LinkedIn: How to coach an entrepreneur

By Dennis Roberts Author | Speaker | Coach at The Rise of the Feminine

July 01, 2014 

Entrepreneurs are some of the most challenging yet rewarding clients a professional coach may attract. They possess unique traits and if understood and appreciated can make for the most rewarding coach/client relationship. Many coaches fail to appreciate the unique qualities of an entrepreneur and how to approach the client relationship.

What are the common traits of an entrepreneur? 

The entrepreneur is a different animal to your average coaching client. They are futurists and have the capacity to see opportunities where others cannot. They are highly creative and are strategic thinkers. They operate best free of constraints. They are impulsive and risk takers. The opportunity will often outweigh the risk. Their impetuosity and spontaneity often leaving a trail for others to clean up. They love to have multiple ideas or projects on the go. They thrive on starting things and can quickly become bored. They often work best alone. They move at a rapid pace. They may experience frustration if those around them cannot keep up.

What common mistakes do coaches make with entrepreneurs? 

Don’t try to change them or slow them down 

Successful coaches appreciate the entrepreneur for who they are and don’t try to change them. Let them run and get out of their way. Watch and learn. They move at such rapid pace they may omit to consider risks or challenges. Help them expand their thinking, use brainstorming techniques, run scenarios, add clarity and detail to the vision, identify blind spots.

Preserve balance and sustainability 

In their haste the entrepreneur may neglect basic aspects of their lives, eg diet, exercise, relationships, birthdays. Watch out for sustained periods of neglect. They are optimists and masters of illusion. Look for hidden signs of stress. The entrepreneur has the capacity to make small things big things – both opportunities and problems. Call it gearing. A good coach will realise this and role-play whatever role is appropriate. This is an art.

Respect their creativity and risk threshold 

Entrepreneurs have a high threshold for risk. Accept it and work with them. You may need to be the flexible one. Their tolerance for risk, not yours, should determine the basis for strategies and objectives. Entrepreneurs love to brainstorm ideas. They also love to talk. So, let them. Coaching is about listening. Entrepreneurs want someone to listen and respond enthusiastically to their ideas. They seek positive reinforcement.

What advice would you give to public practitioners dealing with entrepreneurs? 

Much of the above is also true for the professional advisor. There is one basic distinction. True coaches will not give advice. They will facilitate self-discovery through questioning techniques. Professional advisors such as accountants are expected to give professional advice. They are subject matter experts and required to interpret the law and share their knowledge. Remember entrepreneurs are the decision makers so offer them your considered opinion and let them decide. Give them options.

Be proactive 

Entrepreneurs move fast. They subject themselves to risks and make frequent decisions. They do not and cannot know everything. They place a premium value on astute professional advisors who can give them considered opinion proactively and foresee scenarios or risk exposure they cannot.

Be accessible and responsive 

When entrepreneurs want an answer they want it now. They make rapid fire decisions and have short concentration spans. They don’t want to dwell on the detail. Big picture, clear guidance, fast turnaround.

Service focus 

Tune into what your client wants. Take time to learn how they tick. Be flexible with your communication style to accommodate your client. They talk fast, you talk fast. They want succinct information, give it to them. They want options, run scenarios. They expect you to be there when they need you not return my call two days later.

Questions are the answers 

Learn how to listen. Learn how to ask powerful questions. The techniques of a skilled coach are just as relevant for an accountant or sales professional. Ask open questions, eg what, where, when, how. Practise questioning techniques such as probing, clarifying, paraphrasing, summarising.

Restate commitments 

Once you have reached agreement with your client, repeat it back to them for clarity, “So, it is my understanding that you want me to submit your tax return by Monday, 31 July, is that correct?” or “My expectation is that you will sign and return the contract to me by Wednesday, is that reasonable?”

Real-time information 

Nothing irritates an entrepreneur more than old information. Time is money. They want both lead indicators (prospects, conversion rates, average sales, purchase frequency) and lag indicators (customers, sales, profits) in their management reports. Sales pipelines are essential management information.

