Anne Scoular: Business Coaching (2011) 📙

1 Introduction: the business of coaching

The single biggest reason for the explosion of coaching

• “[…] the single biggest reason for the explosion of coaching, is it helps us deal with cognitive (over)load.” (S. 4)

Intelligent people don’t listen

• “[…] intelligent people often resist being told what to do and don’t listen, so you might as well ask instead.”
• vgl. Michael Bungay Stanier: The Coaching Habit

2 The coaches

Two aspects of freelance life that many dislike

• “In almost 20 years of working with coaches, […] I have observed what while most adore the freedom of being their own boss yet still doing the challenging, rewarding work they love, there are two aspects of freelance life many dislike: the marketing, and the loneliness.” (S. 22)

The specialist coaches

• “These are people who do normal business coaching but when required deploy a specialist expertise.” (S. 26)
• “And while the above list might make it begin to seem everyone is a specialist, they are in fact a minority — but an interesting one!” (S. 26)
• Sind die “Spezialisten” (zumal die ECHTEN Spezialisten) immer noch eine Minderheit, oder hat sich der Markt seit 2011 gewandelt?

Coaching als Teil einer portfolio career

• “But many want to coach because it is, they say, the most profoundly fulfilling work to do. So they mix it up: some coaching, but some other work that earns more, such as consultancy, headhunting, non-executive directorship etc. […] we typically find our own freelance graduates coach only 25-45% of their time.” (S. 28)
• Das ist eine wichtige Information auch für meine UGP-Gründer*innen in diesem Bereich.

4 Developing your coaching: first steps

First step = working with a great coach

• “The crucial first step is to experience good coaching yourself. Ideally, you would go one better than that and feel the full-on astonishing experience of working with a great coach.” (S. 34)

5 Building your basic coaching skills: the ‘Big Five’

Who is the coaching client?

• “There is also the sometimes tricky contractual matter that the real client is not the person sitting in front of you, it’s the organisation paying the bill. Some people, usually former therapists who in my view haven’t properly switched to operating under the rules of business, disagree, and maintain that the ‘client’ to whom they have primary and sole responsibility is the person sitting in front of them. I feel quite passionately that this is wrong: ethically, and indeed legally, if the coach is contracted with the organisation, then the organisation is the client.” (S. 64f)
• “Yes of course we do our level best for the person sitting in front of us, but our paymaster is the organisation. We coach the individual to the very best of our ability — but it would be wrong to coach them, even if they set that as the goal, on anything inimical to the interests of the organisation.” (S. 65)

Goal – auch im UGP

• “”Which of these do you want to work on today?” This is the essence of coaching: it seems innocuous, but it throws the responsibility for the content of the coaching onto the client. Only they know the vast complexity of all the factors, history, data, hopes, fears, contradictions, of the matter in hand.” (S. 69)
• “The goal is utterly key. It does all the heavy lifting of the session — so if you don’t have a good clear goal, you don’t have a coaching session.” (S. 70)
• Gilt umso mehr für Beratung: Wenn der Kunde keine Frage hat, zu der er beraten werden möchte, dann hast du keine Beratung. Es ist nicht deine Aufgabe als Berater, Beratungsthemen für den Kunden zu (er)finden.

Experts in telling

• “Almost everyone who comes to train on our own Programme, whatever their job — lawyer, leader, consultant, manager, HR specialist, psychologist, professor — has earned their living to date by telling.” (S. 83)
• “When I ask a world-class management consultant of 35 years’ success to stop transmitting, I am asking him to cease using the weapon that has been the whole basis of his success to date, and he is likely to naked, exposed and uncomfortable without it. For many of us, it goes even further, as telling, guiding, advising others has become a part of our very ‘ego identity’ — it’s just part of who we are. So it takes great effort to stop doing it, in order to try out the new approach.” (S. 84)
  • vgl. genau gleich: Michael Bungay Stanier: The Advice Trap
• “Pontification has its own charms, I know, but it’s not a patch on seeing your clients becoming fully alive again, reconnected and energised by their renewed purpose, fresh clarity, even joy.” (S. 84)

