Post By Jennifer Drean, Deliberate Directions Success Strategist
Jennifer is passionate about helping people grow their businesses. She can assist with leadership development, career advancement, and systems design.
Jennifer continues to successfully run her own family medical practice, Gem State Family Eyecare, which she founded in 2011.
Did you know that our very own coaches at Deliberate Directions have their own business and executive coaches? A lot of people are surprised to learn this but we’d be frauds if we didn’t practice what we preach! At Deliberate Directions we believe in the power of coaching so much, we think every leader and business owner should have one. Here are 8 reasons why our coaches work with coaches and why you need one too!
Gain an Outside Perspective
We all have blindspots when it comes to business and life. One of the biggest benefits of coaching is that we gain an outside perspective. Coaching provides us with an unbiased, outside opinion that will assist us in gaining awareness of our blindspots so we can peer around them and get us out of our comfort zone. Since growth occurs in discomfort, it is crucial for us to not let our blindspots keep us stuck in our comfort zone.
Maximize Potential
Coaches help us push out of our comfort zone and improve performance at exponential rates. At the same time coaches can help you find the path to success faster than you would on your own and with less stress. According to Angel Advisors, an International Coach Federation (ICF) survey found that “executives and entrepreneurs who use a business coach can increase their net income by an average of 46 percent” and “57.1% lowered their feelings of anxiety.” Most business owners and leaders are dreamers and idea generators, coaches help us turn those dreams into reality by helping us set SMARTER goals and action plans, then holding us accountable to doing what we said we would do.
Cultivate Leadership Qualities
John Maxwell goes into excellent detail about the qualities that every great leader needs in his book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. If you don’t have time to read the book, check out our summary. Great coaches empower and develop leaders. Sometimes that means cultivating the leadership qualities in an established leader of a business but other times, coaches help us find the emerging leaders within our organization and help us develop them into the leaders we need them to be. If 21 Irrefutable Laws is too much (or not enough), here are an additional 8 Leadership Lessons for you to study and implement.
Find Purpose/Fulfillment in Life and Work
Although business and executive coaches enjoy working on business and leadership skills with their clients, it’s unavoidable to talk about life issues and how they affect each other. Actually, one of the biggest challenges for most small to medium sized business owners and leaders is managing a good work-life balance. Coaches spend a lot of time helping clients manage their time and energy to effectively meet their business goals and personal goals. Business coaching has a significant impact on a client’s fulfillment. In fact, 43.3% see an improvement in their personal satisfaction.
Achieve Alignment
Do you think, as a leader in your organization, that you do a great job of sharing your vision but feel like you take one step forward and two steps back? If so, you may be lacking organizational/team alignment. Coach Alli had an interesting conversation with Jonathon Hensley, CEO of eMerge on Organizational Alignment. Alignment means getting everyone on your team rowing the boat in the same direction. The key to achieving organizational alignment towards your strategic goals is communication. If everyone is rowing their own way or maybe someone is just an anchor holding you in place, your organization cannot thrive and many don’t even survive. A business coach can help you identify if this is a struggle in your organization, get 100% percent of your team rowing in not only the same direction but the right direction to help the organization and you as the leader achieve the vision and goals at an exceptional pace.
Get Accountability
This is probably the reason most leaders and business owners seek out a coach, accountability! As leaders and business owners, we often don’t have “bosses” or at least we are allowed an extremely high level of freedom to set our own agendas. Although most of us became leaders in part because we have a talent for self-management, like everyone else it is easy to become complacent. Having a coach as an accountability partner gives you a set time to check in on your goals and action items plus they won’t accept excuses for your lack of results. Read this article to learn more about the power of accountability partners.
Gain a Confidante
One of the most common reasons business owners seek a coach is because they feel like they need someone they can trust to bounce ideas off of or confide in. Being at the top gets lonely so having someone who is truly invested in your success, who is your biggest cheerleader, and who always has your back is highly important to the mental and emotional health of leaders and business owners. Having someone in your corner builds strength and confidence in decision making and helps us avoid both Impostor Syndrome and indecision.
Harness the Power of the Collective Mind
We talked about how a coach can be used to brainstorm and bounce ideas off of and this is what is implied by the collective mind. A coach listens to our thoughts, opinions and ideas but also brings to the table their individual thoughts, opinions and ideas. They also ask clarifying and thought provoking questions to help uncover new ideas. By utilizing both the individual’s and the group’s thinking, we can truly expand what we alone are capable of producing. This is the concept behind peer-to-peer advisory groups and masterminds but also takes place in one-to-one coaching.
Conclusion
So what about you? Are you ready to invest in yourself and your business to achieve exponential growth as a leader and your profits? Not sure if you are ready for a coach? At Deliberate Directions we shift leaders from frustrated and indecisive to confident and inspired to grow their impact on others so please accept our free gift of a complimentary coaching strategy session to see how coaching can help you!
