The lines have become blurred about what business coaches do - business consulting, business mentoring, psychology, counselling or therapy. Coaching develops strategies to move forward, while counselling or therapy looks at past occurrences and analyses what happened. Mentoring is performed by someone whom has had similar experiences as yourself and guides you through your challenges.
The ICA (International Coaching Academy) raises this question in its course, the Certified Professional Coach Program. Coaching supports a client in the endeavours that are being coached. For example, business coaching supports business owners in building their business and dealing with their business challenges.
In many cases, the lines are blurred about what it is a coach does. I put it to you that the coach is different things to different people. If the client is having challenges with increasing profitability, we discuss ways together that increase the profitability of the business. We may look at all of the processes involved in getting a sale, and see if these areas can be improved on.
A business owner is also a person and he/she may have some personal challenges that form a cloud over what is happening in his/her business. There may be relatives that work in the coachee’s business, which presents its own set of challenges. There may be other occasions where a client is having some personal challenges with their own or their partner’s health and these issues may take up a few minutes of the coaching meeting.
The business client may be having some challenges with an employee and be in the process of making a decision about whether to keep that employee or not. This is a really challenging time for the client and the coach acts as a sounding board for ideas, without influencing the outcome of the decision. Business Success have a tool, the decision matrix which is really good at outlining the positive and negative outcomes for such a decision and many of our clients have been assisted by this tool.
So, I put it to you, the Coachee, does your Business Coach support you in your business? Or does your coach baffle you with strategies and ideas that you really can’t understand or comprehend, let alone implement into your business? Does your coach help you with your business challenges and enable you to develop strategies to move forward?
Ann-Marie Gil
Professional Business Coach