Business Coaching

In my practice, I tend to blur these lines. I’ll explain but first I’ll provide some context…

Traditionally, a business coach can be expected to help you grow as a leader by refining your vision, goals, skill development plans, and mindset, through various methods informed by their background. My personal background is based on life & executive coaching techniques as well as neuro-linguistic programming methods.

A business consultant tends to focus on a specialized aspect of your business strategy and/or operations, such as marketing, sales, supply chain, etc. They tend to analyze your business based on specific challenges you’re facing, identify problems, and provide tailored solutions, based on industry best practices.

As a business coach, I do serve as a consultant, unafraid to offer best practice solutions to specific briefs where I believe I can add value. However, I keep my direct advice limited to areas where I have deep, lived experience, such as team leadership, new capability development, sales operations, process improvement, program management and communications, to name a few.

I blur these lines because, while I believe in the power of traditional coaching where questions can help people pull from their own frame of reference to discover solution and feel empowered to implement their own ideas – there is, in my experience, a point at which those internal reserves are exhausted. In those moments, I am willing to offer new ideas and approaches that help my clients to move forward.

This can range from intensive work on a specific piece of work to meeting once a month, but typically my clients meet with me weekly or every other week to help establish and maintain momentum. This frequency also helps keep the context fresh so we’re spending less session time reviewing what’s occurred or changed and more time moving things forward.

All that said, I typically assign next steps and/or exercises following each session and, amidst a busy schedule, I encourage my clients to do those actions justice. If that means delaying our meetings to allow for that to happen, I believe it’s the right thing to do so. What you do is worth doing once, and correctly.

Investing in business coaching can be a valuable investment for both young and established entrepreneurs. But business coaching is not for everyone. Before deciding if a business coach is right for you or not, here are things you need to ask yourself:

• Do you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve?

• Are you willing to learn new skills and strategies to help you reach your vision?

• Are you open to receiving feedback, guidance, and support from someone with experience and expertise in your field or industry?

• Are you ready to take action and implement the changes and plans you and your coach agree upon?

• Are you committed to investing time, energy, and money into your coaching relationship and business growth?