Do You Need a Coach?

Pellegrini encouraged the entrepreneurs to think about their calendars as consisting of three types of days: "focus days," during which you do what's most valuable to expand the company; "buffer days," spent preparing for focus days; and "free days," time off to recharge the batteries. Pellegrini then explained that participants eventually should be taking 150 free days a year--a difficult concept for many in the room to swallow. "The control freaks in the room start to panic," Pellegrini says. People tend to calm down some when they learn that the number includes 104 Saturdays and Sundays. But it's still a big adjustment because many business owners don't slow down on weekends.

Dwyer-Owens grasped these time-management concepts immediately. In fact, the whole notion of an organized system held enormous appeal because it reminded her of the systems that her own company puts in place to help franchisees run their businesses. The only moment that gave her pause on the first day was a meditation session. "It's nice to sit back and relax, but I never benefited completely from that experience," she says. (In subsequent workshops, the meditation session was eliminated.)

Dwyer-Owens headed back to Waco and began to put the concepts that she'd learned into practice. She now plans three focus days a week and spends those days doing high-impact activities that she's identified during the workshops--such as meeting with other entrepreneurs to swap strategies and spending more time soliciting ideas from her own employees. She's realized there is no need to feel guilty about sitting at her desk and thinking. Indeed, it was during such a moment of quiet that she decided to begin prepping one manager to take over for the COO, who was moving into a different role at the company. "Better than doing it at the last minute," she says.

The company has grown to 660 employees and revenue has jumped to more than $100 million. In 2003, Dwyer-Owens successfully completed a drive to take the company private. She attributes a great deal of her company's rapid growth to what she's learned from coaching. "No one should kid themselves--there's no magic bullet to having a coach," says Dwyer-Owens. But by teaching her to balance her time and carve out space to think strategically, coaching has helped her become a more effective leader. She says it's also made her happier: She took off four and a half weeks last year with her family, including trips to Italy, the Cayman Islands, and Deer Valley, Utah. In each case, she checked in with the office only once or twice, on predetermined days. "One of the greatest things about coaching is that it's taught me about balance," she says. She plans to take off six weeks in 2006.

Six years after her first meeting, Dwyer-Owens still attends a workshop each quarter. (She now travels to Santa Monica to take advantage of the warmer weather.) Each time, she says, she comes back with something helpful. For example, during one workshop participants were encouraged to think through their skills and abilities--in Dwyer-Owens's case, building relationships and plotting strategy--and to delegate everything else. She's since extended the process to her managers, doing away with rigid job descriptions. Other workshops have focused on learning to work with fewer, more lucrative clients; expanding a company to 10 times its current size; and evaluating potential deals.

As far as the interaction with her pod-mates goes, it's fair to say that that's not where Dwyer-Owens is finding the Strategic Coach program most valuable. When she's in her sessions, she's focused on her own needs, not the travails of her peers. Still, she has picked up some valuable tips, such as the name of a service she can call while she's driving to have her e-mails read to her and to send responses. She's also shared some of her own tricks and tips, such as an e-mail screening system she devised.

A group coaching situation like the Strategic Coach is less intimate than a typical coaching arrangement. But it also allows you to avoid the relationship-management issues that often arise between coach and client. The drawback is that the program is more rigid. There's no guarantee that the issue of the quarter is going to be a pressing one for you. What's more, if Dwyer-Owens or any client runs into trouble during the months between sessions, Pellegrini's door is really not open. "I have seven groups that I coach in a quarter; if I had 350 people calling me, I'd have no time to run my own business," she says. For pressing questions, the Strategic Coach provides clients with a liaison that they can phone--but 24-7 support isn't the reason people opt for quarterly, group coaching sessions. Dwyer-Owens can't remember the last time she called in for anything other than an extra workbook. "I guess there are some people who really need to stay in touch with a coach," she says. "I just haven't felt the need to do that. I have enough to work on."

Contributing editor Alison Stein Wellner also writes in this issue about Elmwood Inn Fine Teas.

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