The Journey of a Business Coach
Working long days with a lot of human interaction was exhausting. Thulani found that he felt drained and was losing concentration in his coaching sessions. His business was growing, yet he was not holding himself together sufficiently to manage himself and his behaviour in an optimal way.
Thulani approached his Business Coach, who used an introspective process with him, to identify why Thulani felt so powerless. In this discussion, his Business Coach created the awareness that Thulani found his emotions to be the most difficult aspect to self-supervise.
His emotions even contradicted his thoughts – where he would know that he was competent or had things under control – he would still feel anxious or irritable. He also noticed that his emotions sometimes derailed the habits that he had formed so carefully to enhance his Business Coaching practice.
Thulani found it useful to revisit his core values, which are integrity, competence, and security. He knew that everything he was doing was in line with these values and this gave him comfort. Through this train of thought, he realised that he was able to handle his emotions and thoughts with the knowledge that he was supported by a solid foundation.
Thulani felt that he needed to refresh himself on values, beliefs and habits, so he read a case study on one of SA Business Coaches’ blogs from November 2022 entitled: Beliefs, Values, Habits, and me.
Thulani’s beliefs were developed around his values. He believed that he needed to behave with integrity, regardless of whether anyone else was watching or knew what he was doing. This was pivotal to his sense of control. He knew what he expected from himself.
He also believed that he needed to continually develop himself to grow and sustain his levels of competence. To him, this would enable him to implement the expansion of his career and ensure security both financially as well as to build his business. Thulani’s beliefs kept him well grounded and gave him a sense of control.
Having worked with his Business Coach to cultivate habits that would keep him professional, both when face-to-face with his clients, as well as when completing his administrative responsibilities, Thulani was gaining perspective of his actions. His habits included daily acts which he would perform, such as checking and sorting his email at the beginning of each day and only being available via email every 3 hours. This cleared his mind and gave him time and space to be present.
As part of his new ambition of gaining a sense of being able to manage his actions via his thought, emotion, and habit control, he deliberately implemented more small habits that would give him a feeling of being in command of his time and his business. His Business Coach reminded him that habits such as stretching his legs and standing in the sunshine, or sipping cold water would be extremely beneficial, even though this sounded like a minuscule activity.
Thulani’s emotions became governable when he realised that all his behaviours were based on his value system and beliefs. These filtered into his thoughts and actions, which translated into habits.
Through this process, Thulani was able to use his behaviour to his advantage and further build the success of his Business Coaching business.
To learn more about becoming a qualified business coach see SA Business Coaches’ take a look at our Training Page.