11 Why it works

Why coaching works

• “Coaching works because for an hour, or two hours, or even just a minute waiting at the lift, it presses the pause button. Sometimes it’s enough for a client just to have a space which is calm, quiet and where silence can be constructive.” (S. 176)
• “Whatever work we do together, the main value to him is almost always that by the end of the session he has sorted through everything he has on, realised some things must be delegated/declined/pushed back, and reconnected with the key things to focus upon. […] He leaves 90 minutes later with a clear head, and hence re-energised and remotivated.” (S. 176)
• “Many clients say the single biggest value from coaching is “It gives me space to think.” “ (S. 177)
• “Executives often say the great value for them in coaching is to have a ‘sounding board’.” (S. 177)

12 Building a freelance coaching business

Building a business like Tarzan

• “[…] I often say to our graduates, when helping them build their business, it’s like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine through the jungle: you start with the vine nearest to you.” (S. 195)
• “So you start with the vine close by and never know where the vine several swings along will take you! But you need to start somewhere.” (S. 195)

Charging what they charge

• “One coach I know just set the principle that they charged their client, what their client charged others. So if the client is an accountant charging out at £ 270 an hour, the coach would bill them £ 270 an hour.” (S. 195f)

How long it takes

• “[…] it takes at least two years post-qualification for people to get up to speed, i.e. charging full commercial rates.” (S. 198)

Longevity

• “[…] people who have been building their businesses for ten or more years are naturally likely to be more successful than new entrants, if only because those who didn’t succeed have gone elsewhere. Those who remain can reach the useful stage of critical mass, where satisfied clients refer other clients and business snowballs.” (S. 200)

Three marketing activities a day

• “Another of our graduates has a very simple rule: every day, he does three marketing activities. It may be making a phone call, or revisiting a document, and often it takes just a few minutes, out on the road between meeting, but he does three things a day without fail. This simple method alone, combined with hard work delivering the business that comes in, and sustaining his consistently high standards, yields an income some financiers would envy. So the difference between the coaches who thrive is not necessarily their coaching but their marketing/sellingactivity.” (S. 202)

Buyers can tell

• “Buyers can tell: they can ‘smell’ uncertainty and hesitancy. Nervousness is another matter, but they can spot the difference between someone who is initially nervous, but who once they get going lights up when talking about their coaching, from someone who just hasn’t got on top of the subject yet.” (S. 203)

You have to do more than you think

• “When I was starting out, I asked a wiser older coach which of the several possibilities were the most effective — networking, running seminars, writing articles etc. She smiled slightly and said I should do them all, and that you have to do more than you think. She’s right.” (S. 204)
• vgl. Ryan Holiday: Do you have any idea just how much work it’s going to be?

It’s a numbers game

• “As someone put it rather crudely, it’s a numbers game: the more connections you make, the more work you should expect to pick up. Coaches who keep at it, rain or shine, are the ones who are so busy they are turning business away.” (S. 205)

Marketing is about attracting clients

• David Maister: “[…] [professional service] marketing must be a seduction, not an assault. It must not scream ‘hire me!’ but must gently suggest ‘Here is some concrete evidence as to why you may want to get to know me better.’ Marketing is truly about attracting clients — doing something that causes them to want to take the next step. […] Since all clients are skeptical, they need to be given a good reason to [invite you in].”

A coach!

• “Being coached for a session or two might be all it needs to reconnect you with what you do actually know […]. Could you perhaps swap coaching sessions on this with a friend or colleague, someone else from your training course for example?” (S. 213)

Literaturtipps

• Harry Beckwith: Selling the Invisible
• Jenny Rogers: Developing a Coaching Business
• Nancy Kline: Time to Think — Listening to ignite the human mind