What is business coaching and how can it help you?
So, you’ve been looking into a business coach and you’re not sure what it’s all about. Maybe you’ve worked with a life coach before, or maybe this is your first time seeking outside help. Whatever the case, a business coach is a great option if you’re feeling stuck in your career or running your business. So, how does it work?
Interventional
The common reasons someone might seek out a coach are because they feel stuck or unfulfilled in their professional life. This might end up taking the form of a “mid-career crisis” or a growing tendency towards underperforming at tasks. Other clients may be performing well and finding good levels of personal fulfillment, but they struggled to identify the steps they need to follow to take their business or career to the next level.
The primary goal for coaching is to help the client move forward, aligning their actions with the goals they set at the beginning of the coaching relationship. Most often, this takes the approach of being a “professional intervention”. Functionally, this means that your coach will help you identify the areas where you are holding yourself back, make an action plan for addressing those obstacles, and then help hold you accountable for sticking with the plan.
Collaborative
Accomplishing this forward momentum is a collaborative effort between the client and the coach. The coaching process is one of assessment, decision making, goal setting, and goal attainment. Primarily, the coach helps lead the client down a positive path through focused questioning and deep introspection.
In each session, the client chooses the focus of the conversation. Coaching is intended to move the client towards those goals most important to them and thus they take the lead in directing things. The coach listens and contributes observations and questions designed to create clarity and move the client toward action.
Focused
Accelerating the client’s progress is the ultimate end-result of coaching. This is accomplished by hyper-focusing on what the client wants to gain from the coaching relationship, identifying the action steps needed to move towards the goals they set, and then creating a plan to do so. Starting with where the client is at the beginning of the sessions, the coach then helps them extrapolate the necessary steps to arrive at their individual end-point.
Closing
It’s almost impossible to predict the results of a given client-coach relationship ahead of time, since each one is unique to the needs of the client. Through a model of collaborative intervention that focuses on accomplishing specific goals, we can generally predict that many positive outcomes are not just possible, but also likely. Some of the possible successes include, but are not limited to:
Reducing emotional blocks and self-sabotaging behavior
Greater clarity of purpose
Improved time and task management skills
Development of results-oriented planning and decision making
Enhanced motivation and productivity
Increased income
Better work/life balance
This list is far from complete, as the results are dictated by the needs of the client and not necessarily the process of the coach. With an incredibly personalized approach to every step, business coaching can easily be the catalyst to work your way out of a rut or, equally as often, improve your baseline to new heights of accomplishment.