Coaching has become a rapidly growing profession worldwide, expanding form its origins in sports and branching out into a number of different areas. There are business coaches, executive coaches, career coaches, health & wellness coaches, and general life coaches. But, should you hire a coach to help you succeed in life or in your business?
People seem to be recognizing that having a coach can make a difference. In fact, studies of coaching in organizations shows a return of $4 – $8 for every dollar invested.
At the same time, people have begun to recognize that top athletes spend around 95% of time practicing with a coach and 5% actually performing. While the rest of us spend almost all of our time performing, with almost no time to practice or improve.
Why shouldn’t everyone benefit from more time to work with a coach and develop mastery?
5 Signs You Should Hire A Coach
You See The Possibilities
You see great possibility for yourself, your career, or your business, but you can’t turn that possibility into a clear vision, action, and/or results. In other words, you are stuck.
What is your purpose? What is your vision for your life, career, or business? What are your strengths and how can you use them to make great things happen? A coach works with you to get answers to these questions.
Your Having Challenges
You are having challenges influencing or working with other people to get things done. Leadership – in life and in work – is partly about influencing others.
Many people have challenges with how they communicate, work on teams, and make things happen. A coach can help you develop new skills and behaviors to have more impact when working with other people. Your coach can also help you to understand how to build a powerful network of relationships so that you can get more things done more easily.
You Can’t Find Enough Time
You can’t seem to find enough time to do what you really want to do in life. Time is the one currency we have that is non-renewable.
How you use your time tells you exactly what your priorities in life and in your career are. A coach helps you to get clear on your priorities, stay focused, and be accountable for achieving the things that matter most to you.
For instance, if you want to start a business and find yourself playing video games instead of developing and marketing products, then you either need to change the way you use your time or get honest about your real priorities. A coach will force you to be honest with yourself and make important choices about how you spend your precious time.
You Want To Change a Behavior
You are getting advice and feedback from others that you have to change some of your behaviors or attitudes. Do you know anyone who gets good results, but has behaviors that are holding them back?
Perhaps you have been told that you have certain behaviors that hurt the way you are perceived – even if you are doing relatively well. Coaches understand what it takes to build new habits for success.
You Want To Get Better
You simply want to get better. People who seek out coaching are people who want to learn, constantly improve, and discover things that they don’t even know they don’t know.
These types of people generally excel in life and work compared to people who are more insecure, closed, and unwilling to be vulnerable. If you want to get better and achieve your most inspiring aspirations, consider hiring a coach.
What about you? Have you ever hired a coach? What times in your life have you considered when to hire a coach?
Andrew Neitlich is the founder and director of the Center for Executive Coaching, a leading coach training organization based in Central Florida. He has trained over 1,000 coaches around the world—including clients within FedEx, Aflac, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, the United States Air Force, Florida Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota, the United States Department of Defense, Macy’s, the NBA, and Deloitte Consulting.
Andrew Neitlich is author of five books and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He lives in Sarasota, Florida with his family and plays lots of tennis. His new book is “Coach! The Crucial, Deceptively Simple Leadership Skill for Breakaway Performance“.
You can learn more at centerforexecutivecoaching.com or connect via LinkedIn.
I would love to become a business coach consultant. There are too many businesses who aren’t being run properly and are failing miserably. You just gave me an excellent idea to get a business idea off the ground.