Business Coaching for StartUps - Part 2:  Internal.

One of the either most misunderstood or misfunctioning areas in Startups is business coaching. Following up on last week's article (http://www.modernghana.com/news/720216/business-coaching-for-startups-part-1.html) we will focus here on Internal Business Coaching.

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Your Internal Coaching Function: Basic Considerations

Make sure that help you clearly define & establish the right strategy to meet your organisational needs and budget at that given point in time.

Now that you have defined the strategy and purpose of your internal coaching, decide how to offer the Business Coaching:

⦁ will you hire external help or will you develop internally your own Business Coaches?

⦁ will you organize the Coaching activities as Team (separate coaching sessions per Team) or as Group (people semi-randomly grouped together based on location or time availability, etc) activities?

⦁ do you need to coach individuals or Teams/ Groups of employees? Or both?

You also need to put both KPIs and 'gatekeepers' to measure the outcome of your Internal Business Coaching and to you ensure that it is a success. Ideally try to objectively measure its ROI (Return on Investment).

You will also need to face facts -like women have different development needs at work- and realities like that of possibly an intercultural team, which slowly gets to be the norm these days.

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Individual Business Coaching Considerations
Before you start any internal business coaching activity, make sure that you understand the difference between coaching, mentoring and counselling employees. Let's leave counselling as an activity involving a misperforming employee, their manager and HR.

On the difference between mentoring and coaching, I will kindly ask you to read a short clear article by Irene Gloria Addison at: http://www.modernghana.com/lifestyle/8826/mentorship-coaching-for-professionals.html

Simply, decide what the need for Business Coaching is, who is going to deliver it, plan it, budget it, deliver it and measure its efficiency. It would be ideally is every employee in an organization had a Coach or at least a Mentor; in big US corporation that has been a common practice for many years.

Besides the standard Business Coaching given to an individual on business topics, also one can be coach on career development or even career transition within the organization.

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Team Business Coaching Considerations
This is a very tricky subject.... Studies tend to indicate that team coaching is a lot less important than the team basics of having the right people with teh right professional education and experience, etc. But, to all fairness, in teams which are both well put together and well managed, Business Coaching has a powerful impact.

You should use Team & Group Business Coaching to:

⦁ Develop 'Universal' Core Business & Coaching Skills within your organization.

⦁ Plan it in a way that will keep costs low of course and minimize time commitment by attendees.

⦁ Cultivate better relationships within a team, develop it and strengthen it.

⦁ Develop Strength Use it as a 360 degrees feedback to how everyone is aligned with both the Vision and Mission of your Organization.

⦁ In a strange way, Business Coaching (especially in Groups) should be used also to develop, deepen and strengthen your employee's inter-company networking.

⦁ And like any business activity, the focus should always be on ways to improve customer satisfaction from the people who use your product or services.

Tip Please don't forget to put a mechanism in place so you can ensure that your employees apply 'all content' from the Business Coaching sessions.

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Why Team Business Coaching?
⦁ Guarantee a Universal background, knowledge and perception of your Organization's Vision, Mission and Business Processes. You need to make sure that everyone has the same 'views' on that and clearly understands all business processes taking place; this is so critical in a start-up that everybody has even a high-level knowledge of all business processes.

⦁ Typically Business Coaching can be great for complex problem- solving, since all team members work together in a supporting environment to analyze or clarify problems, identify solution- paths and propose realistic strategies, actions and timelines to implement the solutions. Also such process fosters an environment of accountability.

⦁ Obviously, it als allows for problem- solving/ conflict- resolution among team members

⦁ (the above implies) Team Building
⦁ Deep networking, Colleague- Support and Employee Engagement.

⦁ (implied for the previous bullet:) Develop High Performance Teams

⦁ Core Leadership Skills Development. Think about it: you have employees presenting to each other, asking for and accepting help & support, listening, (hopefully) learning the art to ask great relevant and focused questions, action planning and learning from reflection (the 360 degrees feedback activity can add so much on that); also cultivating authenticity, business credibility, engagement and accountability among all colleagues/ team members.

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Business Coaching FAQs (just a few)
1. Are there any Business Coaching Models or methodologies?

Yes, there are: have a look at GROW (developed by John Whitmore, the same guy who came up with 'SMART'). Note that a coaching model is a framework underlying structure that you can use when you're coaching a person - it does not tell you how to coach.

2. Why does Business Coaching work?
Possibly because it allows you (and your brain) to take a rest, a short of a pause from all destruction of the real work and world while you are in a coaching session. It gives you the opportunity to clear your head and with the appropriate input (from the Coach) see things in a new perspective, vent some frustration or even new ideas back to your organization (via using the Coach as the messenger) , take time to think and bounce some ideas while using your Coach as a Sounding Board.

3. What is Psychological Contracting?
Psychological Contract refers to the relationship between an employer and its employees, and specifically concerns mutual expectations of inputs and outcomes. In Business Coaching there are 3 main objectives of contracting:

(i) setting a sense of direction and purpose for the assignment

(ii) aligned expectations are aligned (outcomes, process, responsibilities, behaviours)

(iii) having a 'benchmark' basis for relationship review and assessment of progress

4. Why is there confusion around what coaching means?

Please by the very beginning of the Business Coaching activity- stream, clarify within your organization and w/ your Coach(es) what is it about: goals

? performance? bottom-line results? personal & organizational ‘values’ and emotions and even spiritual growth?

5. Does a Business Coach tells you what to do?

No, since s/he is not a Consultant and -in theory- you are an expert in your Business; nonetheless, avoid a Business Coach how is basically a professional coach or a therapist with zero business background.

Your Business Coach should ask you the kind of 'tough' questions that you have been avoiding. It is often through the -possibly iterative- process of questioning & answering and through your joint ('endless') discussions that new ideas will be generated and YOU will decide what really needs to be done.

6. Are there any guarantees hen using Business Coaching?

No! Same as in Sports, only you can guarantee that you can and you will do whatever it takes to make things happen in a successful manner.

7. Can you employ a Business Coach to motivate Individuals & Teams?

Simply put, yes!
7. What is the GR Model for Business Coaching?

The GROW Model:

• Goal.
• Current Reality.
• Options (or Obstacles).
• Will (or Way Forward).

is a simple 4-step process that helps coached team members improve performance and reach their longer-term career objectives.

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In Conclusion
Keep your eyes open: there are plenty of people out there today calling themselves Business Coaches and without any real or well- established professional accreditation, standards or associations, it is really hard to know who to trust. Business Coaching is a relationship that offers you both business and –to some degree- personal guidance, support, and continuous challenge so you could figure out how to go about creating the business or organisation that you want.

Great coaching should help you in building an organization with a culture of ownership and accountability. And help you transition from been great to becoming really outstanding!

Thank you and Good Luck,
Spiros
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About the Author: Spiros Tsaltas, a Top-Tier Management Consultant and a former University Professor (RSM MBA, CUNY, etc), is a seasoned Technology & Operations Executive. Spiros has hands-on experience on setting up all sorts of Startups both in the US and in Europe. He is an active transformational leader and strategist with extensive experience on Boards of Advisors & Boards of Directors. He is currently assisting a couple of Ghanaian and other West African StartUps and SMEs with the setup of their Boards and Strategy items.

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Spiros welcomes any feedback/ comments/ remarks/ suggestions via your email message to [email protected]

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© 2016 Spiros Tsaltas