As a business owner, you often find yourself wearing many hats, but no matter how much you do or how hard you try, it’s impossible to “know it all” and plan for everything.
Even if you’ve graduated from a university with a degree in business or marketing, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to make your business succeed. In fact, many of the most successful business owners say what they learned in school didn’t fully prepare them for the real-world challenges of running a business.
“It’s hard to teach a 17 to 18-year-old what they don’t realize they need to know in another ten years.” - Donald Miller
Keep reading to learn 10 reasons you should hire an executive/leadership coach — even if you have a degree.
Reason #1:
Coaches Teach You What Universities Don’t
A leadership coach can teach you what universities don’t. What this means is that universities can give you tools, but they can’t give you success. They can provide the information, but it’s up to you to put that information to work.
Once you graduate, their job is done. When you hire a coach, they bring with them real-world experience and guidance to help you overcome your obstacles.
It’s important to understand that coaches are not here to regurgitate the same information you got from your college courses. They’re here to guide you through that part that the university didn’t teach you.
Leadership coaches are not cheerleaders. They’re here to push you to do your best while keeping your best interests at heart. Cheerleaders can inspire and encourage you, but they don’t necessarily have anything tangible to offer or show you how to manage better.
Reason #2:
Coaches Help You Reduce Liabilities
Reducing liabilities means addressing personal weaknesses that are a potential liability to your company. A leadership coach will give you a personal assessment to reveal your strengths and weaknesses.
The leadership coach will take the information learned from the assessment to create programs to strengthen those weak areas to help your business grow.
Reason #3:
Coaches Help You Adopt a Growth Mindset
A business owner with a growth mindset is always looking to scale or grow their business. To see new opportunities and find ways to improve your business, you need a receptive frame of mind. One where you're open to new ideas and critical feedback, and you understand you need to be a lifetime student.
When you’re always learning and growing, you'll always have new things to bring to your company. A coach can help you adopt a growth mindset.
It’s essential to have a growth mindset to avoid stagnation. When you become stagnant, you’re not operating at your fullest potential. The world continues to carry on around you, and you’re missing out on useful resources and information because you aren't keeping up.
A leadership coach can show you how a growth mindset is critical to your company's growth and guide you toward the type of things you need to learn to benefit your business.
Reason #4:
Coaches Help You Get a Clear Vision of Success
A coach will help you clarify your vision of success and show you how to make this vision a fundamental part of your business. A leadership coach will guide you through questions that will help you define your vision of success. A coach uses your answers to show you how to make that vision the cornerstone of your company.
When you have a clear vision of success in place, and share that vision, it becomes a vision of success that everyone can work towards. When everyone is on the same page, the business runs much more efficiently and profitably.
A leadership coach can help you create your mission statement, set up a solid framework for your business, and help you develop your guiding principles.
Reason #5:
Coaches Help You Develop a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is crucial because it gives a business owner a visual blueprint of goals.
When you develop a written marketing plan, you determine who your target audience and ideal customers are, and how you will reach them.
When you know your audience and ideal customer, you can concentrate your focus and limit your expenditures. This reduces your cost for marketing and increases your chance of converting leads into sales. Without a marketing plan in place, businesses end up flying blind and wasting valuable resources.
A leadership coach can help you clarify your business goals and create a plan of action, turning it into a cohesive marketing plan.
If you have a marketing plan, a leadership coach can go through it with you to find ways to refine & strengthen it. Your coach can help you find the gaps in your plan and connect you with the right people to make your plan more effective.
Reason #6:
Coaches Teach You to Be a Better Communicator
Universities offer communication courses where you’ll practice writing and give a few speeches in front of your peers, but it doesn’t give you much experience for the business world. A coach has considerable real-world experience communicating with a wide variety of people and can teach you to be a better communicator.
Everything revolves around communication, especially in the business world. You need to be able to draft agreements and other business documentation. You also face endless emails, telephone calls, and now, text messages. You talk to clients, do interviews, have meetings and conferences, both in-person and video.
