What can a Business Coach provide that others cannot?
A Business Coach will first and foremost provide a personal sounding-board, using previous business experience to help solve existing problems and create new and exciting opportunities.
A Coach will listen, will question, and will probe, in order that truly workable solutions are generated and thought through prior to being exposed to colleagues or introduced to the business.
A Coach will help set business goals, review existing strategies and develop new ones, expand thinking and broaden horizons, and assist in relationship and partnership building.
In addition a Coach will help owners, managers and senior executives with whom they work to define or redefine personal goals helping to make more sense of why one is doing what one is doing, and to what purpose and end.
Why Business Coaching?
Coaching is not traditional consultancy, nor is it therapy or counselling, but a dynamic and modern new management support tool, one that is very much in tune with current needs and business practices.
Unlike normal advice given by consultancies there is no brief resulting in a report, no fixed time frame, no boundaries to the expected input, and no hefty charges.
Business Coaching is an ongoing support service for business people much like a coach is for a sports person. He or she will help to hone existing skills, develop new ones, devise competitive strategies, generate confidence, improve performance and above all become a friend who can be totally relied upon to be frank, objective and understanding at those difficult moments.
Coaching as opposed to almost any other source of advice available to business is personal in that the aim is to make sure that the person being coached solves their own problems. Nobody knows their business better than those that work in it, however they frequently get weighed under by the sheer volume of day to day detail. Coaching allows for time out to think, to unload, to re-enthuse, to broaden horizons and to think the impossible.
How does it work?
Business Coaching, because it is not traditional consultancy is carried out in a very different manner. Consultations are normally on a one to one basis, although it is possible to coach small groups of senior executives.
Many business coaches insist on face to face meetings only, however more and more are using the telephone, email and the internet for either all or part of the programme because it can fit better into the daily schedule of a busy executive. Thus it does not matter where the coach is located. In the USA Coach University, the largest single coaching organisation, has a nationwide pool of coaches who solely use the telephone and the internet coaching people at the highest level in government and industry.
Sessions tend to be either hourly or half hourly and ideally should
be set up to be at a time and place where nothing else is likely to interrupt the session. Additional regular conversations are par for the course, especially to help sort out very specific urgent problems encountered in the course of the daily business round. The sessions tend to need to be regular over several weeks and months, and can be either single issue driven or much more general.
What can it cost?
The cost structure on coaching is also very different from normal business consultancy. It is session rather than project driven. Rates for sessions vary greatly from those charged by national coaching organisations working with major corporations and those supporting the SME sector. In this sector rates can range from hourly fees of as low as £75 - £150 per session or monthly multi-session packages of up to a £1000 - still considerably much less than any form of conventional business support.
As a business tool coaching is probably the most cost -effective way to improve business, team and personal performance. Its ability to improve performance is easily measured and experience within the business coaching community indicates a high level of success through continued use by highly satisfied individuals year on year and onward referrals to business associates.
Conclusion
For owners, managers and senior executives in small to medium sized companies, business coaching can make a real difference. It can assist in the development of the business, lend useful advice and support in dealing with client and staff relationships, act as a catalyst for future planning, and improve overall performance. Above all it can improve personal enjoyment. It can also make owning or working in a small business as enjoyable as it was when it was first started.
"We all have the solutions to our own
problems, what we often do not have
are the questions to let us unlock them"
- A business coach