System and structure 

The entrepreneur needs system and structure. They often aren’t the best person to deliver it. That’s why they hire a coach, personal assistant, consultant or accountant. Coaching an entrepreneur is an exhilarating and rewarding experience. It can be a roller coaster ride and is never a dull moment. Supporting them in your role as a public practitioner can be just as rewarding. So, get yourself ready and hang on for the ride of your life.

by Dennis Roberts, published on LinkedIn 

www.dennisroberts.com.au

Why executive coaching is worth $500 an hour

By Christopher Mims, December 15, 2013

in qz.com

The most comprehensive and rigorous meta-analysis of professional coaching ever conducted was just published in print, and the results are unambiguous: Coaching in a businesses context “has significant positive effects on performance and skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation.”

Writing in The Journal of Positive Psychology, Tim Theebooma, Bianca Beersmaa and Annelies E.M. van Vianena of the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Amsterdam conclude that “In general… coaching is an effective tool for improving the functioning of individuals in organizations.” That’s good news, considering that, as the authors note, coaching is a $3 billion a year industry worldwide, and, as the Harvard Business Review estimated, the median rate for an executive coach is $500 an hour.

Theebooma et al. are so thorough in their analysis that they spend large sections of their paper outlining the flaws of many of the studies of the effectiveness of coaching, and their discursive style, while dense, yields a number of important takeaways.

But we don’t know why coaching works

Plenty of studies have established, to one degree or another, that coaching makes people measurably more effective at their jobs, yielding a quantifiable, positive return on investment for most investments in coaching. But there is a great deal of variability between studies in terms of how effective coaching can be. Is this because some coaches are better than others? Because some employees are more amenable to coaching or to different styles of coaching, than others? (There is even a term in the psychological literature for this trait: “coachability.”)

The authors elaborate: “Future research could investigate whether solution-focused coaching is indeed more effective than other coaching approaches and whether specific coaching effects also depend on significance and/or complexity of coaches’ problems.” By borrowing from fields with deep pools of literature, such as mentoring, training, therapy and education, the authors argue that professional coaches could begin to figure out which aspects of what they’re doing are particularly effective.

For example, effective coaching may be, like good therapy, primarily a product of the connection between the coach and coachee: “Recent work in the field of executive coaching indeed suggests that non-specific factors such as understanding, encouraging, and listening behaviors of the coach may be better predictors of coaching effectiveness than specific factors such as the coaching methodology.” 

Of course, coaching is a highly subjective experience, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The authors note that while many studies of the outcomes of coaching rely on self-reported results (versus evaluations by the coach or by others working with the person being coached) there is evidence from other areas of psychology that simply believing that a therapeutic intervention is working—whether that’s mentoring, teaching, psychotherapy or coaching—inspires a positive feedback mechanism that is key to the kind of deep, lasting, underlying behavioral change that is the goal of most coaching. So when choosing a coach, a good rule of thumb could simply be: Does this person make me feel more effective?

Leverage Leadership Strengths and Mitigate Weaknesses

A good post from Working Resources, an Executive Coaching firm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 Maynard Brusman
30th January 2013

Leadership Strengths and Weaknesses 

To become a successful philosopher king, it is better to start as the king than as the philosopher. -- Nassim Taleb in "Antifragile" 

I recently spoke with the VP of Talent Management of a company regarding providing executive coaching for the company CEO. She asked some very pertinent questions to determine fit. She specifically wanted to know how I worked with different personality styles, and my methods for initiating behavioral change. 

The VP of Talent Management and I spoke about my approach to coaching, and my belief that possessing a psychological understanding of human behavior and business acumen are important competencies for coaching executives. We also spoke of the need for her organization to create a strengths-based culture where innovation flourishes. 

The VP of Talent Management is interested in partnering with me in helping the CEO to become a build on his strengths and mitigate perceived weaknesses by the Board. We further discussed how company executives can benefit by working with a seasoned executive coach. 

I believe leaders are successful by leveraging strengths, and mitigating weaknesses: by taking prudent risk in the hope of significant reward; and by realizing, as Churchill did, that success is never final and failure rarely fatal—it’s courage that counts. 

