Coaching business owners - smarter leadership

I love working with business owners/founders as these roles can often be extremely frantic day-to-day and our coaching sessions provide clients with the space to consider themselves as well as their role within the organisation they lead.

As clients progress through a coaching programme the sessions provide them with an anchor within their schedules where they can explore their thinking with a completely external sounding board. It is a classic situation people at the top of any organisation find themselves in where they spend so much time working in the business and sorting out a mixture of tactical, operational and strategic issues that they find little time to detach and look at the helicopter view and the impact things are having on themselves. 

Within the coaching programme, I personally ensure that there is time allowed to not only look at the professional decisions or situations that clients are facing but also to explore the personal out-of-work activities, goals and relationships that need focus and attention. Personal elements are often the last items on any busy professional's to-do list, however, if neglected can cause long-term health and well-being issues. 

At the beginning of our work together I ask clients to generate ideas they have on areas they want to work on both professionally and personally. After this initial data capture, which I often find they have never made time for before our work together, we filter out the critical few in both camps which the client wants to focus on. This prioritised document can then function as a road map for the rest of the coaching programme and be adapted accordingly if required if circumstances change.

The role of any senior leader or business owner is like walking a tightrope, balancing both the needs of themselves, their family and friends, peers at work plus the overall business strategy they are responsible for. To keep all these elements healthy at any point in time is a skill so we develop tools and models to systemise this wherever possible ensuring all elements are moving forward over any given month.

Collaborating with a coach is normally a short-term arrangement so my personal aim is to equip clients with the mindset and techniques in behavioural or process terms that they can use long after our work has stopped together. Between us, we will discuss new habits or processes that the leader can trial and schedule so that gradually these become a new smarter way of working. Holding clients accountable for trialling innovative approaches or even new ways of handling stakeholder interactions are key roles of a professional coach. Often the accountability piece is the major benefit clients report after first working alongside a business coach. 

Supporting a business owner or any leader is extremely rewarding when they suddenly start enjoying the role again as they systematically start working smarter and often develop other members of their team on route as they delegate and empower others more in the process of embarking on their own coaching journey.