It is critical to the success of any business for the owner to be an effective communicator, and that extends to everyone who works there.
A coach can assess every individual's communication skills and provide them with the tools to build their skills and teach them how to communicate professionally.
Reason #7:
Coaches Help You Implement Systems & Processes for Workflow and Sales
What this means is your coach will help you get your business ducks in a row. Business owners often don’t realize that they have in front of themselves. At times, to move forward, you have to take a step back. You need to take time to lay some groundwork. You need to set up protocols and standards.
A business needs to have an efficient system and process for workflow and sales in place so that the business owner isn’t putting in 80-hour workweeks.
Business owners have that drive that always keeps them “on.” They try to do everything themselves, which isn’t efficient or effective. For your business to grow, you have to let go and delegate. For someone else to satisfactorily do what you delegate, you must have processes in place for them to follow.
A leadership coach can help you set up processes, implement a system, and guide you through all the steps. With a plan in place, you can cut down on wasted time and inefficiency between departments and team members. The workflow will improve, and you will see a measurable boost in sales, and your business will be ready to handle new growth.
Reason #8:
Coaches Help You Optimize Your Business Strategy
A business strategy is a long-range plan that outlines how the company will achieve its goals and meet its customers' or clients' expectations while sustaining its competitive advantage in the marketplace. A leadership coach can help you optimize your business strategy.
A business with a weak business strategy won’t be able to generate leads or sales successfully. A business needs to have a solid business strategy to please its customers and achieve its objectives. An optimized strategy gives you a long-range sketch of the organization's desired image, direction, and destination to follow.
A leadership coach can help optimize your business strategy, creating a clear vision for your company to prevent your company from losing sight of its aim.
Reason #9:
Coaches Teach You Best Practices for Managing Talent
This means that a leadership coach can help a business owner manage current employees and teach them what to look for when bringing new talent to the team.
Learning best practices for managing talent is essential because a business is truly only as good as its employees. As a business owner, you want to employ the best of the best for their product or service. All things should be considered here, education, experience, and personality.
A leadership coach can teach you best practices for managing team talent and show you how to handle challenges, especially when personalities clash. The coach may also want to discuss ways to cross-train, communicate effectively, and lead the team properly.
A leadership coach will train you on how to be friendly, firm, and effective. You need people to cooperate and work together toward the end goals of the business.
Optimally, everyone will do this in a friendly manner, or at least keep it professional. As a business owner, you are not there to make friends. You're there to run your business, and your business doesn't have room for drama and unprofessionalism.
Reason #10:
Coaches Help You Establish a System of Execution
A system of execution is a system designed to execute operational tasks such as production, inventory tracking, or maintenance. Business execution is about getting everyone on the same page. Setting up systems and training employees on how to follow the system properly. Everyone does their part to support a company’s strategy by making sure they’re doing what they need to do to achieve the company's strategic goals.
Having a system of execution in place is vital to business owners because you won't attain your goals without it. With no clear operational system set up, there is no viable future for the business.
There has to be an effective routine outlined for every team member. You need to create a process and stay on top of it. You do this with regular meetings, continually assess and clarify objectives, set and measure progress toward goals, and develop ways to handle obstacles.
You might not know anything about employee performance levels, so your leadership coach can step in and show you how to measure them and why it matters to your business. A leadership coach will show you the correct way to improve business execution and to increase overall employee performance levels.
Get Help From a Real Coach — Not a Cheerleader
Keeping yourself on track these days seems like an impossible task. You feel pulled in so many directions.
You have to complete your work, but you have to make sure that your employees are not dropping the ball. Working remotely is very new to so many.
We help leaders create strong working relationships with a wide variety of people.
We have years of experience working with executives and leaders to help them reach their goals and solve the most significant problems they face.
We coach in 3 different areas:
If you need advice or just have questions about how we can help you reach out and schedule a coaching call with us today.
A Tactical Field Guide to Managing Humans
A straight-to-the-point resource for team leaders