As a participant in Progeny’s Coaching Program you will receive access to the following services based on your selected program:
We typically begin with a Complimentary Coaching Session that can last roughly an hour. This gives us an opportunity to understand your business and the successes and challenges that you have experienced to date. Equally important, though, is that it gives you the chance to witness our approach and to determine if we are a good fit to hold you accountable to your goals and aspirations. After that, if we both see the value of working together, we can discuss the coaching programs that Progeny offers, and get started right away!
We will spend some time – typically within the first month of the Coaching program – evaluating your existing plan and the extent to which you are in concert with it. A Strategic Plan will be developed to identify the activities required of you and your team to achieve your goals. Your Strategic Plan will be updated each quarter.
Weekly Checkins
The bulk of our work will be done in short, weekly calls. Your Coach will have 2 to 8 hours per month of coaching sessions using Zoom, depending on the program you choose. These sessions will be used for goal-setting, accountability, and troubleshooting. Your Coach is also available during normal business hours to discuss unforeseen challenges that arise during the week.
For businesses with the equivalent of at least 5 full time team members, a Team Day is recommended in the second or third month of the program. The purpose of the Team Day is to unify your team behind your Strategic Plan and jump start the Coaching Program for maximum results.
We will supply you with access to hundreds of proprietary templates and systems on an as-needed basis to enable you to complete your weekly goals. These include business and strategic plans, marketing and advertising templates, sales scripts, operations manuals, financial management tools, and more.
Your Coach will critique your work on goals and assignments between weekly coaching appointments. You may submit your work for critique by email and the critiques may be delivered via email or during your next coaching session.
We will conduct up to four complimentary consultations per year with your key suppliers, customers, or professional advisors to solicit and understand their viewpoints and coordinate your coaching program with their efforts. This is an important step in the process, as it ensures that your entire supply chain is in congruence with your strategic direction.
Regardless of the size of your business, whether you are a solo entrepreneur, a small business or a Fortune 500 company, business coaching is aimed at improving the performance of your people and increasing the company’s bottom line.
Business coaching is the process of helping a company or team achieve greater clarity, focus and results. It is typically centered around the goals of the business as a whole and its success.
The underlying philosophy of business coaching is that the individuals within the company participating in the coaching, whether you are the CEO or the front-line staff, are the experts in your business. The role of the coach is to help you come up with your own solutions, strategies and an action plan for improving the business.
All too often, a perfect action plan is created but there is little to no follow-through. A business coach offers objective, unbiased accountability to execute the plan, learn from the outcomes, revise the plan and take further action. A high quality business coach will also help create accountability structures that will encourage individuals to take consistent action to improve their performance and the overall performance of the company.
A business coach is a professional advisor who mentors a business owner in growing their business so that the incremental cash flow more than pays for their customized business education.
Business coaching is typically aimed at increasing the bottom line of a company by increasing revenues and/or reducing costs. Coaching can do both, if done right.
Company Benefits
Cutting edge companies know and understand the value of their people and invest in their performance, well-being, and professional development. They understand that a happy workforce is a more productive one. Coaching is one of the best tools available to companies to bring about change and transformation in their people.
According to the ICF Global Coaching Client Study, published in 2009, clients who received business coaching reported several business improvements, including better teamwork, more clarity of goals, and better communication.
In their own words, here is a sample of some of the benefits they experienced within their company:
- Better corporate culture
- More courageous conversations, more intentionality, more strategic approach
- Enabled an environment of internal coaching and encouraged staff at all levels to see the value in own external personal/leadership coaching
- People listen to each other, support each other and enjoy coming to work more. Performance has improved
- My department has achieved a much better team spirit
- Better communication, shared understanding of the vision, very high mutual trust
- Better interpersonal discussion between management and staff
Individual Benefits
According to the same 2009 ICF Global Coaching Client Study:
“Several focus group participants indicated that, prior to experiencing it themselves, they had negative perceptions of coaching and the people who use it. In many cases, it was perceived to only be for people with problems or those who can’t ‘do it on their own’ rather than a tool that can help people excel and teach them new skills. Importantly, while participants in the focus groups did hold some negative views on coaching prior to commencing coaching themselves, these negative views were dispelled once the coaching process started and all ended up viewing the process positively.”
