Coaching

Asking the right questions, from the right angle, at the right time.

• Why have a coach? First, I give the academic-type defination. Coaching provides a structure and accountability framework to support consistent growth through intelligent and measured expansion.

However, the meat of the situation is that working alone in a vacuum is tough stuff. No one to bounce ideas off of, no boss to hold you accountable if you get up late, grab a nap, take a looong lunch, and get stir crazy sitting at that desk preparing things.

Running a business alone, you sure can get overwhelmed by the many demands, and need a friendly and encouraging voice of one who has been there and done that, in order to be able to hear yourself think objectively about the many critical and often emotion-laden topics.

And you know it's hard to be objective about our own work. Another person can come along and spot the problem in a minute, then ask the needed questions to help us see what is going on.  Then further questioning so we figure out the best way to improve.

• What is the point of coaching? The point of coaching is to have someone who stands apart from your situation, and is skilled at asking the right questions. The topic, timing and angle of approach make all the difference in getting you past, over, under, and around your own blocks. The coach gets you to tap your wealth of knowledge.

• How? By asking very good questions, at the right time, in words to help you hear the question.

• Like what? The questions you overlook or haven’t asked yourself.  And done in a way that not only does not offend you, but pops you forward into what you need to see.

• Like what? Well, one coach, in writing about tennis, wrote that he might ask “When do you first see the curved line on the tennis ball coming at you?” instead of asking “Why did you miss returning that ball?” The type of question, in other words, that brings you to see things you were not seeing, which will give you the control needed.

The ego has a way of either falsely pumping us up, or falsely tearing us down, so it is hard for us to actually see what is going on. The coach, not being inside your challenges, can more objectively see what is going on, and ask the questions that prime your pump again.

The coach does not point out you missed the ball because you were not looking at it, because the coach cannot know that. But by getting you to look at when you saw the line on the ball, you will find out if you were looking at the ball or were possibly inside your head, thinking about how to hit the ball.

That question would also get the tennis player to really focus on when they see the ball, thus seeing it sooner and sooner; gaining increasing control.

The coach does not need to know how to run your business, but to ask the clear, and often basic questions that you, running your business alone, might miss because you have so much information rushing through your head.

The good coach also asks the questions those in business tend to avoid, because they are easy to avoid—questions, like “Have you done ________? For example they might ask if you made an outline for the article you can’t seem to finish. Questions getting you to consider missed steps that might solve the present issue. In our own work it is easy to miss the obvious.

• Isn’t this questioning process intimidating? No, because it is not done to trap you, but to be sure you have not missed something in your own knowledge that will support you.

The coach falls in love with you because of the exciting experience of moving through  the struggles and and challenges you face together, i.e. the all-too-human condition that can blind us to what is right in front of us. We tend to cover this up in daily life, as we want to look cool. But to the extent we succeed in the cover up, we are less ‘real’, less interesting, less appealing.

The coach gets to meet the ‘real’ (unvarnished) person. She comes to feel how much you love your business and how you want to protect it as well as expand it. She is right there, keeping an eye on the forest so you don’t get lost in the trees.

In fact, a coach is a way to have a little hand-holding, while confronting the inner daemons, which inevitably arise when running any business, because any business is the ultimate manifestation of your deepest beliefs.

• How do I know when the coach is good? There are lots of people out there who don't know what they are doing.  There are two ways to know. First is the recommendations of others in situations similar to your own.

Secondly, and more important, is your inner sense of the response to the questions you ask the coach when interviewing them. And then there is your inner sense about the questions the coach asks you. The good coach will ask you the questions you would have asked yourself, given either a lot more time, or more objective thinking. You will know this because the good question pierces you with the ‘rightness’ or ‘appropriateness’ of the question. You say to yourself “Bingo! That is exactly the issue!"

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I offer a FREE, no-obligation interview for you to get a sense of whether I can be useful for you as a coach, as you will want to be very comfortable with your choice, so I look forward to meeting you on the phone. Go to the contact button on the site menu and drop me a line so we can have a chat. I look forward to it.

Wishing you well,