Do You Need a Coach?
More entrepreneurs are turning to business coaches for that extra edge. Here's how to find the right coach--and what you can expect once you do.
Ever since Machiavelli first advised a young prince, leaders have sought the counsel of outsiders. After all, it's lonely at the top. At many small companies, chief executives are the only people who truly understand their organizations, and every major decision falls on their shoulders. And since the CEO is the one who signs the paychecks, it's tough to find employees brave enough to provide honest feedback. Seventeenth-century merchants turned to "cunning men," or wizards, for guidance; entrepreneurs today turn to their more modern counterparts: executive coaches.
Executive coaches are not quite business consultants, whom you'd hire to address a particular operational or technical problem. And they're not psychotherapists, whom you'd tap to work through emotional issues. Coaches generally focus on one thing: improving your performance as a leader. They do this in much the same way sports coaches work with athletes: by helping you make the most of your natural abilities and find ways to work around your weaknesses. A good coach will make sure you meet your commitments, behave like a grownup, and otherwise stay out of your own way--things nearly all of us can use a little help with.
Executives at large corporations have long relied on coaches. But entrepreneurs arguably need them more--mostly because they're so isolated. "Entrepreneurs start out excited about being able to chart their own direction," says Allison Linney, who has been counseling business owners for six years as president of Allison Partners, a coaching firm in Charlottesville, Virginia. But eventually, Linney says, many entrepreneurs find that they actually miss having a boss--or at least they miss having a trusted adviser with whom they can brainstorm, set goals, confess their anxieties, and work through the day-to-day challenges. Think about the best boss you ever had (or dreamed of having). "A great coach can provide you with similar resources," Linney says.
There certainly is no end to the number of people promising such greatness. The ranks of executive coaches have swelled from 2,000 in 1996 to some 10,000 today, and sorting through them is not easy. Different coaches work in different ways. Some work only over the phone; others come to your office; and a growing number work in group settings, coaching dozens of business owners simultaneously. Some provide tough love; others coddle and cosset. There's no standard fee structure, either: Rates can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars an hour, and a few coaches will even ask for a piece of your business. Some demand a commitment of a certain length of time, others are pay as you go.
Adding to the chaos is the fact that despite a few noncompulsory credentialing efforts, the coaching profession is completely unregulated. Anyone, with any amount of experience, can crown himself coach and start offering advice. Hairstylists face more stringent licensing procedures.
How do you make sure you choose the right one? Because different individuals will thrive under different kinds of coaches, there's no way to answer that question definitively--though the tip boxes (Get the Right Coach and What Kind of Coach Do You Need?) should provide some guidance. What is it like to be coached? How can working with a coach transform your company? Those are questions that can be answered by investigating coaching arrangements that are working well. To that end, Inc. asked two entrepreneurs, running very different companies, to open up about their relationships with their coaches--to share the day in, day out, in-the-trenches process of working with a business coach, as well as the results they've achieved. Here's what we found.
Dava Muramatsu had momentum. She just wasn't sure what to do with it. Muramatsu is the owner of Matsu, a popular women's clothing boutique on Boston's posh Newbury Street, and her bohemian-chic sense of style has not gone unnoticed. Matsu "is more than a store. It's an experience," gushed a reviewer in a 2004 article in The Boston Globe. "Dava Muramatsu has an eye for the special and beautiful." Matsu's merchandise, culled from artists and designers worldwide, has landed in the pages of magazines like Lucky and has twice been selected for the "O List," a list of products selected by Oprah Winfrey and published each month in her magazine. Muramatsu would like to capitalize on that exposure, use it to propel her business beyond Boston. The ideas practically explode from her head: Expand the clothing line she recently started. Open another store. Start offering style-consulting services. Write a book.
The ranks of executive coaches have swelled from 2,000 in 1996 to 10,000 today.
But like many ambitious business owners, Muramatsu finds it difficult to get from concept to reality. She's a bit of a micromanager and often gets consumed by the endless stream of tiny details that go into successful retailing. What's more, she runs Matsu on her own, and the days often seem like an unending series of decisions and tasks that are hers alone, from training and managing employees, to deciding what lines to go after, to coping with rejection and struggling with financial pressures. It got to the point where the demands of the business were depleting Muramatsu's creative energy--a problem, since Muramatsu's creativity is the very foundation of her business. "I felt really stale," she says. "I knew I was creative and passionate. I just wasn't feeling it."
