Trainer or Coach for your team?

Business today is more, and more complex, it’s faster, more dynamic and more competitive.

Any business is a team and like great sporting teams, your team needs a coach. Let me put this in to perspective for you so we are not confused by the difference between a trainer and a coach.

A trainer deals with the physical agility and strength of people

A coach provides mental strength, clarity and resolve to achieve a result or goal

Please, don’t think I am saying a business doesn’t need a trainer, they do, but there is a big difference between training and coaching.

Simply put, a trainer will deliver a set of processes and knowledge to your business.

A coach will align your people assets to achieve the goals.

I can speak from experience, I kept engaging trainers and training organisations for my business but kept failing to achieve the results that I had for it. It wasn’t until I was having a refreshing and relaxing drink one evening with a very successful client that I discovered where I was going wrong. I asked him how he had made his business so successful.

His reply to me set off a lightning bolt of reality.

He told me that his success was down to two things;

Great training of his team with knowledge and;
Great coaching of his team to unblock their thought process and to in turn giving them the power to “do business with out fear and do it brilliantly”.

It was an epiphany moment for me.

The first Business Coach I contracted in was a disaster. They failed to actively listen to the challenges my team had. The coach had a set agenda and did not deviate from their agenda – take the money and run.

I had a great relationship with my team and after the first two rounds of coaching, asked for their feedback. What I heard back about their coaching experience was, to put it bluntly, was bloody horrible. They saw no value, they were not being heard, they felt it was more a counselling session. This was not what I wanted!

I set about looking for and found a business coach that had actually experienced business for them-self. They knew what it took to run a business. The thing I liked most about this coach when I met with her – she talked about the failures she had experienced, her learning and how she used a business coach herself to change her business for success.

It was real! She listened to what I thought my business needed but then turned the coaching to me. I had to be part of the coaching, not stand at arms length and believe I was doing the right thing for my business and my team by simply engaging a business coach. It had to start with me.

I had to be the first in the pool – so to speak.

My point here is that every business needs a coach but, you as the business leader, have to take the first step and be involved. If you’re not, you are wasting money!

My outcomes from the first year of engaging a business coach;