Is Business Coaching For You?
Business coaching is a non directive relationship between a business coach and a business person that focuses on
delivering real business and personal benefits.
The business coach supports, motivates and inspires the business person to work out their own solutions, develop insight
and achieve more than they would on their own. This includes the business coach listening, questioning, challenging,
providing feedback, bringing a different perspective, being a sounding board, helping the business person sort out the many
and complex issues of running a business and the business coach sharing their business knowledge and experience with the
business person. The business coach is non directive, non judgemental, positive, open minded, flexible, curious and
maintains confidentiality.
However when may you decide to use a business coach? Here are some examples of circumstances that prompt business people
to seek the help and support of a business coach:
Business performance. You may be struggling to grow your business to where you want it to be and want
support to get the growth you want and to remove the barriers to growth. Equally your business may be growing too quickly
for you to keep control of it and you need support to manage the growth. You may want to step back from the day to day of
running your business and need support to develop a longer term strategy and plan. You may want support to improve
profitability, start new products and services or maximise business productivity. A business coach is well equipped to
support you with all these areas to improve your business performance.
Personal effectiveness and performance. One area of running a business or working in a senior position which
is often overlooked is your own personal effectiveness and performance in the workplace. Coaching can support you with
improving your personal effectiveness and performance. Examples of areas that coaching can help with are time management,
keeping focused, decision making, resilience, management and leadership of your team, delegation, confidence, work/life
balance, being more productive and improving your business skills and capabilities
Stress and overwhelm. Business people often seek coaching when they feel stressed and overwhelmed, when they
are going through a stressful period, when they are trying to deal with a particularly stressful situation or when they
want stress management tips and strategies to help them to handle stress positively at work or in their business. How you
handle stress can have a big impact on the success of your business and your performance in your role.
Thinking. Coaching can help you with your thinking, support you to understand how your thinking may be
impacting the business performance and your own performance at work and give you the space to step back and really think
about your business. You may have lots of ideas but want to discuss these with a business coach or you may want to find
more innovative and creative solutions to business challenges. A business coach can help you to look at the different
options and ideas and to generate new ideas.
Confidential sounding board. It can be very lonely running a business or working in a senior position as who
can you turn to for support for you and your business. You can seek a business coach to act as your confidential sounding
board. They will be totally focused on you, listen to you, share your successes and challenges and support you to achieve
you business goals and objectives. Having someone to talk to can make a big difference to how you feel and the success of
you and your business.
State of mind. Your state of mind can impact your performance at work or in your business, both positively
and negatively. Whether this be keeping things in perspective, thinking rationally, learning from experience, being
realistic or maintaining a positive state of mind. Coaching can support you with all of these areas.
Communication and relationships. How is your communication? Are you struggling with some of your
relationships at work or in your business? Coaching can support you to improve your communication and relationships
(whether this be with colleagues, staff, shareholders, suppliers or customers) by increasing your own self awareness,
increasing your awareness of others, understanding the impact you have on others and improving your communication skills.
Challenge. Do you want someone to challenge you and expand your beliefs of what is possible? A business
coach will ask you questions and challenge you to help you to think more widely about your business than you would on your
own, to see things from different perspectives and to expand your beliefs of what is possible.
Business knowledge and experience. Do you want to increase your business knowledge and experience? A
business coach works with many different businesses and covers many different areas of business. By sharing their knowledge
and experience and by supporting you with your business and in your role you will increase your own business knowledge and
experience to help you in future.
Specific business issues and challenges. A business coach can support you with many different business
issues and challenges whether this be business change, restructuring, dealing with difficult clients, supplier
negotiations, improving profitability, or poor staff performance. Where you are struggling with an issue or challenge you
may want to ask a business coach to support you in dealing with it.
These are just some examples of circumstances that prompt business people to seek the help and support of a
business coach. You may have other things going on for you that you feel a business coach may be able to help you with.
Author: Liz Makin
Published: April 2016
Makin It Happen has a range of personal development online courses to purchase, created by Liz Makin, including anxiety management, communication, resilience, soft skills, stress management, time management and coaching. Liz Makin also provides personalised business coaching, business mentoring and stress management services to business owners, directors, managers and professionals.
Please email Liz@makinithappen.co.uk to
arrange a
FREE consultation session to discuss our business coaching,
business
mentoring and stress management services for business owners, directors,
managers and professionals.