Thulani has spent hours, days, and probably weeks analysing and understanding the Business Coaching industry. He had made his decision: Business Coaching was the profession that he was graduating in for the rest of his life.
Now he needed to define what was necessary for him to master becoming a successful Business Coach.
To assess his current levels of being a great coach, he took the SA Business Coaches’ online assessment called: Will I be a Great Coach?
Thulani gained clarity in what he needed to focus on to be a great coach. The assessment defined the critical areas he needed to work on. There were:
Attentiveness
Being in the moment and paying attention to someone’s spoken and unspoken language is one of the core essential components of being a great coach. Coaches listen far more than they speak, and when they are receptive to what their coachee is sharing with them they increase the rapport, relationship, and the ability for the coachee to not only be vulnerable in their own space, but also, to celebrate their successes.
Business Application
Thulani had established that he was not just going to become a coach, he was going to be a Business Coach. This meant that he needed the business knowledge, experience, and application to run effective Business Coaching sessions. The application of business knowledge was the most difficult part. It was all good and well to be able to regurgitate something from a textbook, it is quite another to apply the most apt and relevant piece of information when the client needs it, so you are not sharing knowledge you are applying wisdom.
Communication
Business Coaching is a conversation. One with guidelines and purpose, yet still a conversation. Communication is pivotal to all human interactions, and it is through effective and clear listening, communication, and active feedback that the coachee progresses through their path. Thulani saw that it is imperative to listen actively, and that this element of communication was far more important for the Business Coach, than the speaking.
Resilience
Thulani recognised that not being able to do things for others or move his coachees as he would like them to from milestone to milestone, would be a challenge for him. He also understood that if his coachees did not achieve what they had set out to, this was not his failure. Therefore, the final area of mastery was self-mastering resilience. The ability to keep failing forward trying new techniques, remaining engaged with disinterested coachees, and learning from each interaction. For Thulani this characteristic was the most difficult, and the one that he would have to put the most effort into.
Feeling highly motivated, Thulani came across a Tony Robbins article→ where he spoke about great coaches: being realistic and seeing things as they are; having visions; understanding strategy; with a goal in mind always.
Everything was tying together and Thulani felt that he knew what he needed to do to be a successful Business Coach.
“If you want to master something: teach it!”
Richard Feynman
Imparting knowledge and skills to others is a responsibility that requires competence and confidence. You can master anything that you are able to focus on, in the right direction, with the right intensely, giving the right amount of energy and time.
To learn more about becoming a qualified business coach through SA Business Coaches, look at our Coach Training Page.