Business coaching is quite popular these days. The right coach paired with the right leader and team can be incredibly effective for the way a business is run and for its profitability.
Effectiveness, however, can vary. It does depend on the coaching method and how good you are in your role as a business coach.
On some occasions, coaching may not work, and it isn’t automatically your fault as a coach, but can come down to psychological qualities of a client. Then it won’t be a matter of what coaching device is used or even who you are as a coach but that some people are just less likely to change.
Great coaches know that there is no aspect of behavior that can’t be changed – just the individual’s predisposition to resist or embrace change.
It is easier to coach someone who realizes that reaching life and business goals is an ongoing lifestyle that creates lasting happiness, rather than someone looking for you to provide a simple solution for an issue.
Even if you do get through to someone who needs improvement, constant responsiveness is necessary not only for one day or two. Developmental interventions need to be in constant progress.
If you have been working with a client or a team and are struggling with why the results aren’t what you want, here are some of possible reasons for why so and why you shouldn’t automatically throw in the towel.
Lack of Willpower?
You could be dealing with someone who is just unwilling to do what it takes to change.
Perhaps this person has been forced or coaxed into undertaking coaching to help their organization. Maybe they accept feedback or criticism fine but the will to change just doesn’t come into view.
Acceptance doesn’t always translate into change. The willpower to change goes past just wanting to ‘get through things.’ Without the deep desire to change, even the best of coaches cannot get through to some individuals.
On the surface, someone may appear ready to adjust, but there will still be challenges. Sometimes the willingness in people is to just conform, and they won’t do anymore than that. They will rely on fate. In such situation, you as a coach become a person who offers both criticism and advice but they aren’t ready to do anything more with it.
A potential solution could be to work out why they aren’t ready to commit their willpower.
A lack of confidence can be helped with your coaching skills, as well as a lack of interest to a certain extent. A lack of free will in the past could also be a reason for reluctance in changing.
Maybe you’re jumping in at the extreme end in your attempts to help someone change. Instead, you need to instead start at a different place that is approachable and allowable to diminish mental blocks that have been built up over the years, and walk through them first.
Is Feedback Responded To?
An integral part of coaching is the feedback you give to people. Without that, individuals cannot begin to understand the changes they are going to make, let alone make them. An individual willing to be coached will pay a lot of attention to this information.
The ideal people to coach are those who recognize and understand their weaknesses is the key to eliminating them. Coachable people are keen to identify discrepancies in how they view themselves and in how others view them.
Increasing self awareness and self knowledge is important in order to bring about change and improvement. Responding in a positive way to feedback and trying to change it so the results of the feedback could be different in the future, will make a big difference in steadily speeding up the effects of coaching.
As a business coach it is important to find out the goals and values of both an individual and the business. Once the highest values of the business are determined and aligned with those of the core self of individuals, you can work on giving feedback related to these values. Meaningful feedback is far more likely to warrant a response from individuals.
Is there the Potential for Perseverance?
For any business to progress with or without coaching, the need for change has to be embraced and any negative feedback accepted and acted upon. A team can work hard to succeed but there must be consistent maintenance to truly succeed and see results.
In a world of globalization, businesses are constantly evolving in order to keep up and stay prosperous. This has to be recognized by those you coach. Even if successful change is implemented over a certain amount of time with coaching, it must be maintained with self discipline and interest from individuals from both a business and personal point of view.
As a coach, you should never treat your work as a short-term solution. It must be accepted from you and those that you coach, from the beginning, that time is needed to get the required results.
Those that don’t get to this stage aren’t necessarily lost causes from the coaching, there are still some positives to be gained from undergoing short programs of improvement even if you feel as a coach there is the potential for more.
The Power of Personality
A huge amount of effort is needed in a serious coaching intervention. Even those who are willing to change and listen to your feedback still need help to break the habits they have built up over the years and to develop new ones.
A person with obviously toxic habits that have led to failure may respond more to changing their ways because they have experienced what it is like to fail. They will be likely to be open to doing new beneficial things.
Anyone you coach however will need to put the work in to break any bad patterns they have gotten into. Personalities are built up of default habits, and you as a coach must help perpetuate substitutable habits, without taking away anything from a person’s personality.
This is a challenge but coaches should remember to help enforce choices that are meaningful to the person being coached. Something connected to their desires and dreams will make anybody work harder to eliminate bad habits.
There can be a great amount of pressure on business coaches. Once hired, they could be working with a team of people, and you can find yourself somewhat of a scapegoat if things don’t go to plan.
Remember that personalities are powerful and every person in a team will deal with change in a different way. No one size fits all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laura Morrissey is a digital content editor at Disc Assessment. She is a native of Liverpool with an interest in coaching and personal-development and passionately writing about them. She shares valuable tips for business leaders in working to the best of their ability. Get in touch with her on LinkedIn.
This is a really great read. I’m in the middle of getting coaching, and I find this is a great start.
Talk about serendipity! I was just discussing this with someone on Facebook, who was saying that some people are uncoachable. I said that no one is uncoachable — they may not be able to reach their goals within the specified time, if ever, but everyone can make progress. And if they’re not making progress, they have the wrong coach — not necessarily a bad coach, just not the right one for them.