The Advances of Business Coaching
All athletes with goals work with coaches. So should entrepreneurs and executives who want to create the most professional possibilities without sacrificing their personal lives. Executive business coaching is one concept that has gone quite a bit of transformation over the years. Back in the 1950's, business coaching is one of those informal services that you get when you tap your local area’s business networks. Maybe your father-in-law has a contact in the bank that can introduce you to somebody with an MBA or an extensive track record of helping businesses. Maybe your lawyer knows an accountant that has dealt with somebody who has coached a business from idea stage to multi-million dollar annual stage. What I'm trying to get at is back on that stage, getting high-quality business coaching was a simple hit or miss affair. In most cases, it's a complete total miss because you are reliant on the quality of your network. If you don't know the right people or if you're not plugged into competent people, your success would be quite limited.
While things have changed dramatically, in some ways the more things changed, the more they remained the same. You have to be vigilant regarding where you get your business coaching from. Even if the person says that they're just going to work for equity or for a share of your company, you still have to be guarded. You still have to make sure that you’re investing the proper amount of time, effort, and energy into the right type of coaching. Quality matters tremendously. Here are the eight hallmarks of truly valuable business coaching. Anybody can tell you that they are business coach. Self-proclaimed coaches are a dime a dozen. Finding highly competent business coaching that actually produces results can be quite rare. Pay attention to these factors.
The Business Coach Focuses on Your Attitude and Mindset for Success
You know you're dealing with somebody who knows what they're doing if they work with helping you cultivate the proper attitude for success. If they are just telling you that you just need to fill in the blanks, use some sort of template or follow some sort of formula, then you know you're not dealing with a real professional business coach. Anybody who knows what he's doing will tell you that success is attitude driven. Your attitude determines your altitude in life. This was true in the past. It's true now. It would probably continue to be true in the future. If the kind of business coaching doesn't even address this very basic point, you have a cause to get worried.
The Best Executive Business Coaches Are Idea-Focused and Solutions Oriented
Beware of business coaching that focuses on gimmicks like they would tell you, "Since everybody is doing this type of business, chances are you'd be successful in there as well." That's wrong. What you're doing is you’re basically riding a trend. You have a very fuzzy or unclear idea as to what counts for the success of that particular trend. Wouldn't it better to focus on ideas and use them to attack a particular context of means which then leads to solid profits? When it comes to business viability, trends and gimmicks don't matter. What matters are solid ideas. It is this idea that separate companies that would go on as become local institutions from companies who are merely flashes in the pan.
Effective Coaching for Business Leaders is Rooted in Systems Efficiency and Creative Problem Solving
Even if you have the best idea in the world, if you implement it incorrectly, you're going to have a failed business in your hands. Real professional and competent business coach understand this. This is why they focus on helping you build systems. You learn the right mindset to start with ideas and then tie them to the needs of your customers and create systems in between.
Systems are what separate high-quality sustainable business from business who are simply getting by on rock. Think of it this way. If you are offering plumbing services and you don't have a systematic service provision infrastructure, basically you'll end up struggling because your customers end up getting burned and you’re dependent on the next referral. You're basically just chasing your next contract over and over again. Companies who are built on systems, on the other hand, don't have to worry about new business because their old business accumulates and sends out referrals. In many cases, they have to turn down new offers.
Executive Coaching and Entrepreneur Coaching Leverages Scalable-Thinking
You might think that you've stumbled upon a gold mine because you've come up with an idea that yields a lot of dollars here and now. However, that's not enough. Even if you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars today, you have to think big. If you can make ten thousand dollars why not a hundred thousands of dollars, if not hundred thousand dollars, why not ten million dollars a year. This reveals the power of scalability. You know your business is stuck when regardless of how much effort, time and advertising you put in, you can't seem to be capable of producing enough dollars past a certain income level. With expert business coaching, you'd be able to plug in scalability into your current operations so you can unload the business for millions of dollars later on or pass it on to your children.
Business Coaching Identifies Truly Actionable Organizational Goals
There is no shortage of people who can talk a big game in this world. These are people who are big on theories. The problem is theories sound good on paper but its actual implementation doesn't put don't put food on the table. Do you see the big difference here? In fact, conmen and frauds are known for spouting big theories. They make you feel good. They definitely make you feel important but at the end of the day, you are holding an empty bag. Be very careful when getting business coaching services from a self-proclaimed professional. Pay attention to what they say. If the tips they give up are truly actionable based on your current infrastructure then you know you're dealing with the real deal.
Less Focus on Massive Capital Inputs to Grow an Organization
Another problem that you get with business coaching is that there's a lot of people with fancy MBA's from really prestigious schools. I am of course talking about Harvard Business School, The Wharton School of Finance and so on and so forth. The problem with a lot of their ideas is that they require millions of dollars in startup capital. If you don't have millions of dollars lying around, their business coaching essentially falls flat because they burn up that much input. Stay away from such business coaching. At some level or another, it's probably valuable and valid. The problem is you can't implement it in the here and now without those massive capital inputs. They are completely useless to you.
Modular Coaching for Executives and Business Leaders
Great business coaching can be split up into stages. This means that if you're ready to implement one particular concept today, you would be able to benefit from it today. Once you planted enough seeds, gather enough resources, you can then go on to the next stage. Beware of business coaching that basically just drops a whole concept on you and essentially calls you a loser for being unable to implement the whole thing. How can you implement the whole thing when you have to work on the whole package up front? Unless you have a massive infrastructure, enough manpower, and sufficient capital, this is too much to ask for. Insist on something modular.
Effective Executive Coaching Demands Step by Step Testing and Implementation in Real Time
Finally, you know you're dealing with a truly professional provider of a business coaching when this person gives you a system that demands step by step testing. In other words, never in the whole process that this person says, "Believe me, it will work." Instead, the person demands that you test what he or she tells you. When you go to the testing process and implement the tip, they actually bear fruit. You know that when this happens that the business coaching that you're getting is worth real money.
Keep in mind the eight hallmarks because it's too easy barking up the wrong tree. It's just very easy to be taken in by an authoritative sounding "self-proclaimed expert" and end up being taken to the cleaners. It doesn't matter how big your current enterprise is, you may be a mom and pop operation or a multinational corporation, every single dollar you've earned deserves to be safeguarded against people who would tell you what you want to hear just to separate you from your money.