Of the 2,130 clients surveyed by the ICF, over 70% reported significant improvements in the following five areas:
- Self-esteem/self-confidence (80%)
- Relationships (73%)
- Communication skills (72%)
- Interpersonal skills (71%)
- Work performance (70%)
Other areas of improvement cited include:
- Work/life balance
- Wellness
- Career opportunities
- Personal organization
- Business management
- Time management
Business coaching is for companies or organizations that want to invest in the growth and development of their people. They see business coaching as a strategic initiative to improve the corporate culture and be more successful. To steal the phrase of the popular business writer Jim Collins, business coaching is about going from Good to Great!
That said, business coaching is often sought to remedy a specific pain within the organization such as high worker turnover, decreased morale, employee burnout, poor communication, or decreased sales. All of these issues can be addressed with a well designed coaching program.
Depending on the needs and goals of the company, business coaching programs can be created to directly impact top-level executives, middle managers, and even front-line staff.
Business Coaching for Senior Executives
Business coaching for senior executives is commonly referred to as executive coaching or leadership coaching. During the 1970s and 80s, when business coaching was in its infancy, the first individuals to receive coaching were senior executives. This is often still the case. Companies invest in coaching for their executives because they are often the highest paid individuals in the company and the ones responsible for creating change within the organization.
Business Coaching for Middle Managers
Business coaching for middle managers is commonly referred to as leadership coaching because the intention of the coaching may be to improve the supervisor’s ability to lead or to prepare the him/her for an upcoming ascent to a more senior role.
Business coaching for middle managers may also be part of a more comprehensive team coaching initiative, which gained popularity in the mid-2000s.
Business Coaching for Front-Line Staff
Business coaching for front-line staff is sometimes referred to as performance coaching, or as team coaching if delivered as part of a group initiative.
Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of business coaching is a hotly debated issue. Traditionally, it has been difficult to demonstrate an increased value of a company’s human capital. The knowledge and value of coaching is growing and clients are increasingly demanding that rigorous methods be employed by coaches to measure the impact of coaching. Clients want clear statistical evidence of the bottom-line value of coaching and they want coaches to better justify the methodologies they employ.
The challenge is that the cost/benefit analysis of coaching is not easily made because the outcomes produced by coaching may not be easily measured or directly attributable to coaching.
The Formula for Measuring ROI of Business Coaching
ROI = (Gain from Coaching – Cost of Coaching)/Cost of Coaching
For example, a coaching initiative may improve team communication which then stimulates more innovation. How is that innovation measured? Would the company’s best ideas have been generated without the coaching? Furthermore, coaching initiatives are not usually implemented in isolation. If the company grows revenues by 25% during the time that coaching initiatives were employed, what other initiatives were taken during that time?
To improve the accuracy of ROI calculations, first identify what the purpose of the coaching is and what key metrics will be used to measure the benefits. Depending on the type of business you operate and the type of coaching being deployed, you may want to measure any one of the following metrics:
- profit increases such as higher throughput, increased sales, sales by department, cross-division sales, etc.
- cost savings such as decreased inventory, lower cost per lead, less management, etc.
- aggregate employee metrics such as worker turnover, worker satisfaction, injuries and more
- individual employee metrics such as behavior-based measures
Once you’ve determined the metrics you want the coaching to affect, collect baseline data against which you can measure the benefits of the coaching. If you are in the process of hiring a business coach for your company, be sure to cover the topic of measuring ROI in detail.
The difference between small business coaching and business coaching for large companies is in scale and complexity. Regardless of size, all companies have a financial motive for using coaching. The major difference, having spoken to both small business coaches and their clients, is that many small business owners will also rely on their business coaches for expert business knowledge in addition to the coaching.
Small business owners don’t always have the luxury of big budgets and employees with specialized skill sets. Therefore, if a small business coach can also offer expert knowledge, they can get more benefit from a single relationship. For example, a small business owner may hire a coach who is an expert in social media marketing, writing business plans, project management, human resources, or any number of other areas.
The most important thing to remember when looking for a business coach is to find one whose training, background and skills most closely match your specific goals. There are many coaches with many different specializations, and your ultimate success will largely depend on finding the coach with the best “fit” for your particular situation.
Because finding the right fit is so important, it’s critical that you not just hire the first coach you talk to. While many coaches offer a free, 15 or 20 minute consultation, at Progeny, we take this step very seriously. Progeny provides a Complimentary Coaching Session (CCS) that can often last up to 2 hours, in which we assess your business needs and design a comprehensive plan for moving forward together!