The coaching industry in the U.K., in any real sense, has only been around for about twenty years. What this means is that the majority of the U.K. public don’t have a real understanding of what coaching actually is, unless they’ve already been coached. Coaching is what I call an “invisible” product, meaning that coaches don’t have many items in our arsenal that one could see, hold, and touch, and the public don’t readily understand exactly what it does or how it works. It’s not like selling electric cabling, office supplies, telecoms, web design or legal accounting services.
Not to mention, coaching can be expensive – or seen as expensive – compared to commodities and other professional services that businesses require. Despite our best efforts to make the invisible visible, coaching is still shrouded in mystery to an extent.
So it’s only natural that anybody considering coaching would have concerns. Am I going to waste my money? Am I risking embarrassment in the event it doesn’t work? How much work will I need to do? How much time, over and above my already busy schedule and long working hours, will I need to put in? These are all valid and relevant questions, which are all hopefully answered in more detail in other blogs in this series. Feel free to visit https://andrewgoldberg.actioncoach.co.uk/news-and-updates/ to research more in-depth subjects.
One of the most common concerns or questions raised by prospective coaching clients, at least in the early days of my own coaching career, is that the coach him or herself does not actually spend that much time with their client – for example, they may only have a 1-hour coaching session on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Or that the coach doesn’t do any of the work required for the client to achieve their goals. So when you look at the coach’s fees vs their time spent on an individual client, the hourly rate can be far greater than a typical hourly rate of an employee or manager, or even that of a director/owner.
And that’s true. Coaches, as opposed to consultants or contractors, don’t do the work. At least, and this is just my own honest opinion, good coaches don’t do the work. The coach’s job is to make sure that goals and targets are set, plans are written, decisions are made, and actions are taken. The work is done by the client, and the work should be done by the client, because that’s the only way to get the desired results. We learn by doing, and we learn by, well, learning – training courses, seminars, books, etc.
People also worry that coaching won’t work. And while it is true that my own coaching clients’ results vary from business to business, the good news is that your desired results are entirely within your power. Good coaches teach you to ‘own’ your own results and outcomes, and give you the belief in yourself (and your team), and the confidence to aim for greater performance than you ever have before. So effectively, coaching will work if you want it to, and are willing to follow your coach’s guidance and commit to doing the work and learning.
Another common concern that people have about coaching is that they don’t have the time to commit to a coaching program. This subject is covered more extensively in another article in this series, we can look at it briefly here as well. Think of it this way: investing in a coaching program isn’t about doing “coaching work.” It’s about “working on the business” work. In other words, any work you do as a result of coaching is work that you should be doing as a business owner, to improve and grow the business. If you don’t feel you have time for coaching, what that really means is that you don’t feel you have time to do your job as the business owner. Aside from the few hours per month you might spend with your coach, the majority of your “coaching time” will be spent on business growth activities: planning, leading your teams, sales and marketing, productivity, recruitment, financial management, and so on.
As it turns out, time is the #1 most common challenges business owners and leaders face: if you were able to allocate more time to growing the business, the business would grow. One of the first things I do with coaching clients who are worried that they are too busy and don’t have time to commit to growing their business, is to teach them how to create that time (without adding hours on to their already long working week). We do this primarily by highlighting to business owners all the work that they are currently doing but shouldn’t, which should be delegated, outsourced, automated, systemised, or simply discarded. We also teach business owners to be less reactive to day-to-day problems, and structure their time so that a portion of time is allocated to operational troubleshooting and functions, and that a portion of time is allocated to growing the business, and this time is protected and non-negotiable.
If you are currently speaking to a coach about possibly coming on a program, raise your concern about time with your coach. They should help you put a plan together that will enable you to very quickly free up some time to work ‘on’ the business each week. You will be surprised how easy it is, as long as you have the right mindset and are willing to break your addictions to certain tasks and empower your team to take on more of the day-to-day operational work.
Find out more about what ActionCOACH can do for your business. Or if you simply have a question about something you’ve read here, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Email me at andrewgoldberg@actioncoach.com.
