When a business reaches a certain peak of development, it may seem that you have run out of all management and scaling tools. And this is it, because it is high time you shifted your focus so that your business works for you, just as you worked for it, creating everything from scratch.
Executive coaching is a solution that can accelerate this transformation. As a founder of MINDS Coaching & Consulting and a qualified ILM Level 7 Executive Coach (the UK professional qualification from the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) and City & Guilds designed for senior leaders, focusing on strategic leadership and establishing coaching on an organisational level, equivalent to Master’s level study), I will help you figure out how coaching contributes to team cohesion and the development of your business, and how to understand that this tool is right for you.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
As you rebuild your team into its best, most proactive version, your focus will shift from excessive control, your personal presence in all operational processes, and a vague role distribution to a bold vision, delegating responsibilities and setting goals for team members.
Introducing a culture of initiative and responsibility involves a comprehensive process of developing employees’ skills to make decisions with accountability, with an emphasis on the fact that this will, at the same time, affect the entire team and business results.
In this topic, I will outline two core aspects that, at first glance, seem unrelated: the issues of low initiative among teams, not only in Ukraine, and the confusion between coaching and mentoring bringing the case with practice.
The subject matter of this article is not how you lead. The message is that what you do to build and develop teams along with creating high-performance organisational culture, especially in the context of entrepreneurship and business where people need development.
To develop out-of-the-box thinking in each team member and their increased performance, you will have to stop moving from the paradigm of fear. For many years, this management legacy has been raising employees who work according to an algorithm, fear punishment for mistakes, and shift responsibility to the management from whom they receive orders.
This management style, with its cultural tendency to criticize or blame, can equally slow down your team’s productivity and hinder your own development.
Given that it may be difficult for you to trust a coach who can partner with you to work on your own leadership style needs to evolve, including your leadership behaviour, self-belief, mindset, emotional intelligence, and performance. But this is an entry point to start building the true organisational development being able to lead an interdependent organisation where people thrive and profits grow. As a consequence of partnership with a qualified coach, business leaders usually achieve both tangible and intangible results on the individual and organisational level. The proved outcomes are enhanced performance, stronger employee engagement, competitive advantage and sustainability.
There is also the other side of the coin and it is a specific stage of your business development. Coaching is a transformative approach and it can derail progress when it is used at the wrong stage of your business.
A striking illustration of this is one of our cases where a potential client seeks advice with a request to start her own business. The client sincerely believes that the coach as a fat cat will answer all the questions, provide guidance and guarantee success. Looking ahead, I would like to note that such a request to a coach is doomed to failure as a client’s need is not about coaching, it is about mentoring and learning.
However, this is a critical and extremely important moment in understanding what strategies should be used to move your business forward. And when. We notice this phenomenon in Ukraine, Canada, the UK, Syngapore, and other countries. At this very starting point, a person needs to learn the basics of management, receive support from a mentor who can share experience, provide reasonable advice, and professional support. And once only this new-entry entrepreneur reaches her initial maximum, having established and developed her business to a certain level, only then she can ask a coach for help to master new techniques and transform herself: evolve, grow, and scale.
The key difference between coaching and mentoring is that coaching is a non-directive, skill-focused approach fundamentally based on asking powerful and thought-provoking questions. Its aim is to facilitate self-discovery and actions for specific goals. While mentoring is a directive way of sharing knowledge, skills, and expertise by more experienced person to help a less experienced one.
An accurate assessment provided by my company MINDS Coaching & Consulting allows you to start coaching when you are ready for it and when your business needs it. Remember that the main condition for working with a coach is maturity: to undergo transformation, to step out of your comfort zone, and not stop when it seems that you have reached your maximum.
