Why Business Coaching Might Be the Key to Unlocking Your Company’s Success

Last week I peeled back the curtain a bit on coaching, so this week let’s take a look at business coaching. What is it, why would someone want it, how does it differ from generic coaching, if at all?

Perhaps unsurprisingly business coaching uses the same core principles as coaching. It involves active inquiry. It involves the same structure and focus, the same goal setting and partnership. There isn’t necessarily a huge difference in the practice itself, but I think the goals might differ a little bit. 

Business coaching often deals with business related goals and topics a little bit more than other types of coaching. One other distinction, at least for how I’m interpreting it, is also the place business coaching occupies on the spectrum between pure Coaching and Teaching or Consulting.

Why might you need a business coach? An experienced coach I’ve had the pleasure of learning from over the past few months, Don Wetmore, described it in the following way: 

You’re at point A, and you want to be at Point B

1. You need or want to get to B but you don’t know what B is so you need help
2. You need or want to get to B, you know what point B is, but you don’t know how to get there and you need help
3. You need or want to get to B, you know what B is, you know how to get there, but you can’t do it on your own

For other coaching disciplines, point A might be where you’re at in life, where you’re at in your career, in your job. For business coaching it might be the current state of your business, its profitability, its revenue, costs, recruiting practices, mission/vision, etc. 

Point B might be a life with better relationships, or better fitness. A life where you can spend less time at work and more time with your family. It might be the next promotion, developing the team you’ve got, delivering on your role’s performance goals. 

Almost all of these can show up in business coaching since businesses don’t exist without people, and people generally have the same core needs and goals. What might not show up as often in other types of coaching are more business specific goals. Improving your product offerings, your business’s mission, improving your profitability, or you want to make it so your business can operate independently of you. Those are some great reasons why a business coach might make sense over another type of coach.

The way I approach it is in three major steps in addition to everything that would go on with normal coaching. First, we Explore your business, get a firm foundational understanding of where your business currently is, how it’s doing. Second we Develop SMART goals, strategies to accomplish those goals, along with the systems and processes necessary to make them a reality and track their progress. And third, we Execute. We work towards accomplishing those goals with regular check-ins to track progress.

Explore. Develop. Execute.

EDE is a terrible acronym but my marketing department (me) hasn’t prioritized that yet.

Every business owner or leader out there likely doesn’t have an exhaustive knowledge of all things business, so there may be opportunities for learning … self-driven, or assisted by the coach. That latter part is where business coaching can diverge from “pure” coaching a bit. Again though, this is particular to each situation, each coach, and client.

So is business coaching wildly different from other coaching? Not really. It’s just more focused on the specifics of your business and possibly how it shows up in your life.

Hopefully this helps. If you’re at A and want to get to B, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can contact me on LinkedIn or on my website. Even if I’m not the perfect person to help you, I’m connected to a number of very talented people (coaches and consultants) who might be able to help you instead.