Coaching and Your Business

As a small business coach, I work with different types of clients – both individuals and companies. Some individuals work for somebody else but hold the desire to begin their own company, while others have been in business for a few years yet seek to move their business to the next level. A growing pattern in both small and large corporations is the human resources division acknowledging the importance of coaching for personnel, which in turn supports a more powerful bottom line for the company. Before hiring a corporate coach for you, your business and your staff, it would be advantageous to have an understanding or an appreciation of a few simple corporate coaching concepts and techniques. The familiarity of how coaching works and what it can help you achieve will make it simpler and easier for you. These are:

a)  Select the appropriate coaching model
b)  Communicate effectively with your coach
c)  Get maximum returns on your investment (on hiring a coach)

Coaching Objectives
Coaching essentially works on three tiers and in a corporate setting can often meld with the roles of consultancy. The first level or tier is performance, the second is behavior, and the third or outer layer is solution. The following provides a brief description of each layer.

Performance  Your coach will observe as well as study your sales and profit levels, employee productivity, business financials, and your senior management team or leadership team. Depending on your business situation, your coach may end up making suggestions and offering new perspectives to enrich your profitability from its current levels. To make certain the coach stays in a coaching role and does not fall into a consultant's function, it is imperative that your senior management team is on board with the styles of brainstorming for solutions communication that will take place. Performance transitions into reviewing your guidelines of effectiveness to make certain the staff is empowered to be as efficient as possible. Keep in mind, employees can be only as successful as the tools they're given, and your business's guidelines and processes are vital to their success.

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Mentoring: Encouraging Success

Once you establish your own company, we have a tendency to look at our previous experience and how it has encouraged your employee's success – to notice what worked and what didn't. One of the essentials of a flourishing business is the openness to share your wisdom and enthusiasm of doing what you love with others. One of the easiest ways is to create a mentoring program. Mentoring doesn't always mean you are "grooming' new employees for their rise in the corporation; it also means mentoring students toward gaining much-desired skills in the work place.

I would like to share with you a few of the advantages of how establishing a mentoring program can encourage your small business to be even more successful while also touching on how setting up a mentoring program in a small- to medium-sized organization can help you develop your human resources and use these resources in the most efficient manner possible.

To begin, let's identify the key advantages of mentoring programs.

Reduced Learning Curve

When an organization establishes a mentoring program, it can prove to be individually one of the most important resources for employees in their initial learning phase or the new hire period. When a member of staff is transferred or promoted to a new department, having an adviser supports a less-demanding or stressful work environment.

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Employee Motivation: A Secret Society?

Motivation is a key ingredient to success. This is not a news flash by any means, and all managers and good leaders embrace some degree of motivational program for their employees; whether they do this consciously or subconsciously, they all do it. Motivation is not some secret society either, but the secret to motivation is the "what" behind it. So what is the "what" anyway?

It's a great question and one that every great leader seeks to answer—although the answer is never the same twice! So that is what makes motivation part of a secret society, remembering and understanding the same employee will have different motivators at different times of her life? And yes, different times can be as often as yearly, monthly or even daily. This is the "what" behind keeping your employees motivated and feeling empowered.

Now that you're a part of this secret motivational society and you’ve been let into the inner sanctum, you're reading this and still thinking, "What? That isn't a news flash, either!" And yes, you would be right—but the news flash is the remembering that translates into engaging in some form of communication with your employees regularly to ensure you're in the know of what their current motivator is or might be. Regular communication is the real secret ingredient to realizing your success as a great motivational leader.

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Business and Your Education

There isn’t a child in the world who hasn’t been asked the question, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” And depending on their personal situation, external influences and experiences, their answer will change by the day. As we enter high school we become clearer about what drives us, fuels our spirit and motivates us to do better. The clock is ticking to choose a path for our lives, our careers and our futures. Entering college and choosing to complete your academic journey with a business degree always seems most desirable when we are looking to go into business for ourselves, climb the corporate ladder or just not sure about where we might be headed in life but still want to keep the most options open to ourselves. But as a small business owner, how does the integration of an individual’s educational focus and training impact her success—or does it?

