NMA Newsletter

Several of you have sent us questions on how to use coaching as a success strategy. The questions cover hiring the right coach who will help you increase your confidence, influence and success. Here are what we consider to be the most important points in hiring a coach for yourself, your team and/or your organization.

Using a coach can be such a great experience. He or she is someone who can offer you a different perspective, support you in achieving your goals and dreams and help you design your roadmap to extraordinary success. There are a few items that you need to consider before hiring a coach for you, your team or your organization. Here is what I suggest, what has been successful for the clients I have coached and executive teams/organizations that have looked to bringing on a coach for their work:

Experience - Make sure your coach has the experience you need. That means that if you are hiring an executive coach, they need to have some good business experience so they understand your needs and issues...ROI; turnover; retention; coaching your team; profitability; productivity; career transitions, sometimes within the same organization; succession; business strategies. Your coach should know and have successful experience in coaching these issues. Business can be complicated. You need someone who can look at the whole business landscape with you.
Speed and Availability - You need a coach who can work at the speed of business now and is easily available when you need them. Most coaching takes place via the phone. Some clients want to be on IM with me. We do lots of sharing of information and building our coaching call agendas via email. We use all the forms of communication that will serve us best and we use it often during the week and during the coaching engagement.
Technology - Your coach should be clearly aware and cognizant of business trends around technology and have their technology reliable, fast and up-to-date.
Chemistry - You should have a good "gut" feeling about who is coaching with you. Chemistry is everything when you are being told something that is key for your learning and might not be easy to hear. You need to be able to trust the information and the communication without hesitation. Rapport and chemistry with your coach produces that for you.
Course of Action - You want to develop a clear and detailed process for the coaching engagement. Your coach needs to be able to outline a course of action with you based on your conversations together. You want defined outcomes that can be measured and that will produce sustainable results for you. I always begin my coaching engagements with a leadership and communication assessment, which I have found is vital to developing viable and measurable outcomes for the coaching engagement. You take the assessment online and it provides you with a snapshot of whom you are right now. It also provides key behavioral elements of how you are perceived as a leader and communicator.
References - Please do not engage a coach without checking references. You will learn lots from speaking to people who have used a coach to support their issues/success and, about how the coaching worked for them. A coach can explain, all day long, the value of coaching, but a reference can give you first person stories of what and why the coaching worked.

The basis of coaching is momentum, measurable outcomes and trust in the guidance and conversations. I have seen miracles and I have seen changes that people thought would be impossible to make. Many times I get the credit for these changes, but you are the one that does the work and achieves your desired results.

A coach can be your silver bullet. My coach has helped me grow at a rate that my team and I would have thought impossible a year ago.

You have all the resources you need at your fingertips. One of these resources is our Pre-Coaching Questionnaire. It will help you define for yourself what it is you want and need for your coach and the coaching process.

My team of coaches and I would be delighted to work with you. You deserve to have the personal and professional life you have always dreamed of. Let us help you design your roadmap to extraordinary success!

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR NEWSLETTER OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: America’s Top Confidence Coach, Natalie Manor publishes the [Confidence Roadmap] weekly Newsletter. If you're ready to jump-start your confidence, influence and success, get your FREE tips now at http://www.NatalieManor.com