5 Ways Business Coaching Programs Enhance Productivity

Business coaching appeals to highly motivated. Just like high-level athletes (and those aspiring to be high-level athletes) hire accomplished coaches in their athletic disciplines, so do business owners who want their businesses to succeed and to get an edge over their competition. So what is business coaching? Business coaching offers personalized support, guidance, and mentorship for leaders in small business. Improving leadership skills and productivity of the entire leadership team creates benefits throughout the organization as those skills permeate throughout.  Investing in your team members, and thus your business, through a business coaching program tailored to your needs yields a tremendous return. Here are the 5 ways business coaching programs enhance productivity.

1. Business coaching makes training “stick”

Do you train your employees? Of course, you do! Do you have a business coach for your employees? Likely not and that might be why you are reading this. Are you aware that a combination of coaching and training has been found to enhance productivity by 88%? Meanwhile, training alone has been found to only increase productivity by 23%. What this means is that through the training is important, it’s not effective in isolation, leading to lower productivity because of falloff. That fall off after spending time and money training your employees can be addressed. Leadership coaching is an ongoing temperature check of your employees, making sure everyone stays 100% on the same page, focused, and organized so that what they learn in training is reinforced and used in the coming days, weeks, months, or even years later.

2. Business coaching creates a culture of SMART goals

Business coaching helps small businesses get organized by getting clear on where the company is, where it wants to go, and how it is going to get there through setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely). In helping the business formulate these goals, business coaching works with each individual in leadership to help them understand their role in achieving the goals of the organization. Business coaching clarifies from the macro-level to the micro-level by setting individual goals, which tie directly to business goals. This culture of measurable goals enhances productivity because everyone is working toward the larger company goals defined as individual contributions.

3. Business coaching improves meeting efficiency

How many times do you leave a business meeting thinking things could have been run more efficiently? Or perhaps wondering if that could have been an email given that one person did all of the speakings? Productive meetings are necessary; disorganized, unnecessary meetings destroy employee morale and motivation.  Lack of organization, lack of preparation, and distracted employees who are multitasking during meetings,  not fully present, yields highly unproductive meetings that ultimately are a waste of time and money. Business coaching helps your business have more productive meetings by running them more efficiently through pre-meeting preparation, setting clear expectations, starting and ending on time, staying focused, documenting important information during, and setting clear action items assigned to specific individuals after.

4. Business coaching improves time management

Business productivity is a result of an organization.  An organized leadership team results in an organized business because leadership always starts at the top and flows down throughout a business. When each employee has clear guidelines and expectations for their role, they learn to manage their time better, and accordingly their productivity increases. Business coaching helps small businesses get organized and the leadership team learns to trust and delegate responsibilities to other employees. This atmosphere of trust results in clear communication about each team member’s accountability,  a fine-tuned, optimally functioning business where there are no stop-starts, overlapping tasks, or duplicative work.

5. Business coaching validates whether the right people  are in the right seats

Are you hiring the right people? Are your employees in the right position within your business? People are most productive when they are in a position for which they are: (1) qualified (2) want to do and (3) have the capacity. Your employees need a sounding board, in a one-on-one, safe, mentoring environment, to uncover professional goals, satisfaction, and what stressors and obstacles they face professionally and personally. Absent that resource, then you may not even know there is a problem until that person leaves your business. Without business coaching, your company is missing out on an opportunity to find out what makes each individual feel inspired, happy, confident, and thus productive. 

Conclusion

What small business owner doesn’t want to see a productivity improvement? Executive coaching helps each individual improve their productivity and that results in a more productive team and thus business. Self-awareness is best served through an objective observer given that each of us is somewhat biased when it comes to ourselves and our performance. That is how a business coach, with an outside perspective, can serve you, your team, and your business.  Ken Kilday, CEO/founder of Leader’s Cut: The Ken Kilday Coaching Experience, is an Executive Business Coach and EOS Implementer®. He works with leaders in companies of all sizes to implement actions, evaluate success, and adjust to new, improved habits and actions to produce repeatable and predictable outcomes independent of changing business cycles. Ken is an entrepreneur who has designed, built, launched, and rejuvenated successful businesses. Contact Ken to schedule a 15-minute Meet & Greet and discover how coaching can best serve you and your business.