Discover Your Coaching Niche

Archive for the ‘Your processes’ Category

Paul Lemberg shared this delegation process with Stompernet attendees in Atlanta earlier this afternoon.

There are five steps for effective delegation, all of them necessary.

1. What is being promised – get really clear on this.
2. The Conditions for Satisfaction – ie the acceptance criteria
3. Milestones, if the task is more than about a month in duration.
4. When will it be complete – get agreement.
5. How will we communicate on progress, and how often?

He also suggested guidelines for feedback for the delegation.  Paul suggested you ask the following questions to the person to whom you delegate, each time you communicate.
1. What is working?
2. What’s not working?
3. What’s missing – what do you need?
4. What’s next?

delegation, task management

In this series of blog entries, we’ve been examining what we as coaches can do when we get a request to coach a group.  In the first part, we laid out the criteria for defining a group.  

Then we outlined the first two parts of the POES model – the Purpose and the Outcome.  Now we’ll move onto the Evidence and the Steps. 

Define the Evidence
Once we have a specific outcome, we need to know when we have reached it – we need the Evidence.

Get this Evidence in sensory specific terms – what specifically will you see and what will you hear when this outcome is achieved? Then as soon as what you see or hear indicates you have achieved the Outcome, you can wrap up the session.

Lay Out The Steps
Having defined the Purpose, Outcome and Evidence are vital precursors to the actual work in reaching your group’s Outcome. Now you need to know the Steps to get you the required outcome. These steps towards the outcome will either come from your knowledge of the problem domain, from another domain expert, or from your group.

So work through all the steps until you reach your outcome. Then pat yourself on the back and go and have a beer.

Anticipate problems
Sometimes working through POES is all you’ll need to do. Other times you may need to deal with common group-based problems.

A good facilitator will anticipate problems that can be caused by disruptive participants. A little thought beforehand about what could go awry – such as people arriving late or leaving early, one person dominating the session and dealing with low contributors can make all the difference.

Often, thinking about the potential problems and planning and agreeing the workshop rules accordingly can negate any problems.

But don’t be afraid to intervene to stop unhelpful group behaviour. As facilitator you’re the guardian of the Outcome – challenge any behaviour that is not taking the group towards their stated outcome.

Summary
So that’s it – work through the POES model, anticipate problems and challenge behaviour not moving towards the outcome. Now, step up, and offer to facilitate a group!

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with Alun’s free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”,

Alun Richards www.brandingyou.org

ps There’s an excellent book for those who wish to develop their facilitation skills further – it’s “Managers as Facilitators” by Weaver & Farrell.
© 2007 Alun Richards.  All Rights Reserved

As a coach you may already have been asked if you would coach a group of people together. These requests often come from those who have not been coached before, and who are seeking what they perceive to be a lower-cost option.

People making these requests are not aware that coaching is inherently a 1:1 modality and its success relies upon the:

• Confidentiality of client issues
• Coach focusing their attention on a single client and their issues and
• A deep and trusting relationship built between client and coach.

This means that coaching is badly handicapped in a group setting. In a group setting you can’t possibly do justice to each participant and the quality of your coaching work will suffer as a result.

Don’t Coach Groups – Facilitate Them!
However, if you have a group with a specific shared interest or shared problems, you can use facilitation as a means to explore and resolve their issues.

Beware, though! A number of people together in a room with no inter-relationships, no working relationships, or no shared problems is not a group. Run, don’t walk away from these assemblies.

What is Facilitation?
Facilitation does have some similarities to coaching, but the addition of group dynamics makes different interventions and different styles of working necessary.

“But isn’t facilitation a skilled job” I hear you ask? Yes, but there are some guidelines you can use to facilitate a group effectively. Use the POES structure (Purpose, Outcome, Evidence and Steps) I outline below adding facilitation to your skillset!

Know your Purpose
What is your Purpose in facilitating this group? If the person asking for your services cannot give you a clear, unambiguous purpose, or tell you who can, you’re wasting your time and theirs.

So know the purpose, and get it clear, or do not proceed. Questions to ask include “Why are we meeting today?” “What is the intention behind our session?”. A skilled facilitator I know well consistently refuses to facilitate a workshop unless it has a clear stated purpose.

Know the Outcome
Having established the Purpose, determine the desired Outcome. This is the required end result of the session. Having this specific can considerably shorten and focus workshops. And a clear, unambiguous outcome makes finding the means to reach it that much easier.

In this article, we’ve covered the Purpose and Outcome of the POES process.  In the next blog entry, we’ll cover the next essential steps of the POES structure, and ensure you’re on your way to becoming a top-flight facilitator!

