What Is Professional Business Coaching?

Definition Business Coaching

Business and/or Career Coaching has multiple meanings and strategies.  Just like what the Professional Business Coaches Alliance (PBCA) says because they have a good business / professional coaching concept. They state: Business coaches support business owners (or business leaders) with productivity and personal effectiveness in business.

Business or Professional coaches work with successful individuals who are “stuck” in other aspects of their business or career.  Such areas can be correlated with concerns of risk-management / ethics, poor income, slow revenue, cash flow difficulties, conflicts with employees, or working too many hours, which can lead to an unstable work/life balance.  Other common problems include quality issues, service failures, lack of depth of leadership, weak organizational culture and limited interest for the business.

Many of those things cause a company owner to feel frozen.  They’re full of tension, sorrow, concern, rage, disappointment and doubt.  Such negative emotions compound the difficulties facing business owners and may generate new issues for themselves; some at work, some at home.

A qualified business coach helps keep the client out of the proverbial woods so the owner can focus on market growth creatively and fix those issues systematically.  This results in higher income, improved cash flow and a healthier workforce, resulting in a safe, productive and happy life.

The second distinct field where a business coach comes in is where the customer understands what he or she is supposed to do, but doesn’t do anything–or –where the customer intentionally does something that he or she shouldn’t do but still does.  That is what we call “personal effectiveness.” Business trainers in the field of financial effectiveness deal with problems that result from bad behaviors, ineffective risk management procedures/strategies and/or addictions. Others actually stem from personal strengths that are overused so much that they become weaknesses in fact.  

Individual success starts with understanding yourself and your own individual dream and goals.  So it turns toward how you communicate with other people of all forms of personality and actions.  Ultimately, personal success is about values-compatible behaviors. It’s about being safe physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually.

A business / professional coach essentially has the duty of having a “secure place” to direct and assist his or her clients in achieving the specified goals of the clients.  The word “secure place” is of vital importance to this concept and should be further explained, as the sense of this phrase is not inherently self-evident.

The word “safe place” refers to an optimistic, welcoming atmosphere free of any secret agendas or judgment.  Often, there are no self-imposed (or “coach imposed”) limits on what is possible. The client is free to speak freely and frankly in this secure environment trusting that everything discussed will be kept in full trust.  If “providing a safe place” doesn’t sound important, just think about it: however, when a person hires a business / professional coach, the coach serves only one person’s self-interest: the client.  

The truth is people are actively projecting onto other people their own goals, beliefs, views, emotions and even fears.  Actually it’s natural. And this is why finding a place that’s “free” from all that noise is so special. A company coach is in the safe position.

Unlike conventional business coaching, business / professional coaches aren’t solving their clients’ issues and then quitting.  A company consultant, then, helps direct business owners to find their own solutions to their problems. The coach directs the client in putting in place action strategies to fix the issues (or build on new opportunities).  The coach allows for creative and strategic brainstorming. The coach also helps promote the development of the practical “action steps” that should be taken by the individual or consulting organization to execute the plan. Once the action steps are committed to, a good coach provides a structured environment where the client is accountable to him or herself for executing the plans.

Business / Professional coaching is a science and an art.  You have to know yourself, you have to know others and you have to know business!  Much of what you do as a business coach comes naturally, but you need to learn a lot of valuable strategies and skills to bring value to your customers too.