What is Business Coaching?

Business coaching is an intentional relationship between two or more people that facilitates shifts in the thinking, behavior and performance of the business person. This relationship enables the business person to be in a position to grow and achieve goals that they consider important. Business coaching is an interactive process that expands business people’s effectiveness at both business and life-skills and allows them to identify obstacles that can hinder them from moving forward and attaining their goals.
If you were to observe a business coaching session over a period of time, you would see that it is a series of conversations between the Business Coach and client, moving along a predictable process through identifiable steps. The steps are: establish focus, promote discovery, determine action plan, establish next steps, and follow-up. Business coaches ask questions, listen, and make suggestions; they explore, challenge, encourage, probe, facilitate, focus, stimulate, and hold you accountable.

Coaching is:

•	Centered on the business person’s needs and wants
•	Enabling the business person to reach his/her goals
•	Measurable and task oriented
•	Done in a direct person-to-person setting.

In practice, coaching is a series of conversations between two people; one intent on making progress in some area of business and life, the other a skilled and empathetic resource in that process. The goal of coaching is to help the business person move from where they are to where they want to be.

"I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities". – Bob Nardelli, Former CEO Home Depot

“Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them. Clients say coaching brings out their best by helping them focus, break down tasks and clarify their values.” - Fortune Magazine

“I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable." - John Russell, Managing Director, Harley-Davidson Europe Ltd.

“The benefits of coaching appear to win over even the most cynical clients within just a few weeks.” - Industry Week