Benefits of Coaching

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Tom Eng, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Name: Tom Eng
Business Name: Certified Master Coaching LLC
In Business Since: 2010

1. Please provide a short introduction, which explains your background and how you got started as a business coach or consultant.

My background is in technology. There was a time when I struggled with obstacles and overwhelm. I was a technical manager for a $10 billion dollar company with significant responsibilities. At the same time, I was trying to take care of my family – a wife and two kids, my mother with Alzheimer’s and a brother with down syndrome. After a great deal of stress and pain, I finally decided I needed some help. As a result, I turned to professional coaching. Once I received coaching, and experienced all its great benefits, I realized I wanted to help others, especially people in situations like mine. So I became a Certified Master Coach, integrating professional coaching with 20 years of management experience in the consulting and technology industries.

2. What does a business coach or consultant do?

There’s an important distinction between a business coach and a business consultant. A coach guides the client in a collaborative and supportive effort to achieve a wide variety of business, professional, or executive goals. A consultant delivers a functional or technical solution based on specific industry expertise and may even take on some or all of the work to develop that solution.

3. What are the characteristics that a potential business coach should possess to be successful?

A business coach must be a leader, supportive, collaborative, a listener, and a problem solver. Based on these key characteristics, the coach acts as the business owner’s trusted guide and partner. In addition, a good problem-solving coach serves as a reliable detective, capable of analyzing the goal, uncovering the source of any challenges or risks, and preparing a quality plan that delivers a solution that best meets the client’s needs.

4. Why does a business owner need a business coach?

Actually, everyone needs a coach. A good coach helps individuals to see themselves as others see them and provides timely, supportive guidance when it comes to difficult situations. A good business coach helps the business owner grow his or her business and reach key milestones sooner with fewer mistakes.

5. What areas of support do most business owners need to address?

Although there are numerous challenges, they all tend to fall into one of three areas: people, operations, and innovation. Not surprisingly, the human thread runs through operations and innovation. The most common work culture issues that block all three of these areas are: work cliques, work silos, and cross-level associations. These issues are subtle, usually go unnoticed, but can be extremely damaging to a company’s bottom line.

6. How do you help business owners address their opportunities for improvement?

I help them to establish strong alignment between a compelling business vision, goals and action steps. These three key elements are necessary to create a solid plan that focuses on opportunities for business improvement and growth. And while opportunities are great, I also work with business owners to assess any potential risks and develop the appropriate monitoring and mitigation steps.

7. In terms of providing coaching to a business owner, what areas do they seem to be most resistant to your input?

Ironically, not all business owners are ready to accept the visualization tools that can be so effective in helping them clearly focus on and embrace their goals. But there’s a reason for this. All of us are bound by our own internal stories – rules and beliefs – of who we are and what makes sense in this world. We tend to hold onto our internal stories, resisting any attempts to change them because that would mean uncertainty at the deepest level – at our core. I am able to help my clients see the benefits of expanding beyond their stories, enabling them to grow with their businesses.

8. Is business coaching affordable and what is the ROI?

When it comes to business coaching, “affordable” is not a relevant term. It’s all about creating value. And the cost of coaching is really an investment. For example, I will work with a client to determine the target ROI and relate that to their investment in my coaching services. Generally, I like the ROI to be at least twice the investment. Also, based on the goal or challenge to be addressed, I will advise on the costs of risks becoming issues if action is not taken.

9. What would be the range of expectations in terms of costs a business owner could expect if they hire a business coach?

From my experience, I’ve seen a range from $75 to $250 per hour for most business coaches. And certainly, there are high-end coaches earning thousands of dollars per hour.

Costs vary based on a number of factors. First, there’s location. The cost of coaching in Los Angeles or New York City will be higher than the cost in Pittsburgh. Second, there are different price ranges for different types of business coaches, such as executive coaches, strategy coaches, process coaches, green coaches, wellness coaches, etc. Third, if a coach has expertise on how to solve a specific industry problem, that expertise will command a greater price.

10. If a business owner decides to hire a business coach how long before they see improvement in their business?

This really depends on the scope of the goal or challenge being addressed. The action plan should include well-defined milestones, milestone dates, and specific improvement metrics. I like to create weekly checkpoints to ensure that clients see the improvements as soon as they occur. More importantly, this gives us the opportunity to celebrate successes on a regular basis, thus fueling momentum while allowing for any necessary course corrections.

11. How can a business coach help a business owner meet short, medium and long-term goals?

It’s important for the coach to work with the business owner to create a compelling vision, identify the appropriate goals, and create an action plan for each of these timeframes. Most important, the coach and the business owner must make sure there is alignment from the vision to the goals to the action plan and that this alignment is clearly communicated throughout the organization.

12. What should I look for when hiring a business coach?

Hiring a business coach is both similar to and different than hiring a full time employee. You need to make sure the coach’s skillset can help you achieve your goals. Domain expertise is important but should not be a deciding factor in every situation. For example, never underestimate the power of a business coach with fresh, inspiring strategies and a passion for creatively solving problems. Sometimes, we get stuck in our own space of how to solve a problem when in fact the solution is waiting for us just a few steps beyond. As I tell potential clients, you want a coach whose principles you agree with and who shows great enthusiasm for their principles.

13. Are their specific questions I should ask a potential business consultant before hiring them?

Yes, your questions should focus on the business coach’s expertise, approach and attitude with regard to coaching. Attitude is very important as it is the coach’s attitude that will drive momentum. Here are the key questions to ask:
1. What are your certifications?
2. What is your approach to coaching?
3. Where and how will the coaching take place?
4. Will there be tangible deliverables from our coaching engagement?
5. How long does an average coaching engagement take and how will we measure success?
6. Who is your perfect client? (Helps you know the coach’s ideal niche)
7. Can you tell me a success story? (And while the coach shares this story, check their enthusiasm level.)

14. What is the best way to hire a business coach?

Ask yourself, what goal am I trying to accomplish? What are my hiring criteria? Based on your answers to these questions, create an interview checklist with a simple rating system. If there are multiple interviewers, this checklist helps to ensure a consistent interview process. Each interviewer should rate the coach independently and then meet to compare their assessments of the coach. Once you find a coach who’s a good fit, the coach can draft the coaching agreement. Just make sure details like the length of the coaching engagement, milestones, deliverables, and any other relevant details are included.

15. What specific ways can a business coach help my business?

A good business coach can help a business in so many ways. Here’s the tip of the iceberg:
1. You need to develop a customer retention strategy.
2. You are the president of a company, your father is on the board, and you are having difficulty with the work relationship between you and your father.
3. You want to establish operational excellence with increased job satisfaction.
4. You want to create a business environment of continuous innovation.
5. One of your newly appointed executives is having difficulty in their new role.
6. A division, department, team, or group needs to learn collaboration skills.
7. A manager is being promoted to vice president and requires executive leadership skills.
8. You get stressed and you need strategies to help you better focus on high quality business challenges as opposed to low quality problems.

16. In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges small business owners face?

It’s amazing how so many business owners, executives, and managers allow themselves to get stressed over the simplest things. This blocks their ability to recognize and handle the more important business challenges where they should be spending their time. What ends up happening is they tend to lead things and manage people. And what they really need to do is “lead people and manage things” to achieve higher productivity and greater results.

17. In terms of the business coach’s own business, how do you market your business?

I like to do a lot of networking which has worked well for me. I also use press releases as a marketing tool and maintain a social media presence.

18. How do you prefer to coach your clients one-on-one, conference calls, or through online methods.

I like face-to-face sessions the best. They’re more interactive. That said, I’ve coached successfully using each of these methods. As a general rule, I’m fine with whatever the client chooses as long as it’s time efficient.

19. How much time on a monthly basis do you spend with each of your clients?

Between four to eight hours. In most cases, it’s closer to four hours. Business owners are extremely busy individuals. I value their time and mine as well. And this is consistent with my philosophy of keeping things simple. For any business owner, as complexity increases, so do the challenges and the problems. So the last thing my clients need is more complexity or more coaching time than is truly required.

20. Without sharing confidential information, can you share a story of your work with one of your clients that best characterize the success you were able to help your client achieve?

I’ll share two stories, because I’m truly inspired by these individuals’ courage to be coached and to turn their suffering into true successes.

In my first story, my client wanted to start a small business but felt stuck because he often experienced severe panic attacks while driving away from his home. Most of the time, he pulled over and allowed the attacks to subside. I designed a visualization technique for him and coached him to use it properly. His panic attacks completely disappeared in a month and have not returned since. He now runs a very successful business as a personal trainer.

In my second story, my client wanted to reboot her event planning business after moving from Los Angeles to Dallas and taking a five year hiatus. But she was extremely stressed out about how to proceed and about identifying good contacts. Her stress created a block that prevented her from being a resourceful problem solver. So after I helped her to better understand her vision and goals, I created some specific strategic intervention steps that she applied to release that stress. Once the stress was gone, we reviewed her contacts. She proceeded to open up, recalling her contacts which included the wives of retired hall of fame professional athletes. It was quite a surprise to her that her stress had blocked her ability to access key information she already had. As I write this, my client’s event planning business is in full swing. She’s working on a proposal for a multi-city fundraising event in which the wives and mothers of professional athletes, celebrities, and other public figures will raise money for a number of great causes and charities.