Coaching Perspectives for Small Businesses
When a business is young or newly started, the business owner is often the “Mr do all”. This is particularly the case with the start-up small business, where the business owner tends to wear all the hats. He is the company administrator, marketing manager, head of sales, company secretary, bookkeeper, website 
designer… the list is endless.
The challenge here is that his “to-do’ list also tends to be endless, and continually grows, possibly just as long as his days also become. The resultant effect usually is that his energy is constantly drained, and his personal productivity dwindles, as he struggles to make end meet.
Expectedly, because the business revolves around him and depends on his physical presence and ability, any negative effects on his personal energy, state of health, as well as mental and emotional well being would also affect the business. This is one of the sad never-ending stories of the management crises usually faced by many owner-managed small businesses, especially in tough operating environments.
Crises situations like these are very common with micro and small businesses because the business owners and managers often lack the finances and structure to employ enough staff to do some of the work that they are doing. Another reason is that they usually lack the appropriate management skills that would enable them to effectively deploy and leverage personnel and materials for sustainable business benefits.
Entrepreneurship and business coaching interventions have the potentials to provide solutions to these and some other challenges of small businesses in particular. The coaching intervention in this regard would usually begin with engagement on the personal development of the business owner and other key business managers, if any.
This is because the personal development of owners and managers of small businesses usually play critical roles, in laying the proper foundation for the growth, development and overall success of the business. These relate to their personal awareness, knowledge, personality, lifestyle, values and passion, among others.
Coaching Success Foundations for Small Businesses
No business starts by itself. It is the creation of a person or group of people that have specific goals, purposes, expectations and desires in mind. The business 
design, planning and execution would therefore also reflect these foundational issues that compelled the setting up of the business. That is why every business, small or large takes its direction from the knowledge, values, capacity, skills, resources and passion of its founders and promoters.
It is this understanding that makes business coaching such a valuable process in among others, helping to facilitate increased business impact, growth, development, productivity, value, profitability and sustainability. The role that a business coach would most likely play in this regard relate to helping to balance personal motivations of stakeholders and business goals. This is to eliminate potential conflicts that may arise from a clash of personal motivations and the direction that the business takes, especially as it grows and possibly diversifies.
The business coaching approach would usually be one of assisting the entrepreneur, business owner or manager to answer the following ‘indexing’ coaching questions:
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- What do I want (or do not want)? This describes your objectives.
- Why do I want it, and how much do I want it? This shows your motivation.
- When do I want it? This reveals your need levels.
- Where do I want it? This shows your environmental challenges and opportunities.
- With whom do I want this? This highlights your collaboration choices.
- How would I achieve this? This describes your strategies
- Can I do this? This describes your capacity to deliver effectively and consistently.
- What are the chances of success? This identifies possible risk factors.
- What are the alternatives? This shows the need for flexibility and creativity.
There are immense benefits in aligning specialised business coaching engagements with life (or personal) coaching, as has been indicated by the examples of the indexing questions above. These benefits are both for the stakeholders and the business itself. It is also worth mentioning that these benefits are not just for start-up businesses, but have huge implications for ongoing business as well, irrespective of the size, type and operating environment of the business.
Some of the benefits of business coaching interventions especially to small business owners in dealing with the most critical areas of business growth, development, profitability and sustainability are highlighted below.
1. Goal Setting Support
It is inconceivable that there are still many businesspeople that manage their business, but set no particular goals to get the business to the level(s) that they desire. The risk that they face is that, without definite short term and long term goals set for the business, that business could head just about anywhere.
There is a common saying that if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will
take you there. The problem in fact may be that you sometimes just never take off. Because, when there are no great and exciting goals to achieve, there will be no energy, passion, focus, commitment and inspiration to make a move to accomplish the goal(s).
Obviously, having specific goals will always motivate action. And, learning how to match your personal goals with your personal realities is perhaps one of the most important business strategies, which the business coach has the knowledge and experience to help with in the course of the coaching engagement. This involves an assessment of your personal knowledge and capacity to perform. It would also relate to your personality, personal stamina, available resources and the acquired business skills.
