Should you become a business coach?
Business coaches, also referred to as executive coaches, "must manage the expectations of a variety of stakeholders," states the Effective Coaching Forum. Keeping this in mind, networking and communication skills are vital to their success. The ongoing benefits of becoming a business coach include developing partnerships, facilitating growth, defining core values and clarifying company goals.
Business coaches perform consulting work in many different job industries. Their services are employed by the government, public and private industry, and institutions like hospitals, schools and unions. Business coaches are expected to oversee business direction and performance, managing and guiding integral aspects of corporate operations in all areas and stages of development.
Business coach focal points
Effective business coaches incorporate multiple skills to provide a quality program that manages client expectations and perceptions. This enables them to build, define and present unique brands to consumers. Key disciplines of being a business coach are:
Intellectual training
Intellectual training is an essential part of being a business coach. Psychological theories and concepts are integrated into the business model to define and address social and emotional intelligence associated with individuals and organizations as a whole. Executive coaches identify individual motivational factors, career paths and psychological inhibitors. They also present stress management techniques, transitional styles and leadership assessments.
Business discernment
In order to assist clients in gaining the edge for their companies, business executives must have an innate sense of business-to-business operations. This includes, but is not limited to, having knowledge of international and local government laws and regulations, maintaining a futuristic technological vision, actively participating in company globalization as well as engaging in human resource and public relation operations.
Organizational and managerial skills
According to Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, "Managing a successful business (nonprofit or for-profit)—or building up the health of an already established business—requires healthy, ongoing leadership and management, planning, product and service development, marketing and financial management." Business coaches assess and offer solutions for faulty business dynamics due to dysfunctional organizational and managerial systems. They help develop leadership programs that influence internal politics, impacting negative internal business practices associated with power and poor methodologies.
Educational experience
Business coaches need to be well versed in business theologies, research and applications associated with executive coaching. Their primary goals are to understand company system perspectives and operations, deliver results, maintain business focus, develop lasting partnerships, prove competency, model integrity and exercise sound judgment. Using their expertise, business coaches serve as corporate consultants to guide and set the course for achievement and success of private small-business owners, individual companies and large public corporations.
Financially, business coaching can be a fairly lucrative career, depending on personal client lists. Working in-house guarantees a set salary and benefits. Beginning salaries for business coaches start at around $4,000 per month, and they can earn well more than $12,000 a month, factoring in services offered, types of clients served and hourly operations per project. The United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics anticipates that business consulting (and coaching) will be one of the fastest-growing and highest-paying careers through 2018, taking into account that more than 80 percent of companies employ business coaches, executives and consultants at some point in their history.
