Portfolio Directors Blog

26.08.11

Entrepreneurs need a unique style of coaching...

I realised something yesterday...
I was on the phone yesterday to someone I got to know through work, but am now privileged to call a friend and our conversation meandered through the things we were due to talk about (the work she does for us) into a small gossip cul-de-sac and then she said something that I just knew I had to work with her on.
It didn't feel like work,  it felt natural and we worked together to get her a solution.  It was her solution, I was just a "critical friend" and I empowered her to recognise her feelings, her ambitions and her issues - AND I loved doing it!
I already coach and mentor as part of what I do for a living, however this was a bit of a revelation for me.  But why??
When you coach, you hold the client and it's about helping them seek the answer - no judgement, no advice, centre it on them.  When you mentor someone it's about using your experience and advice to your client's benefit - but the two are different.  I do each of them (separately) regularly and love doing it BUT yesterday I was absolutely flying and I've worked out why!
Firstly, we had a defined issue and the client had already done lots of thinking about it.
We had trust and the client wanted to be helped to get to a solution.
The issue was centred on business and emotional issues and I used coaching (what do you think?) and mentoring (here's what I think) to work through it.  Importantly, in the end, it was the client's decision, they owned it and they're running with it as a solution.
The client was really brave - they knew that they had to let go, to let come. (read it again, it does make sense - lol!!)
I encouraged the client to be authentic, to be true to themselves for the business solution to work.

So where's the revelation then?

I haven't talked about the other facet of me that I pulled into play - throughout the session I was tuned in, I was sensing and using intuition at every turn.  I was using my knowledge of the person and dynamically sensing when advice (mentoring) was needed and when the answer was there but needed drawing out (coaching).

Here's the revelation - when you're working with an entrepreneur, at a certain stage of their development - they have an umbilical cord to their business, so by definition if you're working on a business issue with them, it will be affected/defined by who they are.  They generally know the answers, but want a 3D advice solution.  So that's why what I do in this context works for them - they get coaching, mentoring and someone using business experience and intuition to flip between these methods as appropriate, to get them to their solution. At the moment there isn't a word for it - perhaps I need to combine the two words - centor??

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