What is Coaching?

Coaching is professional partnering between a coach and client in which we, as the coach, assume a responsibility for assisting our clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to grow in their capacity to meet and overcome both the business and personal challenges that stand between them and the results they seek.

Business Coaching

Business coaching is about applying the above process with business owners or managers in the context of their business, to improve the quality of both their professional and personal performance - and to improve the quality of the results that flow from their performance.

The focus of Business Coaching is on improving the management performance of the Client, and the consequential performance of the business as a whole. 

All coaching is also, at some point, "personal coaching" since our dialogue is with "people", and not with "businesses", and so can entail the development of a range of interpersonal knowledge and skills with our Clients.

Business Coaching clients often have deep trade and industry experience and knowledge, but often lack a formal management education.  In that respect they are often what Michael Gerber termed, "Technicians who have suffered an entrepreneurial seizure!"

In other words, they are "managers by accident because they were good at something else and a business grew around them."

TMS Business Coaching

Business coaching is not offered to a prospective client without first completing a thorough analysis of their business (an RIBI Business Analysis  powered by ProfiTune) to determine the client's "unrealised profit potential".

This is done to ensure that the potential exists for any coaching to be "self-funded" by an improvement in profitability, the value of which exceeds the investment required in coaching. 

Effective Business Coaching should never be a net expense to a business but rather, should result in a net increase in earnings, even when the coaching investment is taken into account.

Business Analysis

If a Business Analysis shows that the Client and their business have a level of profit potential that would return the Client a multiple of their investment in coaching, and we sense that the Client has a sufficient initial commitment to personal and business improvement, then we may extend an offer of Coaching.

Under a Standard Coaching Agreement, Client and Coach meet (either face to face or by phone) once a week for approximately one hour, to work through the issues of the past week and to plan progress for the next week. The coach is responsible for managing the session in a manner that has been developed and proven to produce consistent and evolving results.  The client is responsible for taking a committed approach to the improvement of their business.

Click for more on the Business Analysis

Client Performance Monitoring

In between sessions, the Coach has a unique, patented means of monitoring their Client's progress, and of providing timely and relevant feedback that ensures progress is swift and sure.

RIBI Coaching powered by ProfiTune is a unique blend of subtle personal coaching and results-focused business coaching, with a strong accent on ensuring that our work translates directly into measurable new profits for our Clients, that they can sustain after the end of their engagement with us.

The Challenges Addressed By Coaching

Sustainable results are the natural outcome of improving management skills across the entire range of business issues (hence our accent on "Business Improvement Systems"); and most of those issues will fall into the areas of:

1. Managing Time
2. Managing People
3. Managing Resources and Processes 

While we must identify and make finer distinctions than these when diagnosing and dealing with the challenges faced by our clients, at the end of the day, most fall under one of these three broad categories.

Just how useful is this broad categorisation? 

Puzzle

Here's a small puzzle for you: 

If you managed your Time to execute the tasks you face superbly and in accordance with the priorities that your business and circumstances dictate, would you have more Time available to invest in better managing your people? 

And if you better managed your people in the time you now had available, would they be more productive and more profitable? 

And if they were more productive and more profitable, would you then have a problem managing your resources (ie, enough money for everything)?

In our view, it makes sense to start with an examination of how our clients manage their Time; to then progress to their leadership of people; and finally to look at their management of the other-than-human resources within the business.

GOLD Coaching

Anyone observing a coaching session would hear a lot of questions posed by the Coach and would come to understand that those questions complied with a definite structure (in our case, that structure can best be understood under the acronym of GOLD (Goals, Obstacles / Opportunities / Options, Learning, Decisions). 

In the session the Coach's job is to ask the questions that will lead their Client to:

1. Clarify their goals (What do you want to achieve in this session?)
2. Assess the opportunities, obstacles and options that exist in relation to achieving those goals
3. Acquire the information, knowledge, skill or perception required by the situation; and
4. Decide on a course of action, and commit to that course, and to a timeframe, with their Coach.

At the end of the day, the Coach's job is to assist their Client to clarify their goals; to understand the terrain between where they are now and where they want to be, and when; to apply old or acquire new skills and knowledge to the challenges they face; and to make themselves accountable to their Coach for carrying out the commitments they have made that are aimed at achieving their goals.

Coaching Skills and The Safety Factor

A professional Business Coach brings an interesting mix of skills, talents and disciplines to their relationship with their Client. 

For example, they:

• Have no agenda except for ensuring that their Client succeeds;
• Bring professional discipline and systems to bear on issues to accelerate resolution;
• Are trained to leave their ego out of the process and to seek their Client's growth and independence through the application of ego-less systems and processes;
• Have an outside perspective and professional detachment when dealing with issues, while still holding their client's interest foremost;
• Are accountable for ensuring that results flow from their Client's application of their processes; and  
• Can be "fired" if the coaching isn't working.

