Since its inception, business coaching continues to grow in popularity, sophistication of techniques, and outcomes obtained.
Any business coach worth their weight in salt (i.e., their fee) wants you and your business to benefit greatly from the coaching relationship. This brief guide helps maximize the value of your coaching engagement.
Make a List of What You Really Want
When your goals are clear, progress comes quickly.
Success is not about what you should achieve, but rather what you want to achieve based on your desires, needs, and values.
If your vision is cloudy, have a conversation with your business coach to ensure you’re clear and focused during your coaching engagement. You’ll be glad you did!
Get to Know Yourself Better
Working with a trained and knowledgeable strategic business coach is a healthy way to grow. Most clients hire a coach to accomplish several specific goals. Much of the time and focus is on these goals.
However, don’t be surprised if you find your vision and goals adjusting to who you really are and what’s most important to you. This discovery process is natural. There is no need to rush it, just know it may happen.
Accelerating your personal and professional growth is the hallmark of working with an experienced coach.
Be Willing
During your coaching engagement, there may be times your coach makes a request that, in the moment, seems like a BIG ask. Not too much but certainly more than you have previously asked of yourself. Other times, instead of asking for more, your coach may ask for something different from what conventional wisdom dictates.
Through years of working with thousands of entrepreneurs, we’ve discovered the quickest route to achieving your goals isn’t always by doing more — or doing what you’ve done in the past. Many goals are realized by taking a fundamentally different path.
Don’t worry. You and/or your business will never be placed at risk. Plus, the final choice for implementing any request rests with you.
Be open to experiment with fresh approaches such as:
- Put yourself first
- Tell yourself the truth as you see it
- Stop working hard
- Remove all sources of stress
- Ask for what you need from others
- Set goals that are different than originally intended
- Expect more and different service from your vendors
- Change your behavior
- Simplify your life
- Drop all current projects
- Stop tolerating
Come to Your Strategic Coaching Appointments Prepared
Your time is valuable. Make it count by investing time to prepare.
Prior to any coaching appointment, create a written list of things to discuss. This ensures you obtain what you want.Items to include:
- Achievements since your last appointment
- What you’re currently working on and how it’s going
- Insights and new awareness that excite you
- Report on commitments made
- Advice you want regarding a specific situation
- New skills you want to develop
- Strategies you wish to develop
Time spent reflecting on your achievements, insights, and challenges — and planning — provides the clarity you and your coach need to maximize your results.
Showing up for a coaching appointment unprepared is a waste of valuable resources!
Enjoy the Give and Take of the Meeting
There’s a lot of information to cover during a coaching appointment, especially in the beginning. After several meetings, you may take a little time to catch up on parts of your business experiencing change or growth.
Meetings aren’t exactly gabfests, and are meant to be enjoyable and uplifting. They don’t need to be intense or difficult to produce that which you know is possible. Feel free to set the tone of the meetings.
Get Healthy – Stay Healthy
Growth, whether it’s business or personal, requires energy – mentally, emotionally, intellectually and physically. Given this, take extraordinary care of yourself during this process of growth, innovation and synergy.
Only you know what that looks like, but we suggest some of these habits to keep yourself fit:
- Say ‘no’
- Read
- Underpromise
- Eliminate sugar, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol
- Listen to great music
- Exercise a minimum of 30 minutes daily
- Eat more vegetables and fruit
- Reduce fat intake
- Meditate
- Take vitamins
- Write in your journal
- Eat six (6) small meals daily
- Schedule 10 minute breaks every 1 ½ – 2 hours throughout the day
Honor Your Commitments
At the completion of each appointment, you’ll co-develop a plan of action with your business coach. This isn’t the dreaded homework like high school. These are tasks, actions, results, or changes that support the achievement of your goals.
Honor yourself — and your commitments — to maximize your coaching results.
Coaching is exhilarating, fun, productive, informative, and scary all at the same time. And, there’s nothing more gratifying when you begin to see major progress towards goals that previousl eluded you. Now, that’s success!