We found that part-time coaches and those who are starting to build their coaching practice mentioned this issue most frequently.  However, even some experienced coaches have difficulty balancing the time they need to spend marketing and the time they need to deliver their coaching services. 

The issue here is insufficient time to deliver coaching services AND to market those services.  The good news is that this is usually indicative of a growing coaching practice!

While the statement of the issue is straightforward, there are several possible root causes, and a corresponding number of solutions.  The specific solution for you will depend on the root cause of your insufficient time.

Ask yourself the following questions.

1. How am I spending my time currently?

Here, examine how exactly you are spending your coaching week.  Include your coaching time and leisure time.

2. What stops me from undertaking more marketing activities?

And no, it’s not “time”.  Once you identify what you’re doing that’s preventing you from marketing, you can take action on it.

3. Prioritisation – what should I be doing?

Coaches tell us that they benefit from considering the priorities in their lives, and how much time they are able to spend delivering coaching services and marketing.
 
4. Delegation and Outsourcing

Others can benefit from establishing which activities in their coaching, their marketing and their lives have to be performed by them, and which could be outsourced to other providers.

Want more help?

For those coaches wishing to examine this area in more depth, I have an article in www.ezinearticles.com called “Finding Time For Marketing! – How To Have Time To Market As Well As Deliver Your Coaching Services”. 

Summary

In this article I have outlined the seven main problems coaches have in getting clients.  There are solutions for each of these problems, and I have covered several suggestions used by experienced coaches.

Which of these could you implement in your coaching practice this week?

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with the free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”, available from http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

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Having explored the tasks we can Eliminate, Automate, Simplify and Execute leads us to the final part of the EASED model – Delegate.

Delegate

After you’ve gone through the Execute phase, you’ll have some tasks that are candidates for delegation. These will probably include aspects of the administration of your business and aspects of the process of your marketing. They may also include elements of your home-life like childcare or cleaning.

Your potential task list may be quite long, and you know there are many tasks that you could usefully delegate. But, I also know what you’re going to say next.

But I can’t afford to pay staff…

No, not many start-up coaches can afford to pay full-time, permanent staff. But you don’t need to do that yet. Just look at the list of tasks you had from above, and the ones that you could delegate.

Now consider these options:

• Get yourself a cleaner, order groceries online and delegate other non-business related time-consuming tasks.
• Consider getting part-time typing assistance from a temp agency or from personal contacts.
• Hire a VA – a Virtual Assistant.
• Use resources for specific tasks from www.elance.com .

But, But… Don’t All Of These Cost Money?

Yes they do. And that’s the wrong question. The right question is, if this frees me up and allows me to get one paid coaching session extra per week, what is that worth?

Let’s say it costs you £15 per hour for admin support – for a VA perhaps. And let’s say your coaching fees are only £80 per hour. You could pay for five hours of your admin and marketing time a week, if you got just one ongoing coaching session per week.

Now, what would five hours of marketing per week, every week give you, or get for you? Hmmmm… Just a thought…

Summary

These postings have outlined my EASED process for categorising tasks in your coaching practice that can be Eliminated, Automated, Simplified, Executed by you or Delegated. Now, what from this article could you put in place in your coaching practice this week?

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with the free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”, available from http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

In looking at the tasks that we peform in our coaching practice, we’ve identified the tasks that we can Eliminate, Automate and Simplify. Next we need to identify the tasks only we can do – the tasks we must Execute.

Execute

We’ve now arrived at the core activities of our business. These are the tasks that need to be performed for our business to operate effectively. We only have two more categories left – those only we can do and tasks that could be completed by others.

Execute tasks are those you must do yourself – this naturally includes the delivery of your coaching services. But it also includes a proportion of your marketing tasks.

Content vs Process 

Here, it’s helpful to distinguish between content and process. You need to provide the content for your marketing – the text for your sales letters and your website content.

But others can manage the processes of marketing for you. This might include setting up your website or blog in the first place, uploading your sales pages to the internet, sending out your weekly newsletter, managing your autoresponders and making telephone calls to arrange coaching sessions or meetings.

The key is being ruthless about what do you HAVE to do. If a task is not focused around your core skills, and high-value added activities, you shouldn’t be doing it.

So have a long think about where you add value to your clients, and where there are routine, lower-value tasks that can be delgated to others.

So make a list of those coaching delivery tasks that you cannot delegate, and those marketing activities, or parts of them, that only you can undertake. Once you’ve made the list, look again at what you’re doing. Are you sure you HAVE to be doing all of each of those tasks?

