Bonus Material: Are You Qualified For Business Coaching? Learn What Makes An Ideal Coaching Client.

What Does A Business Coach Do?

Having the right expectation of the coaching engagement will ensure maximum results. Though coaches may be individually dissimilar in their methods of operation and techniques, there is some baseline expectation you can have from working with coaches, some of which include:

Self-inquiry

Probably the first thing you should expect from coaches is questions – lots of open-ended questions. Business coaches will engage you with probing questions like:

Why did you engage in your company?

Why did you choose this particular business to take on?

What specifically do you love about the business?

In what ways do you desire your business to change? Etc.

Such questions will provoke deep personal thought about yourself and the business. Though it can be invasive and sometimes uncomfortable, the results are worthwhile and totally worth it. Self-inquiry is where coaching begins.

You can expect your coach to pose questions that you may never have even thought of before, which will help you explore and uncover your actual values, mission, fears, and way of thinking. With these questions, you’ll be able to explore your beliefs, discovering the things that inspire/terrify you, as well as the things that keep you bound and derail you.

With this, you must get a coach you’ll be very open to and transparent in all things. Trust is a critical element of the coaching procedure.

Assessments

Being a business owner, you may already be aware of certain things you’re quite good at, things you love doing, and areas you’re weak in. The business coach makes use of assessment tools and criteria to uncover and better understand your strengths and weaknesses and their impact on the current trends of the business.

For example, you may believe you’re good at financial management but can’t account for the company’s financial transactions. The business coach will help you identify what you’re truly best at and where you’re holding the business down.

With an outside perspective, the business coach has a better vantage point to pinpoint areas where you’re wasting efforts or investing in vain. In some cases, the solution is to delegate specific responsibilities to other, more capable personnel to better focus on your string suite.

Our coaching firm has a 36 point coaching scorecard system that lead to 36 coaching modules in areas that include leadership to marketing to media to sales to processes to time management to hiring to accounting and everything in between. This assessment helps us to prioritize areas to work on and gives us a baseline that we return to as we measure our clients’ improvements.

This self-assessment phase demands a great deal of honesty and vulnerability, and a good coach will always try to instill a sense of safety and support through this phase.

Developing A Business Road Map And Following Through

Most often, business owners have goals for their business, pointing to where the business should be in a certain period. Still, the absence of a concise roadmap will shipwreck such lofty visions and expectations.

You can expect business coaches to aid in developing feasible plans towards achieving set goals. A good roadmap should account not just for anticipated successes but also for challenges and unexpected obstacles.

The way it works is, you and your coach will create a plan with attainable daily and weekly steps and an accountability partner to monitor progress. This will enable the coach to deduce your fears and limiting beliefs when you fail and your strong suites when you do succeed.

Professional Standards and Values With Business Coaching

Like all other professional fields, you should expect pristine professional standards and values in the business coach, with qualities like trust and patience at the helm. Core values like integrity, faithfulness, trust, and respect should be clearly evident in the business coach, seeing you’re entrusting a great deal in their abilities. With such, you can rest assured, knowing you’re in good hands.

How Long Does Business Coaching Take?

When it comes to the length of business coaching, several business coaches employ different methods to achieve results and so the length of time required may vary from one business coach to another. Even the number of sessions needed will vary from coach to coach, and may also depend on what you’re seeking help with.

For the most part, business coaches work with their clients for about 6 to 18 months. The sessions come to an end when all the goals have been reached, or whenever the client wishes the business coaching session to end. Coaches aim to work at their client’s pace and shouldn’t normally rush any decisions, or take longer than necessary working on a particular project.

Is a business consultant the same as a business coach?

The roles of business coaches and consultants are undeniably essential in rescuing failing businesses, but their functions are slightly different. The main difference between a business consultant and a business coach lies in how you choose to achieve the next business level.

Business consultants pay attention to the organization and modus operandi of the business, teaching processes, and systems pertaining to their fields. This can include:

Managing payroll and accounting issues

Determining whether or not an idea is profitable.

Restructuring teams.

Minimizing the costs of operation

Implementing a functional marketing system

Business consultants are primarily concerned with identifying problems and developing solutions to them. They have an eye for existing inefficiencies in the business, and they prescribe fixes from a vantage point not easily attainable by someone within the organization.

Business consultants vary from business coaches in that coaches pay attention to the individual growth of the people and ideas central to the business’s success.

Generally speaking, coaching can take two major phases:

Raising awareness.

Prompting action based on that awareness

In any way, this doesn’t suggest that coaches leave you to navigate your path to the next level on your own with this new degree of awareness. As a matter of fact, some business coaches perform all of the above roles of consultants. But they also bring to the table tools and processes to enable you to become a better and more efficient business owner. Their focus isn’t just a better, more successful business, but also a better life with clarity of purpose and intent for the future. Business coaches will work with you to ensure a clearly stipulated vision of your company and long-term and short-term goals towards attaining the said vision.

In the words of Sir John Whitmore,

“Coaching is a management behavior that lies at the opposite end of the spectrum to command and control.”

A business coach doesn’t just tell you what to do to attain success but works with you to find the best possible path forward, considering your vision for your life and natural abilities. It is a cooperative effort to overcome challenges and create substantial progress in yourself and your company.

Is Mentoring the same as Business Coaching?

It is easy to confuse mentoring with coaching, especially as they both bring to bear years of experience to aid the business owner. However, the main difference between the two is, mentoring focuses on providing advice to the entrepreneur owner on the way forward based on their own personal experiences.  Coaching serves a more intimate role in aiding the owner in planning and accountability, ensuring that the business owner finds satisfaction and fulfillment in the business venture.

Can You Be Coached?

Coaching is a great tool to better your business, but it may not apply to every scenario. But are you coachable? Before considering a coach, you should consider some questions:

Do you truly seek a partnership that will challenge you to think critically and more intently than you currently do?

The coaching exercise’s success rests mostly not just on the coach who desires to get coaching clients, but also on the business owner. As such, you must be prepared mentally to bear the challenge.

Are you ready to encounter innovative and intuitive processes in the coaching process to bring out the best in you?

This will definitely drive you out of your comfort zone, and you must be ready to explore new things and new methods of doing things; else, the coaching process will fail.

Are you genuinely excited to maximize your personal and professional potential and ability?

Such excitement is a good sign you’ll be willing to explore new ideas and strategies.

Are you ready to play your part in the coaching process?

Coaching isn’t a one-way process centered on the coach; it depends on the business owner’s cooperation to reap the benefits, and you must be willing and ready to participate in every step of the way.

Do you accept that growth comes from daily practice and commitment and will take time?

Coaching isn’t a quick fix or an overnight wave of a wand to get the results. You must be willing to commit every step of the way to the process and develop the intended habits for success and growth, both personally and of the business.

Are you ready to be the best version of yourself?

There must be that desire to be the best you can be, to maximize your potential and ability, both for personal and business advancement.

Not everyone can be coached, and if you answered “yes” to these questions, then you’re ready to work with a business coach.