THE WHO WHAT HOW AND WHY OF BUSINESS AND EXECUTIVE COACHING

Today’s Business Owner and Executive has huge demands placed on him/her by the company they work for, by their employees, customers, family and friends. How do they cope with these demands? How can they achieve maximum job performance, stay motivated, meet all the demands placed upon them? If the Business Owner and Executive wants to do all this without feeling stressed out and even achieve personal fulfillment and happiness each and every day, working with a Business and Executive Coach, can be the answer.

So what is specifically business
and executive coaching?

It is a process where a coach personally partners supports and assists with problem solving and encourages Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, Executives, and Professionals with the development to achieve their business and personal objectives. Coaches are totally devoted to the client’s well-being and success, and are sometimes a sounding board, often a mentor, and at times, a challenger. A coach many times will be instrumental in creating a “shift” from how the client views or responds to a particular problem to a different, more effective way of dealing with the particular situation.

The Coach assists their client with making the most of themselves and their opportunities in the most efficient and fastest tactile approach possible than going it alone. The goal is to greatly benefit the client while saving them time, money and personal anguish.

Personal and Business Coaching is a relatively new profession about 20 years old. Coaching in its present form began in the 1980s. Thomas J. Leonard, is considered by most to be the founder of today’s professional coaching. He was a financial planner living in Seattle and was assisting his young affluent clients how best to invest their six-figure income. During these discussions, Leonard learned that his clients were looking for more than the basic financial planning advice. He discovered that they were very interested in investigating the larger personal issues and goals of what they really wanted to achieve in their business and personal life and needed some guidance with that as well. They were not looking for a therapist to deal with any emotional issues. What they were seeking was an independent third party that they could brainstorm with and help them with figuring these issues out. There was so much interest in this area, Leonard decided to change his financial planning practice to a "life planning" practice. The term coaching was suggested by one of Leonard’s clients. By the end of the 1980’s Leonard was teaching others how to coach and in 1992 he founded Coach University a leader in coach training with over 7,000 coaches operating in 38 countries. In 1994 he also founded the International Coach Federation a large association of professional coaches with over 130 chapters worldwide.

What can a Business Coach do specifically for you or for your company?

There are 2 basic forms of business coaching. Coaching for the individual executive and coaching for a group of company employees. Many major companies have made coaching a core part of executive and employee development including IBM, Microsoft and the Marriott Hotel Corporation.

Business Coaching can take on a variety of topics. Typical objectives and goal oriented results are as follows:

• You are having trouble with consistency and effectiveness in your leadership role
• You become a dynamic, inspirational, effective leader.
• You just don’t seem to have enough time in the day to get everything done you need too
• You have not only enough time to resolve your business issues but also end up having more leisure time as well.
• You feel like you are not getting through to your employees or they are not seeming to understanding the tasks at hand
• You improve your skills of relating to your employees and at the same time greatly improve their comprehension abilities
• You are having trouble balancing the demands from job and those of your family to relieving your personal stress
• You are able to prioritize and gain the feeling that you are fulfilling both your business and family needs effectively.
• You need to increase sales which seems to have stalled or are just not coming fast enough
• You are able to not only meet your sales quotas, but also exceed them.
• You or your employees just seem to be doing the job and not really deriving any feelings of personal accomplishment from a job well done,
• You or your employees are now able to achieve a feeling of being greatly satisfied about the job.
• You are burned out on your job or you just don’t enjoy it like you used to,
• You are able to reenergize yourself towards your current job or now can figure out what you would really like to do and how to get there.
• You feel that there is limited or no effective communication between departments and or between the corporate office and the satellite properties,
• You can now get all parties involved to work effectively and increase cooperation with between them.
• Your department doesn’t understand the importance or demonstrate quality customer service skills,
• You receive from your customers rave reviews about how helpful your staff are.
• Your want to really specifically define your or the company’s future goals and objectives,
• You now are able to pinpoint the direction of where, what, and how it is you want to accomplish though developing a defined business plan.
• You want to reduce and minimize conflicts within your organization,
• You are able to maximize your employee job satisfaction, cooperation and understanding between your employees and management.
• You want to figure out a way to keep employees longer,
• You reduce your current employee turnover rate to a point where it has a positive effect on your bottom line and frees up more time for other goals to be accomplished.
• You want to develop new ways to deal with reoccurring problems
• You are now able to reduce or eliminate these problems all together.

How does a typical Coaching Session work?

Initially, the Business Coach will either offer a 30 minute complementary coaching trial session or submit a proposal for coaching to your company. This is very useful to determine the benefit value for both the client as well as the Coach.

Most one on one coaching sessions are done over the telephone in a 30 or 45 minute session 2 to 4 times per month. The coach will ask from the client to specifically state the topic that he/she wants to be coached on. Through a series of questions and mutual dialog, the coach will assist the client in defining the goal or problem and act a guide through the process. The client most likely will realize different ways to view the topic selected, review various options and develop a plan of action. The coach provides a framework and a safe non judgmental environment for the client to be encouraged, supported and challenged. The coach acts as a sounding board and in many cases will give the client a way to look a topic from many different angels where the client would not see on his/her own. Personal experiences may also be offered to the client if they are relevant to the situation and the client is open to hear them. These techniques as well as many other coaching models are used to assist the client with improved clarity.

The coach also is available between scheduled sessions, if the client feels it’s beneficial to get clarification and support. The client may also ask for an independent opinion from the coach on some particular event that the client is currently experiencing.

In a group environment, either on a conference call or in person, the coach will act in very much the same way, but focusing on the group’s objectives as opposed to a single individual objective.

Under the right circumstances, a one-on-one or a group interaction with an objective third party, the Business Coach, can provide focus and goal oriented results more effectively than other forms of organizational support programs. This is a synergistic approach to improving performance in achieving business goals. In the past, coaching was used by organizations as a tool to assist in correcting underperformance. It is now being used my many executives and companies in supporting and creating top producers, creating more effective employees and managers while increasing job satisfaction maximizing both personal and company performance.