» A short piece about business coaching and mentoring

The terms coaching and mentoring are used somewhat loosely. I attempt to be prescriptive about them here.

This piece is about what you do and do not get from business coaching and mentoring.

If you want advice about how to run your business, go to an adviser. Business coaches and mentors do not (or should not) offer advice.

If you want to bounce ideas around about how to develop the business, some business coaches will offer this. Be careful to find out if a particular coach does. Caveat emptor.

If you want someone to do a job of work for and in your business, you need a contractor, an interim manager or a consultant. You will need to be willing and able to grant them executive authority within your business, powers of command and, possibly, of delegation. They are effectively temporary employees. Business coaches and mentors never do this stuff (unless they are seriously confused about their identity).

If you have issues in your personal life which you can’t exclude from the business, you probably need to go to personal coach, a counsellor or a therapist, though a very small number of business coaches (including me) have the training and expertise to help you there. Their benefit is that they have an understanding of the business context in which you are playing out your stuff and therefore can offer an integrated approach which the others miss.

The huge value of business coaches and mentors is that they will help you work out how you can be a better businessperson and then support you in putting whatever you decide to do into effect. It’s the concept of teaching someone to fish versus giving them a fish.

As a result, the business improves.

There is a rule: It is your business, not theirs. They have no authority in your business and cannot be held responsible for anything that happens (good or bad) in the business as result of you doing what you decided to do in the coaching session.

In particular, if you decide not to do what you said you’d do, and the business suffers as a result, it isn’t their fault! You have to take responsibility for your life and that of your business.

by Jeremy Marchant . © 2016 Jeremy Marchant Limited . acknowledgements to Ben Curtis for helping me realise I needed to spell this out . uploaded 28 january 2016 . images: Free images
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A short piece about business coaching and mentoring

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