I am a strong advocate of helping my executive coaching clients leverage their strengths. I also strongly support the importance of individuals mitigating their weaknesses. Frequently, I stress how much of our success in life comes from utilizing our strengths -- your intellectual strength and determination, for example, may have enabled you to complete your college degree or another significant achievement. However, challenges we face in our future may involve you doing things that are difficult for you -- especially if one's goal involves advancing to a higher level of leadership. 

I'm a fan of strengths assessments such as the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths or the Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0. However, there is nothing in those two assessments that prompts an individual to consider if they may be using a strength too much, whereas the Leadership Versatility Index (Kaplan Devries) also measures "overused strengths". 

McCall and Lombardo's interview studies conducted at the Center for Creative Leadership of derailed executives led them to them introduce the phrase, "strengths can become weaknesses". The Leadership Versatility Index gives leaders feedback on if they are doing behaviors "too little", the "right amount", or "too much". 

In a study of 421 upper-level managers, Kaiser and Kaplan found that by comparing self-report and 360 degree feedback the least effective managers overrated their effectiveness, and the most effective managers underrated their effectiveness. In fact, the high performing managers often did not have a good grasp of what their strengths are. This lack of strength awareness can cause them to overuse certain strengths in challenging situations because they come naturally to them. Of course this also is an argument to use strengths assessments to increase self-awareness. 

Is there a cost to overusing a particular strength? It seems obvious that to underutilize a strength, when that strength is needed, will lead to lower performance. It is just as true that to use a particular strength more than the ideal amount needed for the situation is equally harmful. 

Kaiser and Kaplan point out that you can have a manager that is a forceful leader -- who can take charge and provide clear direction. This leadership quality is often needed, especially with a new employee or in a crisis. However managers who are too forceful and too tough make employees feel badly about their work, and at the same time a leader who spends too much time including everyone in a decision and is too concerned about people's feelings for the situation, will get lower business results. 

The solution is to be versatile -- to display the "right" amount of their strengths for the situation at hand. The researchers describe being high in versatility as being a master of opposites. For example, managers or leaders can be evaluated for versatility by looking at pairs of leadership attributes such as Forceful and Enabling leadership by calculating how close their ratings are to the "right amount" on both dimensions. 

The bottom line is we need to balance focusing on strengths with a realistic assessment of where and how we may be overusing our strengths. Discovering your true strengths is the path towards improvement and success. When you pay too much attention to your deficits and try to overcome them, you are placing emphasis on becoming what you are not. You wind up living a second-rate version of someone else’s life rather than a world-class version of your own. 

Are you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development to grow emotionally intelligent leaders? Does your organization provide strength-based executive coaching for leaders? Sustainable leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to create a more compelling future. 

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I build on my leadership strengths and mitigate weaknesses?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching as part of their leadership development programs. 

Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-I, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help leaders develop their strengths. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company. 

About Dr. Maynard Brusman 

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist, executive coach and trusted advisor to senior leadership teams. He is the president of Working Resources, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. We specialize in helping San Francisco Bay Area companies and law firms assess, select, coach, and retain emotionally intelligent leaders. Maynard is a highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader. He facilitates leadership retreats in Northern California and Costa Rica. The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded Dr. Maynard Brusman "Board Approved" designations in the specialties of Executive Coaching and Leadership Development.

Coaching Vs. Mentoring: a Common Confusion, Explained.

Post by Anirban Bhattacharya

8th November 2012

I often hear this - "Mentoring helped me deliver on my goals at 110% last year..." Or: "My coach helped me understand the value of developing a well-rounded personality..."

While the mentor or the coach in question may very well have done these, and helped the coachee/mentee achieve all that he/she wanted/needed to, these statements can be a tad confusing. And often, when working with corporate sponsors, we are asked to help "mentor" a "coachee", an arrangement that is a tad conflicting at basic levels.

So, what is Mentoring, and how is it different from what we do - Coaching? The difference, at one level, is quite simple - something like the difference between a benevolent uncle and a math tutor. Both may have the ward's (sorry for the archaic term) mathematics prowess in mind, but while the former is likely to be focused on the child's overall development and progress in life, the latter is expected to have a more specific goal-focus - to make the child do well in the next term exam...

