Have you thought about or have perhaps even decided now to work with a personal or business or career coach? I want to talk about the five critical things to consider when you’re starting this process.
But before I do that, I want to tell you a little bit about why this is so important to me. For the last five years or so of my career, I’ve worked with a series of different coaches–personal life coaches and entrepreneurial and business coaches as well–to help me really get to the next level. They have helped me to hold myself accountable to my goals and vision. To expose myself to new ideas and thinking and people and networks. And to level up my success by having somebody else help me envision, dream, and aspire greater.
And I couldn’t tell you how instrumental and helpful it’s been to me. I continue to be a student of my craft, in the world. And even though I’m a certified high-performance coach myself and I have coached so many different people, professionals, groups, and organizations, I believe that we’ve never fully made it, right, and we should always be a student of our craft and of the world. So I will continue for the rest of my working life and for the rest of my life, perhaps, to work with coaches that can help me do just that.
So why don’t we start by talking about again the five key things? If you’re considering or if you’ve already decided to work with a coach, whether it be a life coach or business coach, the five key things to consider and really focus on to make sure you get the best and the most impact out of this experience, right?
Clarity on your goals.
So the first again is having clarity on your goals. By that I mean you have to have clarity on what you want to achieve, right, from anything before you start down that path or else it can be hard to achieve what you’re setting out to achieve, right, if you don’t even have clarity around what that is. So get clear on your goals, right? Your vision for this. What do you want to do professionally and personally to really grow and stretch yourself, right? To get to a new platform and a new level.
Find someone with experience and expertise in your focal area.
The next step again is going to be to find somebody to identify and create a shortlist of coaches that have experience in the areas that you want to grow in. So if you’re working and looking to work with a life coach that could be looking for somebody who maybe you want to improve your relationships, right?
Or you want to really address your fitness and nutrition and your health, right? Or you want to really improve your relationship with money, right? And your finances. So find somebody, a coach with experience in those areas, with great testimonials. Interview the candidates on your shortlist to see if there’s a good fit with them based on their experience level. You’ll do the same professional if you’re looking for a business or career coach as well.
So if you are an entrepreneur, you’re looking for somebody to help you take your business and your mindset to new levels. And let’s say you have a business of 10 employees, you’re doing less than 5 million. You probably don’t want to find a coach that works with Fortune 100 companies with thousands of employees.
You want to find somebody that knows the pain points, the struggles, and the problems that you go through uniquely as a small business owner, right? So, create a list of three to five people that have direct experience coaching entrepreneurs and business owners like yourself. Or maybe you’re a career professional in the corporate world. You’re rising up the ranks. You want to find a career coach that can help you that’s worked in similar situations with other career management professionals looking to grow in their career.
Be vulnerable, honest and coachable.
The third key thing is to be vulnerable. To really understand, right? That we need to go into this with a little bit of vulnerability. We have to be honest about the things we’re struggling with, our pain points, our weaknesses.
What are we not proud of? What are we ashamed of? What do we need help in? Because if we don’t get vulnerable, right, and expose some of those weaknesses and areas of improvement, we’re not going to achieve the most we can from this coaching relationship. So be vulnerable and coachable guys, it’s really, really important to making this relationship work and getting the most out of it.
Commit fully to your vision and goals.
The next is to commit fully to your goals and vision, right? So once you get clarity around your goals for wanting to work with a coach, whether it be a life or business coach, you need to commit fully to those goals that you’re going to work with them on defining and then commit fully to your vision. So important. Commitment and dedication. It’s critical to achievement.
Install and follow an accountability system.
And then the last thing I want to talk about, the key thing here is to really create an accountability system. Ideally an accountability system with your coach or a lateral partner. So if you create great goals and a vision, that’s awesome. That’s one step. What is going to hold you accountable to doing the work to make sure that those get achieved, right? Day in, day out, the hard work, you know the, putting in the time, right? The routines, the work ethic, all of that. It’s really important to have somebody hold you accountable to do that work, to make sure it gets done. When it’s public, when it’s stated, when it’s out there and when it’s somebody else you gotta talk to, it tends to be a mechanism that creates better productivity and results.
So those are the five things to consider when you’re considering working with a personal or business coach that I would recommend focusing on, right? Because that’s going to help you really get the most from this coaching relationship to set you up for success so you can have the most impact and the best results. Drop a comment below if you liked this or share it with somebody who is considering working with a coach and see if it can be of value to them.