Mind you, given that TMS measure their own success by their Clients' increased profitability, it is far more likely that if the coaching is not "working" in terms of creating positive changes within their Client and their business, and those improvements are not evidenced by new, increased profits, then the Coach will have had some serious conversations with their client around the worth of their continuing in the process.

The next Client "fired" by their TMS won't be the first!

Why Would I Want to Be Coached?

Q:  Why would any world class athlete want to pay a significant percentage of their income to, and surrender a degree of their freedom and autonomy to a professional coach?

A: Because, they want to win!

Practice makes permanent - but - Perfect practice makes perfect!

If execution is poor, then working harder is never the solution to sustainable improved performance. 

Improved execution, technique, skill is!

Coaching provides our clients with the ongoing feedback that is essential if their application of new and existing skills and knowledge is to be honed to perfection so that they experience superior performance and, as a consequence, enjoy better results - and enjoy a deep feeling of personal satisfaction.

You would only choose to invest in coaching if you want to accelerate both your personal performance as an individual and your professional performance as a business manager, or if you wanted to take yourself beyond your existing limitations.

Coaching Gets You There Quicker - And Safer - And More Certainly!

RIBI powered by ProfiTune Coaches are true "catalysts" in that they "increase the rate of a reaction without incorporating themselves into the end result".

Coaching offers a very high probability that you will succeed at whatever it is you are wanting to achieve, more quickly than you would without coaching - and probably to a much higher degree. 

Our Clients are still in charge of their business.  It is still a direct reflection of their personalities and intelligence, but it is now a much bigger reflection than it would have been without the acceleration factor provided by Coaching.

How Will I Know If This Will Work For Me?

The only limiting factor to your success in coaching, is you!

Life is Change!  Growth is Optional

Vince Lombardi, one of the great motivational coaches, made that statement and we'd have to say that we are yet to find a Client who wanted to excel, was open to change, and was prepared for personal growth, who did not benefit very significantly - and very quickly - from coaching with us.

Initial Diagnostic

If we - or our prospective Client - has any doubt about their potential for performance improvement through Coaching, before we or they spend one cent, we diagnose their Coaching Potential.

We have simple yet powerful diagnostic tool that enable us to measure - and which enable our Clients to understand - the true profit potential that coaching with us may offer them.

In less than 30 minutes we can provide a cost-benefit analysis as to whether we would (both) be justified in proceeding to a deeper analysis of a business and its profit potential. That exercise can be done on-line, anywhere in the world.

How does the Client and their Coach know that the coaching is working?

By the additional profits in the bank!  We measure it with you! 

It's Not Always About Money

Don't think that money-in-the-bank is the only thing we measure, but this is business, after all, and we have found that if our coaching is working we can measure those improvements (in management, sales, expense control and productivity) directly in the form of the new, additional profits our clients are banking.  As Peter Rowe says:

A profit is to business what a pulse is to a human being: 
It's not what Life's all about, but it's essential it be there!

Those new additional profits only pile up on an on-going basis if the business fundamentals are improving, and those fundamentals include leadership, teamwork, collaboration, productivity, sales increases and cost control. 

So, we find that if those new, additional profits are piling up, our clients and their staff are experiencing less stress, more motivation, improved relationships and that they are now (figuratively, at least) 'whistling while they work'.

What If It Doesn't Work For Me ?

Performance Guarantee

Our Standard Coaching Agreement provides for our Clients to terminate their payment for coaching if they are not entirely satisfied with their progress within four months of commencement.  In the vast majority of cases, by the four month mark they are flying!

That TMS has the right to terminate a Coaching Agreement at any time. Why is that?  Well, we are responsible to our clients for producing a bankable result and if that's not happening for our Client it usually means that our Clients priorities have shifted and they are not playing their part in the Coaching.  In an event such as that, after attempting to address the matter with our Client, and failing we are highly likely to withdraw from Coaching, canceling any forward fees.

What Do I Do Next?

If you are interested in knowing more about coaching, or you would like to assess your (or your business's) suitability for it, we will arrange to carry out either a Free Diagnostic - or a Business Analysis - with you.

For more information on how to go about that, please Contact Us 

 

Testimonials

Dear Andrea,This is a short note to let you know the huge impact that your systems & advice has made over the last 3 months.For a start  you got us to review our overheads and look for ways to make savings. The savings we have found has just paid for our $10,000 Yellow pages ad.
- read more

After 6 years in our business we found that we could do with some new ideas in growing our business to take us to the next level. After meeting Andrea and Kevin from TMS we know we have succeeded in taking the right step. They have shown us the need to put a strategic plan in place and how to follow it to create achievable goals in growing our business.
- read more

After meeting Kevin & Andrea from Time Management Solutions we uncovered some hurdles in our business which was inhibiting our growth. Kevin & Andrea  wrote a yellow pages ad for us in which 90% of our window cleans have resulted from that ad.
- read more