Depending on your experience the value brought by Business or Executive Coaching is Good, Bad or you’ve never considered it. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of people out there presenting themselves as Coaches. Some are very good at what they do and others are simply looking for a way to make money. The key to a good Coaching experience is as much in how you choose or select a Coach but also how “Coachable” you are as well as the credentials a Coach has. How can you, a Business Owner, Leader, Executive or Professional get the best value from a Business or Executive Coach?
Let’s begin by clearly defining a Business or Executive Coach. Many people use this term frequently to describe the services they offer due to the term’s popularity in the marketplace. A true business or executive coach has received formal training, certification, and has had the appropriate experience. Understanding the difference between someone using the term or someone who is professionally trained and certified as a business or executive coach is key. After all, you either have invested time and money in your current coach, or you are considering hiring one. Knowing what to expect from that investment is important.
A true coach has received formal training, certification, and has had the appropriate experience.
Business or Executive coaching is a useful way of developing your skills and abilities, and of boosting performance. It can also help deal with issues and challenges before they become significant problems. Coaching focuses on helping you discover answers for yourself. People are much more likely to engage with solutions that they have come up with themselves, rather than those forced upon them. While coaches can also be mentors, mentors are not always coaches. Mentors can be more ‘directive’ and provide specific advice where appropriate – a coach would not often offer their advice or opinion, but help the individual find their solution.
Business and Executive Coaches are business professionals who are professionally trained coaches. They have significant business expertise and have mastered a body of knowledge designed to ensure that their coaching skills are appropriate. They have invested in specific learning methods and successfully demonstrated the skills involved in coaching others. They guide and help you as a Business Owner or Leader in developing and mastering skills, prioritizing issues, developing plans of action, and executing those plans of action. All of this with one purpose, to grow and sustain a successful business.
Ensuring you have hired a Certified Coach is critical to not only the success of the coaching arrangement but your long-term success as well.
Coaches, rather, good Coaches, are typically experts at what it takes to make a business successful. They understand how all of the different pieces of the business and your skills must come together to ensure not only business success, but professional success. After all, you worked hard to get your business or career to where it is now, but that has limited value if you can’t make those results last.
A March 2016 Forbes Magazine article, Eight Signs It’s Time To Hire A Business Coach, written by eight members of the Forbes Coaches Council, lists the following reasons for when you should hire a business or executive coach:
- You are overwhelmed
- You need a confidant to talk to about your business with
- You intellectually know what to do, but don’t do it
- You aren’t getting the results you want
- You want to save time and money
- You find yourself listening only to your own ideas
- You’re feeling stuck and frustrated by others
- You want your company to grow
So how do you choose a Coach?
Working with a coach can be a significant investment, so finding the right person for you is critical to a successful outcome. There are also many coaches available to choose from and you will want to take your time in researching your options. Find out if the coach you are considering has background and expertise in the areas relevant to your needs. Remember too that Coaching is an unregulated business activity. In the current economy, many individuals call themselves “Coaches” while lacking in any professional training or certification to ensure that have mastered coaching skills and procedures. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you hire a certified coach. Ensuring you have hired a certified coach is critical to not only the success of the coaching arrangement but your long-term success as well.
You can also download our ebook Identifying, Selecting, and Working With a Business Coach found on our Resources Page.
Working with and hiring a Coach can be an incredibly rewarding and profitable experience. Ensuring that you have established the right relationship with the right Coach helps ensure the success of that relationship. How successful? That’s up to you and your Coach but my client’s success results in a significant and sustainable return on investment.