There are those who believe if a student wants to succeed in the business world, then receiving an education in business is where she needs to begin her career. Her education in any subject matter will ultimately support her…

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Employee Training and Development

Employee development training is an essential part of the success of any company. Implementing specifically designed training programs to assist employees in keeping updated (as an example, with current technology) is part of any sound employee training program. It is also important for employers to identify those employees who have the ability to grow within the company and develop their skill sets to fill critical roles that will open in the future – also known as succession planning.

However, it is one thing to acknowledge employee training as vital and quite another to invest the time in developing a comprehensive training program into an already busy schedule.

A few preliminary steps a business owner or leader needs to take are identifying what needs or skills are required for each key position and understanding that the training ultimately enhances your business opportunities. A complete skills analysis to determine the real need for employee training will take care of this preliminary step. As a follow up, you will need to make sure the training opportunity you are providing will address the challenge you are targeting to solve and is, in fact, a basic training issue.

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Skills of a Successful Entrepreneur

So you want to go into business for yourself, do you? Well, there are a few skills every successful entrepreneur needs to either have himself or the resources (both monetary and human) available to him. We are not all born to entrepreneurship; and even if we grow up in an entrepreneurial family setting, we still need to have a certain amount of drive and basic skills to achieve success.

It is a given that successful entrepreneurs need to begin their journey of being in business for themselves with a certain degree of courage combined with the ability to plan before entering into the business world—let alone meet or exceed the challenges they will face. The following are eight basic skills you need to achieve success as an entrepreneur.

#1: Value

The first and the foremost skill before embarking into business for yourself is to ensure you will be providing value: value to customers, the industry, vendors as well as to yourself. Once you enter the business world, you will face tremendous challenges and a new competitor at every turn. It is important to try to discover new ideas of promotions and do what others are not providing to your target market. It will be important to work hard to maintain your value on a scale that is equal to or greater than your competitors.

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A Look into Business Psychologists

Choosing the right career path is becoming a bigger than life challenge–not only for those in the midst of completing their education, but also for those who are seeking a greater challenge in life or who have the desire to switch careers. Nevertheless, there are jobs that are still quite in demand, and there are many articles and blogs dedicated to highlighting the most sought-after careers as well as the ones that are the fastest growing.

One such career choice that has little focus is business psychology. Not everyone has heard of this, nor do they have any idea what a business psychologist does. Essentially, a business psychologist focuses on maximizing the primary asset of a company: its people. This is achieved by recognizing the impact behavioral issues have on the bottom line of any enterprise and creating the most synergistic balance through education, information and teamwork.

Business psychology operates at four different levels.

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Perfect Moment Monday: Thanking Employees

My Perfect Moment for this week included the company of some wonderful friends and watching my husband be a shining example of what makes not just a good leader but a great leader. Every year my husband likes to acknowledge those who work for him. He realizes that saying “thank you” throughout the year means a lot to motivating his employees, but he chooses to show them by inviting them over to our home for dinner twice a year. For some individuals this seems like he is going over the top to show his gratitude and that it is a lot to ask of me to host with him. In reality, I fully support this show of gratitude and really enjoy socializing with these individuals.

This past Saturday was for those who report directly to him and was a celebration of 2010: the successes, the challenges, the laughs and the frustrations. My husband, Jerry, puts a lot of thought into the evening; the gift bags they each receive are meant for not just the employee but are meant to be shared with their supporting spouses. Jerry recognizes that for his employees to truly give their all at work, their spouses or partners play key roles and therefore are not just invited but are part of his decision regarding the theme of the gift bag. This year we did “martini” themed gift bags. The idea was to provide each of his employees the opportunity to celebrate one evening with their partners a successful day.

