Accelerate Your Growth With A Coach

For generations coaching has been the preferred method for personal and professional development in many fields including: music, sports, martial arts, skilled crafts, medicine, politics, legal professions and more. So it should come as no surprise that business people and entrepreneurs are reaping huge benefits from hiring a business, or life coach as well. Simply put, people engage a coach to improve their performance.

John Russell, former Managing Director of Harley-Davidson Europe, explained, “I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skill or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable.”

While the benefits of a coach are nearly endless, here are a few ways you could benefit from hiring a coach. A coach can help you:

1.   Identify and capitalize on your strengths
As odd as it may seem, many of us are not working in the area of our strengths. We may have been prodded into a field of study in which we can function, but it’s neither our passion nor our true gifting. A coach can help you clear away the clutter and help you determine what your real strengths are and how to leverage them to their full extent, maximizing your potential. 

2.   Build and retain strong relationships
When it comes down to it, all of life and business is about relationships. But today it seems that, more than ever, we’re failing at relationships at an ever-increasing rate. Think of the people you know who may be successful in business or in some other expertise, yet they’ve failed miserably with relationships in their personal lives. It doesn’t have to be that way and a coach can help you improve your relationships.

3.   Continue to develop strong character
Long-term success in business and in life requires continual growth of character. Again, the business world is rife with examples of seemingly successful people who have come crashing down due to some character flaw or moral failure. Our character is not some compartment of our lives that we give occasional attention to. Character is fundamental and foundational permeating all we are and do.

4.   Clarify and focus on key goals
Sometimes the options available to us are so many and so varied, we don’t know where to begin. A coach can help you figure out where to begin with a powerful, singular focus. And having someone to whom you’re accountable is great motivation for following through with goals.

5.   Help you get unstuck
Whether a sense of feeling stuck comes from challenges within or outside of you, a coach can help you identify the obstacles and find your way around them. 

How to Find a Coach

The field of professional coaching is growing and there are many great coaches available. Perhaps the best way to find a good coach is by referral. Ask people you respect and admire if they’ve ever used a coach and what their experience has been. 

The International Coaching Federation (ICF https://coachfederation.org/) is also a great source of information and potential coaches. You most likely want to find a coach who is credentialled and comes with good track record of success among their clients.

How Coaching Works

As the client, you have a lot of leeway in designing a coaching arrangement that works best for you. Professional coaching is client-directed rather than coach-directed, so you take control and guide your coach in ways that benefit you most.

The duration and frequency of coaching sessions varies and can change based on your personal needs. But an initial typical coaching arrangement might involve:

• Meeting for 45 to 60 minutes, three or four times per month
• Either face-to-face, phone, or virtual meetings
• Assignments created and designed by the client at the prompting of the coach
• Spot-calls, texts, and/or emails between sessions to update your coach
• Costs per hour vary from as little as $75/hour to as much as $1000/hour
• Coaches typically have specific niches in which they function most effectively

Bob Nardelli, during his time as the CEO of Home Depot, has said, “Without a coach, people will never reach their maximum capabilities.” Working with a coach can accelerate your personal and professional growth and help you set and attain aggressive goals to take your business to new levels of success. 

Read in my upcoming Blog how I can help you in your personal and business life.

Do you have a coach? Are you going to find a coach for yourself? 

And if so where your coach is helping you to grow?