What are Four Typical Qualities of a Business Coach?
Working with a business coach can be a big decision. And when you’ve made it, you want to make sure you’re working with the right one. In this article, you’ll find my take on four typical qualities of a business coach.
I’m a multi-award-winning coach and entrepreneur, and best-selling author of The Up Level Project. I’ve worked on both sides of the coaching relationship, both as coach and coachee, and this is what I’ve observed:
So, without further ado, here we go.
1) A coach should have great intuition and be highly emotionally aware
Your business coach’s job is to help you to become the very best entrepreneur you can be.
For anyone being coached, who is truly open to change, this can be a difficult process. All kinds of sensitivities, insecurities and doubts, can bubble to the surface when you really dig deep within yourself about your ambition, your desires, and your hopes for the future. Coaching requires coachees to work hard to uncover their deepest-held beliefs, and challenge them, and sometimes bust them out of the water. This means that sometimes, you can feel angry, aggressive, vulnerable, elated. It’s a rollercoaster.
A coach who has a deep understanding of where you’re coming from, they will be prepared for these moments, and these emotions, and will be able to help you work through them, whilst also providing practical tools and techniques to move your business forward in a really concrete way. They will be able to understand and therefore balance the nuances of your personality, the personalities of your team, your goals, and your ambition, to enable you to deliver real change to your day-to-day working life.
A coach who is highly emotionally aware will generally have an above-average ability to empathize, which means they are often able to imagine themselves into your situation, and coach you in a way that is tailored specifically for you. A great coach will recognize the emotions coming to the surface often before you recognize them yourself, and they will respond and offer tools and strategies to match exactly where you’re at.
2) Your coach should have excellent leadership qualities
A leader is someone who understands business at a high level, who demonstrates expertise in their discipline, who has a vision for the future, and who is able to galvanize people to buy into that vision, and execute well on a plan. In order to achieve this, they will have excellent communication skills, as well as resilience and tenacity when things don’t go according to plan.
As a leader of your business, you need to know that the person you’re getting guidance from understands your situation and knows how to model the behavior you yourself are developing.
So when you look for a coach, the qualities listed above are vital, and once you find someone who you can look up to as a leader yourself, this goes a long way to building the trust necessary to establish an effective coaching relationship.
3) Your coach should be a great listener
You can’t help someone if you don’t properly understand context and challenges.
It’s only when someone really listens to your challenges that they can offer realistic, tailored, and actionable advice.
And listening well doesn’t just mean that a coach will sit in silence for you to do all the talking. They will nudge you and prod you with questions in order to coax out every piece of information needed in order to make decisions, and therefore progress, in your business.
Coaching is about helping people to unlock the brilliance inside of them. It isn’t like consulting. A coaching call should be all about the client, and most often should not involve long one-sided conversations from a coach.
The majority of a coaching call will naturally be the client speaking, and the coach listening. The coach is there to guide, nudge, provoke and challenge the coachee, rather than offer up ready-made solutions (if you want ready-made solutions, you should call in a consultant rather than a coach – see this article for more information on the difference between the two).
4) Your coach should always be trustworthy and reliable
Trust is a huge component of a coaching relationship. When you’re asking someone to open up about their deepest desires for their future or their business, people can feel vulnerable, and are only likely to dig deep within themselves if there is psychological safety in the relationship.
Trust doesn’t happen automatically when you hire a coach. It – necessarily – builds over time, as you get to know them, and they get to better understand you and your business.
This is why hiring a coach can be a scary step – you don’t know for sure whether you’re going to get the results for your business that they promise.
Being punctual is part of this. My cornerstone values as a coach is always being punctual, trusting, and building forward momentum.
Trusting a coach that you will get results is another important part of this. And it doesn’t always happen straight away. Sometimes, clients need to see progress or change within their business in order to be fully able to trust a coach, and fully embrace or lean in to their coaching.
How do you find a coach who embodies all these qualities?
Well, not to toot my own horn, but I’ve worked hard to become the best coach I can be, and I’m delighted to say that my clients have achieved some pretty spectacular results for their businesses as a result of working with me.
In fact, here’s what some of them had to say about working with me:
If you’re interested in working with me too, I’d love to help you out.
As you’ll have learned, I’m a multi-award-winning business coach and entrepreneur based in Boston, MA. Here’s how you can get more support from me to become the best possible leader for your business:
Accelerate your growth with this free handy download
Read my bestselling book, The Up Level Project
Join my group accountability program: Business Growth Achievers
Work with me: Book a 1:1 consultation with me here
If you’re in Boston yourself, you might also enjoy this: Wanted: Business coach, Boston.
