has there been much interest at small and midsize companies. This trend makes a lot of sense. Midmarket companies often have less of a cushion for mistakes. And they have fewer internal managerial resources. Thus a coach can sometimes make the difference between victory and failure for both the executive and his or her company.
How Business Coaching Can Help
Depending on the needs of the particular executive and business, coaches can help by:
- Encouraging discipline. It’s easy for business people to postpone critical tasks. Sharing your goals with your coach means that if you don’t complete them, he or she will require an explanation and commitment to buckle down and get them done.
- Developing your ideas. Some of your ideas may need refinement. An experienced coach has acquired a working knowledge of hundreds of marketing, sales, customer service and team-building strategies and knows how to adapt them to your business.
- Sharing a wealth of business growth strategies. When you’ve just “run out of ideas,” a coach can provide fresh ideas from his or her broad experience.
- Providing contacts. When you need contacts or resources for your business, such as expansion capital, investment advice and professional services, your coach has a network of business contacts and knows where to find the information you need.
- Giving you perspective from the outside. Over time, you lose the ability to see your business with the same objective clarity that you once did. Your coach can take a fresh look at you and your business. He or she knows what to look for and, most importantly, sees what your customers or clients see.
How do Business Coaches Work?
The business coaching process typically begins with a meeting between the executive and the prospective coach. The coach must develop a basic understanding of the challenges facing the executive and his or her business. The executive must evaluate the coach in terms of background to learn whether or not the coach has the experience to provide meaningful support and assistance.
Both parties must also gain a level of confidence and mutual respect. The coach-executive relationship is based upon candor, trust and confidentiality so both parties need to feel comfortable before beginning a coaching program.
Once this comfort level is attained, the next step is to assess the executive’s managerial and functional skills. Based upon the results of the assessment, a program is developed that focuses on those areas identified as opportunities for improvement, both personally and professionally. Basic improvement goals are established so that progress can be measured as the coaching program unfolds.
Like any mentoring relationship, success is dependent upon the commitment of the executive to the improvement program. Success can be measured many ways but is always based on the executive’s goals and purpose for seeking coaching.
Some coaches are qualified to act as a sounding board for key issues and decisions. For example, who does a CEO turn to if he or she wants to evaluate a particularly sensitive matter? A business coach, particularly one who has CEO experience, can be an excellent resource for counsel.
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Comments
One Comment on Business Coaching Can Take You to the Top of Your Game
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Kevin Jackson on
Wed, 25th Mar 2009 8:46 am
Please see the below blog written by one of our clients in reference to our 90 – Day Planning Session held last week in Stratford, CT:
A TIME FOR OPPORTUNITY
“I read a blog today about how plant seed sales are expected to grow by 25% this year because of the economy and people’s desire to get back to basics. Small business too has the opportunity to do the same-get back to the basics. I attended a seminar of about 35 small business owners last week and the issues are the same across many different businesses.
One resounding theme was that there is tremendous opportunity as well.
Opportunity for available talent, that a year ago was unheard of,
Opportunity for acquisitions,
Opportunity to get back to the basics of good business practices.
Now is a time to look at our businesses to cut waste, NOT to stop spending, because as one of the business owners pointed out that will only perpetuate the problem, but an opportunity to run a leaner organization. One of the speakers said, “Sales hide all sins.” That’s very true, when sales are up you can overlook a lot of things. Now is a time to take a deeper look at your business so that it is lean and mean for when the economy turns. It’s a great opportunity to take time to prepare your business, get your systems in place, fine tune your processes so you are ready, so that you are still standing when others may have fallen.
Another recurring theme of the day was that when business is good, people tend to be isolated and don’t need anyone (except their customers of course) but when times get tougher people tend to need each other more and we are seeing a surge in good old fashion networking. Competitors are even helping each other out -as good will lives in a down economy- that to me was nice to hear- human nature of the small business owner-to help each other.
The small business community will get us out of the mess that the corporate giants have gotten us into. We spent the entire day sharing our pains, strategies, challenges and successes and I came away from the day with a renewed sense of hope in the knowledge that we are not alone in our challenges and that through positive support of each other and a vision to see the opportunities and not just the pains, we will not only survive but will thrive through this.
If anyone is interested in a community of small business owners preparing to thrive- click here to learn about the next session and fuel the small business movement to turn the economy around.
We work daily with our customers to help them utilize technology and strive to be not their vendor but their trusted business communications partner- all of our customers are small businesses we want to help thrive. If you think we can help you- give us a call 203-649-6405 we are all in this together and will need to work together to get out of it.”
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