What We Do...
Excerpts from
"Business Coaching And Why It Works!" ©
by Ernest F. Oriente and Judy Feld
In professional sports, great athletes have coaches to guide their progress, support their success and identify and improve upon any weaknesses. Today, business executives and their companies are hiring business coaches to keep their winning edge.
Business coaching can be done in many ways--in person, or on the telephone. We've found that coaching by telephone works well for our busy clients because it allows either the coach or the clients to live, work or travel anywhere in the world. As a result, there is no interruption in the coaching call schedule. As business coaches, we work with our clients individually and in groups. When coaching our clients individually, we may work together as much as twice a week, or as little as twice a month for 45- 60 minutes.
Between scheduled coaching calls, we work and communicate with our clients by E-mail and fax. This contact between coaching calls allows us to review our client's projects and proposals, provide just-in-time response to their specific questions and to be a sounding board when our clients are putting into motion the action items from this week's call.
Whether coaching is done on the phone or in person, it works because it is a dynamic and interactive relationship that helps clients reach their goals. A coaching relationship encourages clients to make changes, improve their skills and take specific action steps. As a result, people reach their big goals faster. Many clients value the perspective of someone outside their company, and appreciate receiving honest and truthful advice untainted by corporate politics or hidden agendas. And some clients look for the benefit of industry knowledge, professional experience, or a broad range of resources.
Returning to our professional sports analogy, it might be interesting for you to identify your company's version of winning the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA championship, or the Stanley Cup. How would you know when you have won it? It's pretty clear-cut for winning professional teams--their goals are clear, and their measurements of success unambiguous. Most winning sports teams say they perhaps could have been good, but not the best, without the support, strategies, encouragement, insights, accountability and, yes, the "push" they received from their coaches. We bet that soon many businesses will be able to say the same thing.
