What Coaching Requires

When you think of the best coach you ever had, who comes to mind?

For me, it was my 7th & 8th grade basketball coach, Mr. H. With my career game-high 8 points skills, he turned me into a play executor and a defender. Shaq had a better free throw percentages than I did. But as I learned and worked hard within his system, turned out that I loved my role.

My next coach wanted a scoring guard or taller shooting forward. That wasn't me. Long story short, I did not make those next teams.

Coaching requires a willing player. In business, I call them clients. My established founders and family business owners who are struggling on their current growth plateau are understanding that what got them there might not get them to accomplish their next SMART or stretch goals. After all, their "system" worked before. Why shouldn't it again?

Coaching requires that willing player to change something. Let's be honest: many things. It may be habits. It may be cutting edge leadership techniques. It may be a better way to becoming the visionary and strategic CEO that your employees, suppliers, and customers need. It probably means hiring a key role that you do really well and that you really enjoy. That will be really uncomfortable.

Keep in mind that a coach pulls the competency forward, or even out of you in the first place, that you might not even know you actually had. The best way I can explain it right now is this: a real coach will turn take the kid everyone else has relegated to playing defense all the time to the kid who can score goals. Typically, only after that happens can your coach then help you start smoothing your rough edges. Before that, you probably won't believe that your coach not only has your best interest at heart but also has the best interest at heart of everyone around you.

2024 is weeks away. It's your year. But the choice is yours.

ryan

Ryan Kauth is a coach for established founders and family enterprise owners and leaders who have been maddeningly and stressfully stuck on their current plateau of no-growth. No growth can mean many different things: stagnant revenue, decreasing profit, uneasy cash flow, business value below the level needed for you to exit or set up the next owner(s) for success, customer base not expanding, unbearable changes to suppliers and vendors, personnel leaving, and/or a personal feeling of not growing professionally. If you don't have your 2024 business coach, let's see if we're a fit by clicking here.