This week's feature is Kirk Bogue, business coach with ActionCoach International. Business coaches provide an important service to small businesses helping provide independent advice and counsel.
What is the # 1 issue facing small businesses/small business owners today that you come across in the coaching business?
The answer to this question is a matter of perspective. If you are an immediate family member of a business owner, you would likely say the top issue is that the business doesn’t produce enough income or that it takes too much of the business owner’s time. If you are the business owner, you would likely select your top issue as one of the following: competition, getting more customers, getting reliable employees or lack of time. As a Business Coach and a business owner, I would say the key issue facing most business owners is something about their selves; most business owners would significantly improve their results if they would demonstrate increased accountability regarding their own desires and actions. This translates to the establishment of company vision and mission as well as long and short term goals. It also translates to the adoption of habits that are commensurate with and congruent to having the kind of business and results they truly dream of having (i.e. the owner of a business that makes $1M in profits thinks and acts differently than an owner of a business that makes $100K in profits).
Can you describe for us some of the benefits that come with hiring a business coach?
The tangible benefits for business owners that result from a successful relationship with a business coach include improved profits, more time to pursue other business or personal interests and more of the lifestyle they deserve. Owners produce those kinds of results as outcomes of the education, accountability and mentorship they receive from the coaching process. The coaching process helps them develop the skills, beliefs, principles and mindset they use to take them and their businesses to the next level.
There are benefits for the owner that emanate from building trusting relationships with their customers, their team, their suppliers and their coach, although these may be more intangible in value than those mentioned above. The reputation a coached person can develop as part of or as a result of their enhanced success can also be extremely meaningful to a business owner or those close to them. More important than any other benefit, however, are the feelings a business owner’s success breeds within. As a coach, it is truly an honor to witness the moment that a client’s confidence soars, that the smile on their face beams with pride or that they experience real peace of mind.
What industries benefit the most from coaching?
There is no one industry that benefits more than another from business coaching. The people (in any industry) who benefit most from coaching are those who want to achieve more of their potential, who realize they do not have all the answers themselves and who are willing to demonstrate the leadership necessary to increase personal and business effectiveness.
What does being under the Action umbrella allow you to provide that’s different from other coaches??
Being an owner of an ActionCOACH Business Coaching franchise, the largest coaching organization in the world, means that I have the support of a global network of licensed business coaches, access to mass amounts of material / information that our clients might need for their development and the mentorship of Brad Sugars – ActionCOACH’s founder, CEO, author and one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.
A key point of uniqueness is that ActionCOACH helps its clients through the toughest parts of personal transformation, which is when the most powerful learning and personal development takes place. Learning new skills is usually the easy part of coaching for a business owner, but often it is not enough. Frequently business owners need to develop new beliefs, new principles, a new mindset or new elements of their core identity to achieve the success they desire. We are trained, experienced and successful at helping clients get to and through those most challenging parts of personal change.
Can you recount one of your client success stories for us??
I have a client who is now on his way to building a business that is 5-10 times its current size. He is well respected as an expert in his trade and has earned national recognition for his contributions to his field and the people his field serves. He started coaching because he wanted to get his business beyond where it was and he didn’t know how to motivate his team to do that.
If my client could name only one area of development that is contributing to his success, he would say that his commitment to personal leadership development is responsible for his progress. With the support of coaching, he has come to understand the responsibilities of good leadership and to demonstrate those in his business and personal relationships.
He has learned the importance of vision and mission and how those form the basis of a common external focus that his team can rally to serve in every task they perform. He has learned that leaders go first in establishing new habits and that demonstrating the vulnerability of not getting something right to his team is powerful in motivating them to overcome their fear of failure when they try something new. He has learned about accountability, including how to set goals, how to measure performance against them and how to have conversations with team members regarding their positive or negative performance - an activity he aggressively used to avoid.
Net, this client used to blame his team for his business’ lackluster results. Now he routinely considers what he can do through leadership to influence better outcomes. While financial results have shown some variability since he started coaching, he has built the foundation for consistent and sustainable growth. His team is more solid and aligned with his goals, he developed a long term plan he and his team are executing against, he is hiring more people of the right caliber and his team is implementing systems to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
This client has overcame many obstacles to his success and is now moving forward with predictable and desirable results in his grasp.
How can we contact you??
2 comments:
You can just hear your coaching clients' questions: How do I get on a Board? Which board training or board conference should I go to? What is the best Board magazine to read?We found a site with 600+ resource links for all these CEO Coaching questions
Does board training really matter as it relates to coaching or does just having someone who is experienced who has a different set of eyes and ears and a different perspective with which to view the operation of the business matter more???
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