We’ll look at this more in the final part of the EASED model in the next post – Delegate.

So far we’ve examined the tasks we’re performing day to day and we’ve identified the tasks that we can Eliminate or Automate. Next on our list is what we can Simplify.

Simplify

Once you’ve Eliminated and Automated tasks, what tasks can you Simplify? How can you make what you have to do easier and have it take less time?

It’s true in organisations that business processes get more and more complex over time as they have to deal with more and more different situations. These processes then take more effort, manpower, time and cost to operate. They only ever get simpler if you take a long hard look at the purpose of the process and consider whether each activitity within it is actually still required.

Simplifying, therefore, means making processes easier to operate by taking out non-essential activities from them. It differs from Eliminate, where you stop doing the entire process, by looking at specific tasks you perform in operating the process.

Simplify also means organising the resources required so they’re close at hand. And it can also mean reducing the standards for completion of non-essential tasks.

You can simplify not only your marketing and coaching delivery tasks, but also your home management activities. For example, could you use online shopping and delivery to save yourself two hours a week?

So let’s start to Simplify your what you do in your coaching practice and in your private life.

Of the processes you undertake:

1. What non-essential steps can you take out of them?
2. How can you make the tasks easier?
3. How can you reduce the time it takes for the tasks, or the whole process?
4. Are there resources – material, space, machines, instructions, templates, checklists, pre-prepared or part prepared documents, tools and other aids that can be more readily at hand, and in a state ready to use?
5. Bearing in mind the required standard for completion of the tasks by your client, do all of the tasks have to be completed to the standard they are today?
6. Could you meet the requirements overall, while lowering the standard of individual tasks? Negotiation with your client on this may surprise you.
7. Can you make your home management processes more effective by simplifying them in the same way?

Summary

Simplifying your tasks and activities may initially seem time consuming. And it can be. But you’ll see the benefit immediately, and for every day you use the simplified process.

In fact, only doing what you have to do in your business and in your life, and no more can release huge amounts of time for you to spend marketing.

So far we’ve examined the tasks we’re performing day to day and we’ve identified a number that we can Eliminate. Next on our list is what we can Automate.

Automate

The next category in my EASED process is Automate.

Have another look at the remaining tasks you perform. The increasing numbers of online and PC-based tools available mean that today many tasks can be automated. What are the marketing and administration tasks that you can automate? Talk to other coaches to see what systems they use.

The secret here is to find automated systems that do the work for you. Examples here might be 1shoppingcart or other autoresponders to keep in touch with your client and prospect list. It might include having an online system to take booking requests and accept client payments automatically.

As this area of technology moves fast, it pays to check often on the current position.

Of course, there may be tasks other than those to do with business administration that you could automate. If your weekly shop has a percentage of recurring items, perhaps you could order these via the internet, for home delivery. Most such systems allow you to use a saved online shopping list.

So what can you Automate to give yourself more time?

I mentioned that the key in being able to deliver coaching services AND market yourself is my EASED process. EASED stands for Eliminate, Automate, Simplify, Execute and Delegate. It allows you to categorise the work you do and find more effective solutions for its completion.

So by now you’ve had a look at a typical week to see where you spend your time. You’ve written down all the major tasks you undertake. This includes your delivery of coaching services, your marketing activities and everything else that doesn’t contribute to your business.

Let’s look at that list and let’s ask ourselves – “Do I really need to be doing all of that?”

In other words, we start the EASED process with Eliminate.

Eliminate Tasks

We will get the biggest payoff from Eliminating tasks which we do not really need to perform.

Looking at your list, what can you Eliminate from your stack of work with no impact to your marketing or delivery? In this category you might find time spent watching TV, playing video games, surfing the ‘net – stuff you like but that doesn’t contribute to your business.

Now, I’m not going to suggest you’ll eliminate all of your TV watching. But when you look at the time you spend per week doing it, you may surprise yourself with how many hours you could save per week when you cut back.

Low Value Tasks

Also in the Eliminate category is low value activities – things you don’t get paid for and that would have no real impact if you didn’t do them. You may find many of these, too.

Frequency of Tasks

With some tasks you could cut down the frequency with which you perform them – for example – food shopping or dusting.

Are there things you do automatically, that are more the result of habit rather than need? Now’s the time to examine these. Often we can get into patterns of behaviour that are comfortable, but don’t take us where we need to be.

Take Action

Once you’ve identified potential activities from your list – just stop doing them! You will probably find you will immediately have more time on your hands. You might want to review the situation in a month or so, to see if there’s any adverse reaction. If there isn’t, keep on not doing these tasks!