Do You Need a Coach? The Best Professionals Do! by howardshore, Date: Sep 29, 2020

I believe every leader can achieve significantly more growth than they ever thought possible. But sometimes you need a coach to get you across the finished line. After all, who would Tom Brady or LeBron James be without their coaches? If you feel like you’ve stalled, or perhaps your business is lagging behind your competitors, it’s time to consider bringing on a coach.

But what kind of coach should you seek? An Executive Coach? A Business Coach? Let me help you answer that.

Business Coaching vs. Executive Coaching

When considering Executive or Business Coaching, you may find you need one, the other, or both. There are some similarities and vast differences between a Business Coach and Executive Coach. Regardless of type, the coach is not there to provide answers or solutions. With coaching, the premise is that the leadership team or person being coached already possesses enough knowledge, skills, and capacity to develop the strategies and lead the organization but has yet to reach its full potential. The best outcomes usually occur when the coach does not provide you with any advice, but instead, causes a transformation in individuals, teams, and organizations.

What is Business Coaching?

A business coach brings processes, tools, and concepts to help facilitate team and organizational growth.

In the case of Business Coaching, the Coach brings processes, tools, and concepts to help facilitate team and organizational growth. The methodology causes a shift in the way that you and your team view the challenges they face. The goal is to create that shift in view to cause the management team to develop different strategies, make better people decisions, be more focused, strengthen the culture, be more accountable, and better align the entire organization.

For example, after nine months of taking them through a process and some hard questions, I have a client who changed a $10 million business with negative cash flow to one that produced over $1.5 million in cash. More importantly, that shift in strategy, people, and execution caused a sustainable business model designed to produce 20% net cash flows annually. Most importantly, all the ideas came from the organization and their leadership team.

What is Executive Coaching?

An executive coach helps individuals unlock their leadership potential by increasing self-awareness and improving their effectiveness.

The Executive Coach’s role is to help individuals unlock their potential, not teach or show the way. The Executive Coach helps the person being coached discover areas where their beliefs, motives, values, or personality traits cause them to be less effective as a leader. The biggest part of coaching is helping the person being coached become self-aware. Research has shown that the higher the position, the higher the gap in self-awareness.

An excellent example of this gap in self-awareness is a COO whom I once worked. His CEO appreciated him because “things got done.” However, the problem the CEO was trying to ignore was that no one else on the leadership team wanted to work with him; he was a person who had no empathy, demonstrated passive-aggressive traits, and was steamrolling everyone else in the organization. Eventually, no one would cooperate with him, and things got heated. The COO could not see things from anyone else’s perspective.

What Makes an Ideal Coach?

Do you ever wonder what an Executive Coach does? I get this question all the time. An Executive Coach’s job is to help you write your story. What do I mean by this? Whether you want to improve your business, career, or personal circumstances, the Coach’s role is to provide a forum and process to help you maximize your potential. In other words, as your story is unfolding, your Executive Coach’s job is to help you to write your best story, a great story.

You must work with someone that will help keep bias out of your story creation. Your story starts today, and you want to have unlimited possibilities. While writing your story, you will gain new wisdom and will need course corrections. Everyone’s story has surprises, and your Coach is there to help you through and to stay accountable as you reach your full potential!

A Good Coach Enters Your Story Without Bias

Your coaching relationship is one where you are given space to create. A good Coach enters your story without bias. Good coaches are not there to judge you, do not have expectations of you, and their only stake in the outcome is to help you achieve the goals of the engagement. While most everyone else in your life has good intentions, they usually also have a bias. This bias causes them to consciously or unconsciously steer you in a direction that may not be in your best interests.

A coaching relationship brings you a blank canvas with which to work. This does not mean you need or want to start over. It means considering that your business, career, or personal circumstances should be whatever you want it to be. People mistakenly start from where they are rather than where they want to be. This thought process will always limit your possibilities. This is why working with people who know you well can be limiting.

Coaching Helps Define Business Goals & Objectives

Given that your story is already in process and not certain, think of your possibilities. With the wisdom you have today, how do you want your business to look? How do you want your career to look? How would you like your personal story to unfold? As your Coach helps you write your story, they will first help you create a clear picture of what you want that story to be. This is hard work because it is not always easy to articulate and define what you want. This may take some time and need to be refined over time.

Once you have developed a clear picture of your story, you need to create an action plan. The action plan looks at long- and short-term objectives that need to be attained for your story to unfold. You do this by identifying the gap between where you are and where you are capable of being. Your Coach will help develop a series of 90-day goals that help lead you to achieve your full potential.

Everyone Needs a Coach

Like any worthy story, you will encounter surprises and obstacles. Your Coach is there to help you work through these challenges. They allow you to identify the midcourse corrections needed and help you stay accountable to your lofty goals.

Coaching is a personal thing. The fact that you are here and that you’ve read this far tells me that you are interested in how a Coach can help you and your business. However, finding the right Business Coach and Executive Coach isn’t easy. That is why I am offering FREE 30-MINUTE, NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION to see if we’re a good match. There’s no hard sell. This is my gift to you. If you feel we’re a good match, we can discuss working together. If not, I will leave you with enough value that it will be more than worth your time. That is my promise.