Coaching: From Buzzword To Critical Success Factor

Business coaching, specifically, is a method to accompany, instruct and train a person, a group or a company to help meet targets or develop specific skills. The entire coaching process combines training, learning, and autonomy through motivation, responsibility, and creativity to achieve growth.

Business coaching is aimed at micro-enterprises and SMEs, and its objective is mainly to improve the company’s structure. If you think that your company or your team needs coaching, the truth is that you can benefit (and a lot!) From this practice.

How to apply business coaching to your SME and lead it to success

First, let’s start with the definitions. The Coach is the professional who accompanies people in their coaching process. And Coachee is the one who receives guidance from the Coach.

Have you already considered hiring a business coaching service? You may not have believed it yet, but more and more companies, microenterprises, SMEs and startups are doing it. Whether for managers, leaders or work teams, coaching is a tool that can be a success factor and make a difference. And because? Because coaching works primarily in three areas:

• Conflict and problem resolution;
• Development and fulfilment of long-term goals;
• Increased and improved performance.

If, on the other hand, you assume the role of leader and want to coach yourself, here are some tips and guidelines to become the coach that your work team and your company needs.

Create authentic and trusting relationships

True leaders focus more on the success of their team than their own. As long as a leader’s actions do not reflect this philosophy, obstacles can arise. For this reason, trust is critical. If faith is not established early on, it will eventually become more challenging to achieve. A leader must never assume that his title is necessarily accompanied by confidence. He must earn it.

To achieve this, you must focus on each of your team members and your business partners in knowing their objectives, goals and ambitions. Only then can you offer an authentic coaching experience to your employees, and they will only become coachees if they realize that one of your focuses is them.

Divide your goals into small objectives

Coaching can be an intimidating endeavour, especially when coaching a team or an entire organization. The best coaches break their goals (for example, increased productivity ) into smaller, more achievable short-term goals. If you decide to skip this step, your audience may be much less receptive to adopting new strategies and working methods.

Hear, listen and understand your team

The role of the coach is to guide but also to listen. Coaching cannot be developed without knowing the coachees and their goals or difficulties. Thus, to become a good coach – and even a mentor – the way forward is to listen, listen, listen. Value the voices of your employees, give importance to their concerns and guide them with the instructions they provide.

Use positivity as a foundation

Great leaders encourage and motivate their teams. The function of coaching is to take the employee’s motivation and use it to achieve specific goals through individual and team effort. Therefore, leadership and coaching always go hand in hand in the business world.

Be a consistent presence

As in marketing, a consistent and cumulative approach is very effective in building, creating change, and progressing. In this way, productive leaders are consistent in temperament, availability, and mission. And although there are several styles of leadership, all have five fundamental pillars: building trust, listening carefully, positive reinforcement, focus and consistency.