Let me put it in another way. Mentoring is often delivered by someone who is an expert in the field and who offers advice, often, but necessarily, on a larger context. Coaching, on the other hand, avoids any advice and instead encourages independent thinking through questioning, with a specific goal in mind.

So, if coaching is more Pep Guardiola, mentoring is Shifu.

Or if mentoring is Robin Williams in 'Good Will Hunting', coaching is Denzil Washington in 'Training Day'... kapish?

Let me switch the above simple example. If the same child went to a teacher, who was mentoring him, and asked for the best way to deliver a lesson; the mentor would give some ideas and suggestions. If the same question was asked of a coach, the coach would ask a series of questions to get him to try and solve the issue himself. Not general guiding principles, but specific plans, steps, tools, inputs, to deliver on specific goals...

If one needs to see the differences in greater detail, there would be about five key aspects where the two processes differ.

1. Coaching is task oriented. Mentoring is relationship oriented. 

Coaching focus is on concrete issues, such as managing more effectively, speaking more articulately, and learning how to think strategically. 

Mentoring, on the other hand, seeks to provide a safe environment where the mentee shares whatever issues affect his or her professional and personal success. Although specific learning goals or competencies may be used as a basis for creating the relationship, mentoring's focus can go beyond to include things, such as work/life balance, self-confidence, self-perception, and how the personal influences the professional.

2. Coaching is short term. Mentoring is always long term. 

A coach can successfully be involved with a coachee for a shorter period of time, as long as is needed, depending on the purpose of the coaching relationship. Coaching relationships, therefore, are more concrete, clearly contracted, with predefined outcomes. In our practice, an average coaching assignment lasts 4-6 months, extended based on need.

For mentoring to work, the process requires time to go deeper and look at issues and challenges beyond specific problems. Relationship building, while important in coaching, is far more critical in mentoring, and the relationship covers much more than identified performance-related issues. Successful mentoring relationships last nine months to a year.

3. Coaching is performance driven. Mentoring is development driven.

The purpose of coaching is to improve the individual's performance on the job. This involves either enhancing current skills or acquiring new skills. Once the coachee successfully acquires the skills, the coaching agreement should cease, and may get renewed to cover other specific needs.

Mentoring looks to develop the individual not only for the current job, but also overall, with an eye on life in general and the future. 

This is the most important distinction, and also differentiates the role of the mentee's immediate manager and that of the mentor, thereby avoiding conflicts.

4. Coaching does not require design. Mentoring requires a design phase

This is somewhat of an artificial distinction, but can be true in cases. In some cases, based on the mandate, coaching can be conducted almost immediately on any given topic. In most cases, an amount of design is involved in order to determine the competency area, expertise needed, and assessment tools used, but this does not necessarily require a long lead-time to actually implement the coaching program. However, in our practice, most coaching assignments have lead-times to build on trust, comfort and credibility, as well as get necessary information from managers, peers, partners and other key relationships.

In mentoring, in order to determine the strategic purpose of the intervention, the design phase is critical, to build on of the relationship, the specific mentoring models, and the specific components that will guide the relationship, especially the matching process. 

5. The coachee's immediate manager is a critical partner in coaching. In mentoring, the immediate manager is indirectly involved. 

The sponsor in the coaching assignment is required to provide the coach with feedback on areas in which his or her employee is in need of coaching. This coach uses this information to guide the coaching process. This can be structured feedback, or general inputs.

Although she or he may offer suggestions to the employee on how to best use the mentoring experience or may provide a recommendation to on what would constitute a good match for the mentee, the manager has no direct link to the mentor and they do not communicate at all during the mentoring relationship. This helps maintain the mentoring relationship's integrity.

So, at the end, mentoring is more focused on general and overall development of an employee. Coaching, or, as in our case, Executive Coaching, is more specific and time-bound, with clearly set objectives and goals, with greater measurability of results.

Sources: Inputs from Management Mentors (www.management-mentors.com) and other sources.