The standard of business coaching that made you feel competent when you graduate as a Business Coach, shifts dramatically when you become increasingly experienced.
Competence in Business Coaching is an ongoing process of growth and development.
The difficulty in becoming more and more competent as a Business Coach is simply that the framework on which you started, as stable as it may have felt, shifts with the market, your clients’ needs, and your own personal growth. Change is beyond continuous; it is critical to our success.
The framework of your current levels of competence forms a solid base on which your future competence can be developed.
Dr Elana Siew (Competence Refined – Amazon Kindle) calls these 5 areas of competence B.E.A.K.S. which we use with permission. Below is an explanation of what this anagram stands for, and how you can use each area to enhance your levels of competence:
- Behaviour:
- How you perform both in front of your client, as well as how you dance in the moment, and think on your feet to ask those powerful questions. Feeling confident to adapt your style as required ensures that your client gains value from the session. Your clients will experience new insights and awareness of their lives, based on how they perceive your input.
- Experience:
- Using every Business Coaching session to grow your experience base is a habit. You need to deliberately take time after each session to contemplate new learnings or methodologies. Consciously finding occasion to implement your new learning embeds the experience and makes the new development part of who you are.
- Ability:
- Although abilities are inborn, you have opportunities to polish these so that your performance improves. Understanding what you can and cannot do grows your competency levels. To improve your business processes, your abilities regarding preparation, after session administration, and invoicing methods can also be enhanced.
- Knowledge:
- Continual learning, attending CPD sessions, attending conferences, reading relevant articles, and business coaching books, all ensure that you are not just informed, you are knowledgeable and can start to develop wisdom in the Business Coaching space. To develop a competitive edge, your increased knowledge about market, industry, and your clients’ trends, may boost your business.
- Skills:
- Developing skills is a lifetime commitment. Which skills to grow when is quite a challenge. The best way to structure your learning is to prioritise the skills that you believe are most crucial in your Business Coaching practice. Then rate yourself on these, determining which are most vital to your success, and how you can improve each one.
Working and using each of these 5 components builds Business Coaching competence. Competence grows deeper competence, and so your cycle repeats.
To be competent is to make a difference in each client’s life.
To make yourself the most competent business coach you can be, click here to build your coaching smarts: