Analyze the customer's potentialities

In the world of coaching and particularly in business coaching you must perform an analysis of your client's potential. This means that you must adopt a comprehensive and critical thinking and posture if you want to be a good business coach.

Initially we are going to use the self-coaching perspective, where you are going to imagine that you are your own client, and then put into practice what you learn with a real one.

Client Competencies

To be a good coach you must be sure of your client's aptitudes and dispositions. That's why you must first ask yourself:

• How capable do you see your client?

• Do you think that after guiding him/her he/she will grow and improve?

There are two perspectives or ways of approaching your work that are usually presented to you:

• Your client really wants to put in the effort, they are passionate about what they do and want to invest a lot of their time to improve. They have dreams and purpose that place a high value on their work.

• They see work as something they have to do because they have no choice. They are driven by the need to make money. He does not have much motivation.

These questions are vital to the training methods you will use. In the case that the person does not feel much motivation, you are going to have to follow them more consistently so that they can keep going. If they do want to make an effort, you will just have to give them a little support so that they can learn and grow on their own.

Strengths and weaknesses

Other elements that we must also take into account are the strengths and weaknesses of our clients. In this case we always try to focus more on strengths over weaknesses. It may cost you more effort, since we usually focus more on improving our weaknesses.

Let me give you an example, in a soccer team, let's say you have a player who is very good at defending. He is not particularly fast and does not have a lot of power in his kicking. In this case your coach should not try to turn that player into a striker who is fast and kicks the ball with great power. What he should do is enhance his strengths as a defender.

That's why you should change your way of thinking, about focusing on people's weaknesses instead of their strengths. In this way you will see that your own strengths are far greater than your weaknesses.

It is not possible to be exceptional at everything you try, but you can be exceptional at some things. It is more effective then, to concentrate on improving those advantages that we already have beforehand.

Imagine if Pablo Picasso's parents had pressured him to improve in other areas of thought, such as science or literature, considering that he was already good at the arts. He would never have become one of the greatest painters of our time.

Focus on the solution rather than the problem

In the business side of coaching it is much more advisable to focus on solutions rather than problems. By this I mean, if someone comes to you with a problem, you must change their mindset, so that they also come to you with a solution.

You will approach these eventualities as opportunities to find better solutions. Think about outcomes first before you go to someone. Train your brain to constantly relate these concepts.

When you are supporting a project, you should always try to focus on future potentialities and not on past performance. Most people can lose faith in what they are doing because of past failures.

Let's say you started 4 marketing projects a year ago and today only 2 have been really successful. You are going to focus on the projects that did bear fruit and not on the failed ones. You, as a coach, should always highlight the positive aspects that make companies and entrepreneurs grow and improve.

Motivation analogy

There is an old analogy about motivation in which we use the example of a donkey that we want to walk. For this we use a carrot tied to a stick that we put in front of the donkey, this makes it move forward trying to get the carrot. The problem with this technique is that once you remove the carrot in front of him, the donkey will stop.

The other way you can get the donkey to walk is with a stick, which you use to hit it from behind resulting in the donkey moving around trying to get away from the stick. But again, when you stop using the stick, the donkey stops.

In coaching we must get away from this carrot and stick analogy, because if you treat people like donkeys, they will act like donkeys. If you take away their motivations or incentives, they will stop.

The strategy you are going to adopt then, is to see people as seeds ready to germinate. You are going to water them and remove the weeds to encourage them to grow and develop their intrinsic potential.