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Managing Employee Turnover

Employee turnover is a huge concern in certain industries and is one of the main reasons for sleepless nights among managers. Turnover is simply the superficial problem; the crux of the problem is much deeper. What really needs to be studied and analyzed is the reason behind the high turnover rate of an organization. There can be various reasons that may induce employees to switch jobs: lucrative offers by other companies, long working hours, stress at work, inadequate training and development, fewer growth opportunities, etc.

Understanding Employee Turnover
A high turnover rate obviously has serious side effects such as increased expenditures and efforts in hiring and training as well as a greater risk of information leakage.

As we have already discussed, there can be several reasons for a high turnover rate; the most alarming ones are what are commonly called “dysfunctional turnovers.” These refer to cases wherein talented and hardworking employees decide to leave the organization.

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Training and Development Benefits and Techniques

Training and developing human assets are among the most important responsibilities of any HR department. After all, it is essential for an organization to adapt itself to the ever-changing business scenario if it wants to grow and expand in the long run.

Apart from this obvious benefit, there are several other goals that good training and development practices can help an organization achieve. The following are a few of the benefits.

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Human Resources: Employee Engagement

Employees are the key differentiating factor in any organisation. After all, they are often the ones who are instrumental in giving an organization an edge over its competitors. It is therefore essential for HR departments to ensure employees stay fully committed and motivated while performing their responsibilities; in other words, they must use effective Employee Engagement strategies.

Five Categories of Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement is a measure of how emotionally attached employees are to their organization and how passionate they are about their job and responsibilities. According to HR Anexi’s survey, employees tend to fall into one of the following five categories in terms of their engagement.

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Manpower Planning

Irrespective of the size of your organizations, you must make staffing decisions carefully. After all, poor manpower planning results in either overstaffing or understaffing—both of which can act as major roadblocks in an organization’s growth.

Understaffing often results in unnecessary delays, unproductive hours, unsatisfied customers, unfilled orders, and last but by no means least: uncontainable losses! On the contrary, overstaffing leads to additional and pointless cost burdens and diminishes the competitive advantage and efficiency of the business. To add to these problems, eliminating extra staff can lead to legal complications and extra costs in terms of compensation.

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The Whys and Hows of Corporate Coaching

As a small business coach I work with different types of clients. There are those who are working for someone else but hold the desire to start their own business, as well as those who have been in business for a few years but are seeking to move their business to the next level. An increasing trend in both small and large businesses is the human resources department acknowledging the value of coaching for employees, which then in turn supports a stronger bottom line for the business.

Before hiring a corporate coach for your employees, it would be a good idea to gain a basic understanding of corporate coaching concepts and techniques. The knowledge of how coaching works and what it can help you achieve will make it easier for you to:

Continue reading here.

Mentoring Programs: Supportive of Success

When we set out to start our own business, we tend to look back at our previous experience and how the environment was either supportive or non-supportive of the employee’s success--to see what worked and what didn’t. One of the elements of a successful business is the openness to share our wisdom and passion of doing what we love with others. One of the easiest ways is to establish a mentoring program. Mentoring doesn’t always mean we are “grooming” new employees for their rise in the corporate environment; it can also mean mentoring high school students to gain much needed experience in the work place.

Today I would like to share with you a few advantages of how establishing a mentoring program can support your small business success while also touching on how setting up a mentoring program in a small to medium organization can help you develop your human resources and use those resources in the most efficient manner possible.

Continue reading here.

Human Resources: Stress Management Policies

If you are an HR professional, it’s a part of your job to make sure the employees of the organization for which you work remain productive and efficient. Devising policies and taking initiative to keep their stress levels to a minimum is an essential component of ensuring the efficiency level of the employees stays up to the mark. However, it is also a well-acknowledged fact in business circles that a little stress is essential in order to get peak performance out of employees. The vital question for HR professionals, therefore, is how to ensure stress levels in the organization do not rise too far above the required minimum. As we know, more does not equal better when referring to stress.

Office politics, harassment, intense work pressure and negative relationships with colleagues or managers are some of the most common causes of excessive stress in the workplace. While discord, politics and work pressure are inevitable by-components of working on a team, as an HR professional your job is to ensure these problems do not become unmanageable.

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