As an executive coach and independent author, I’ve spent years thinking through goals, strategies and tactics related to growing my businesses. Furthermore, all of my professional roles of the past 20-something years have required think I “think like an entrepreneur” in order to make things happen.
As a result, I have a genuine admiration and respect for entrepreneurs—whether they are someone starting or running their own business, or operating a “business within a business” such as what a financial advisor, attorney and physician must often do. I help professionals from a variety of industries and backgrounds to think more clearly about their goals, strategies and action steps, posing challenging questions they might not ask themselves because of their proximity to their own situations.
As your executive coach, I would pose these types of questions to you—among others—during our bi-monthly telephone sessions:
Strategic Thinking
Goals: How much do you want to grow your business across the next year? What will be the evidence that you have succeeded?
Strategies: How in general do you need to meet these goals?
Tactics: What specifically do you plan to do? What are the priorities? Describe the action steps you will take.
Planning and Organizing
When is the best time to carry out the specific tactics you’ve identified? What do you need to do this quarter, this month and this week in order to make steady progress toward executing these strategies?
What distractions of your schedule can you anticipate?
What amount of time are you planning on investing in your support staff each week, and what does that look like?
Execution/Measurement
A coach can help an entrepreneurial professional be accountable for more than just whether a sales target was reached or a new client secured. I ask questions pertaining to whether the individual followed-through on commitments he or she made during the previous coaching session, and what factors might have facilitated or hindered implementation. The execution/measurement piece is vital for “closing the loop”—ensuring that the entrepreneur’s strategic thinking combined with planning and organizing is ultimately building a sustainable business.
This limited list of potential coaching questions and approaches might have already stimulated some of your critical thinking about your approach to your work and leadership. I learned some things just by writing this blog entry!
I would be delighted to demonstrate the impact of coaching with you first-hand. Please stay tuned for more blog entries on this topic, and contact me at john@dev.johnmichaeldemarco.com if you’d like to set up a complimentary 45-minute telephone coaching session. Thanks for reading!