The major benefit of business coaching as relating to goal setting is therefore the advantage that it provides in assisting the business to set goals that fit its vision, purpose and market opportunities. In this regard, the coaching engagement helps to unveil several business opportunities and possibilities, which would have been unknown if there wasn’t the process of goal setting involving active questioning and feedbacks.
In addition to this, the coach uses his knowledge, skills and experience to keep you accountable to achieving your set goals. This is done by constantly challenging, motivating, encouraging and nudging you toward the point of execution each time. And, importantly, with a good coach you never quit until the goal is achieved and celebrated.
2. Solving Problems of Procrastination
Almost every one of us is guilty of procrastination at one time or the other. In this regard we would usually find an excuse to put off certain tasks that can determine business profitability or even wholesome success. Procrastination is without a doubt a major problem for many people, and can be a major stumbling block to business performance.
There are of course different reasons and circumstances that may lead to procrastination. You might be putting something off because you do not know how to approach it. It may also be that you find yourself procrastinating due to lack of time or even lack of needed resources at the time that they are required. There is also the possibility that procrastination may be due to your lack of expertise or the present unavailability of the best solution to the problem. Another issue could be 
that the task is considered to be too overwhelming to attempt at the particular time. There is in addition to all of these, the possibility that you put off doing something that you should or need to do, simply because you just don’t like to do it, or you don’t feel like doing it.
Business coaching intervention in solving the problems of procrastination provides firstly a clue to the nature of the real problem, and then provides a different perspective to enable you to start working on a solution. The business coach for instance may assist to motivate you with a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. This is by presenting to you a scenario of the pleasure and pain that your actions (or inaction) may result in, especially if you don’t like to do the task or have little time to do it. The coach may also help focus you to source expertise and solutions by providing options relating to outsourcing for instance.
And, if the problem is that you are overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, the coach may offer realistic solutions, assistance and support by guiding you on how to breaking up the task(s) into smaller bits, which may be much easier for you to tackle, one after the other. And, in situations where you don’t have the expertise for the task(s), or you dislike doing it, the solution may be to give the task(s) to someone else who has the know-how and actually loves doing it. The aim of the coach is always to prevent you from making excuses and justifications for procrastination, especially when you and/or your business may experiences loses through your actions or failure to take action.
3. Assistance with Task and Time Management
As earlier mentioned, the typical small business owner tends at some stage in the development phases of the business to try to do everything in his business all at once. It would often appear as if he is coping well, but in actual fact, he is not getting a lot of the most important things in his business done.
For example, the small business owner/manager whose business revolves around him soon finds out that he has involuntarily become the most compulsive 
‘fire fighter’ in his business. He suddenly realises that he has to juggle so many things at the same time, and has to practically deal with virtually everything as an ‘expert’, which he is not. Nothing kills productivity and initiative faster than this.
It is wisdom to realise that, since you cannot be an expert at everything, you would need to engage the services of other people, while you focus on your area of expertise. Doing that is what will bring more income for you and your business. The strategy is to first identify the activities that generate the most income for your business, and determine who is best to do it, if it is not you. That obviously helps you to determine which tasks to undertake and which ones to delegate. This is not usually as easy as it appears.
The task of the business coach in helping out in such situations is essentially to assist with developing realistic strategies for time, resource and people leveraging, which may in some instances involve outsourcing and effective delegation. With specific regard to time leveraging, the coach skilfully guides you to take stock of where you are and what you are spending time on each day, as you are made to account for time/costs/benefits.
The goal of business coaching in this regard is to develop a time management system, which dramatically increases the time that becomes more available to you. This enables you to concentrate on what you have to do; what you love to do; and what you have the skills to do, with all of these also ensuring greatest income for you and your business.
The coaching strategy is to motivate you to concentrate efforts and attention more on what is important and urgent, as well as what is important, but not urgent. When you are able to do this, the less important tasks are delegated to other people that can handle them, or you are able to attend to them when you are under less pressure.
Dr Emmanuel Imevbore is an executive coach, management consultant and business strategist. He is the CEO of International Coaching and Mentoring Institute, a specialist coaching and coach-training organisation. He can be reached by email: emmanuel@ic-mi.com; and WhatsApp: +27 79 259 1768.
