Executive Coaches and Business Coaches: Are They the Same Thing?
Expert professionals in any field or niche are described by their successes in their practice. Still, this journey to success is always challenging for most professionals. The journey often involves learning, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes to be the best in practice.
However, there is always the chance of getting lost in the journey, which translates to no success. And when this happens, the individual cannot be described as a professional. The possibility of getting lost or failing highlights the need for a coach in your profession.
But then, how can a coach help prevent failing? Well, they (coaches) do not prevent failing but help you learn and grow to become the best and expert professional. Please note that learning and growing without a coach’s help are possible, but the odds are that it will take longer; thus, we can say that a coach quickens learning and growth.
What does Coaching Entail?
Coaching is defined as a client-driven service involving a coach partnering with a client or clients in a thought-provoking and creative process, inspiring them to maximise personal and professional potential. Hence, from the definition, we can tell that coaching does not solely focus on the professional aspect of an individual’s life but extends to the personal; thus, coaching can be described as a medium for all-around improvement.
Remember, coaching does not eliminate the odds of failing but reduces them when done correctly. Also, as much as coaching is beneficial, choosing a coach is tricky because the right coach attracts many benefits, which is summarised as growth. In contrast, the wrong coach attracts no benefits, summarised as no growth.
Indeed, the world of professional coaching could be confusing to someone new to it, given the diverse coaching types, niches, and services available. Still, knowing what each coaching niche, type, and service entails is needed to accurately choose a competent coach and enjoy valuable and productive coaching services.
As mentioned earlier, there are many coaching services, niches, and types available in professional coaching, but there are two prominent services that this article will discuss. They are executive and business coaching; this article will outline what they are, their benefits, similarities, and differences.
Executive Coaching – What is Executive Coaching?
Executive coaching focuses on leaders in organisations, communities, and more; thus, why it is also called leadership coaching. The clients who use this coaching service are leaders or on the path to becoming leaders; thus, with a clear understanding of who the clients are in executive coaching, the definition above can be tweaked as follows:
Executive Coaching is a client-driven service involving a coach partnering with leaders or executives in organisations, communities, and more, in a thought-provoking and creative process, inspiring them to maximise their leadership and professional potential.
Benefits of Executive Coaching
This coaching niche or service started in the early 1970s and has proven productive since then; thus, it is still in use. These benefits best describe how effective and proven this service has been, and they include the following:
- Leadership successes for new leaders: Being a leader is burdening, and this burden is amplified for newcomers (newly appointed leaders). Hence, the risk of these newcomers getting overwhelmed with the demands of being a leader is ever true. However, Brisbane executive coaching helps these newcomers manage their demands, which translates to leadership success because they become successful leaders.
- General or overall growth: Where there are leaders, there must be followers whom their leader significantly influences. It is safe to say that whatever the leader experiences translate directly or indirectly to the followers or people under the leader; hence, the saying, “when the leader in an organisation grows, everybody in the organisation grows.” Executive coaching helps leaders in organisations, companies, and communities develop and improve their human management skills so they can get the best results from the individuals they work with.
- Provides leadership skills to elevate any situation: Remember when we described leadership as burdensome, it is a role where everyone looks to you for answers/solutions to problems they cannot solve, and you are expected to provide these answers/solutions. However, as a leader, your opinions, solutions, or answers tend to grow biased; thus, the odds are you do not provide a competitive solution for a situation. Hence, executive coaching corrects any bias by providing objective and unapologetic advice and opinions. The result is a widened viewpoint of any situation allowing for intelligent solutions from a leader.
Business Coaching – What is Business Coaching?
Business Coaching focuses on business owners like entrepreneurs and investors; thus, they are the clients involved in business coaching. Business Coaching is a client-driven service involving a coach or coaches partnering with business owners in a thought-provoking and creative process, inspiring them to maximise their business and professional potential.
Benefits of Business Coaching
We now understand the parties involved in business coaching, but the question is how the clients benefit from this coaching service. Well, these are some of the benefits of business coaching to business owners:
- Revamping small business owners: What does it mean to revamp? The English dictionary describes it as “to improve;” thus, business coaching improves small businesses. It is easy to start a business today, as seen from the growing number of new businesses, but similar cannot be said about establishing a business. Establishing a business involves growing that business from the start to the point of consistent success. Business coaching helps small/new businesses improve towards achieving consistent success because it outlines success methods and flaws to correct or improve on for small businesses.
- Guidance and accountability for business owners: A word that best-described this benefit is being self-critical. Similar to how leaders can become biased (as stated in executive coaching), business owners also become biased with their opinions and decisions. Hence, business coaching addresses this bias by helping business owners become more self-critical and open-minded.
- Increases profits and growth for startups: It is easy for business owners to start a business and set its goal to be “increased profits, growth, and success,” but where they encounter challenges is bringing the set goals to life. As a business owner, you must consistently experiment with methods and models to achieve the business’s goals. Still, often the experiments cause more harm than good. Hence, business coaches serve as partners to guide your experiments, reduce the harmful impacts on the business, and develop efficient and productive models and methods. Hence, a business coach guarantees startups success, growth, and increased profits.
Conclusion
From the information above, business and executive coaching are similar in some sense but are unique services. Their similarities range from being aimed at helping clients achieve success by asking critical questions to answer to developing models for their clients’ improvement. The noticeable difference between both coaching services is that executive coaching helps leaders improve and achieve success, while business coaching helps businesses grow and achieve success.
Business coaches will typically offer one on one business coaching sessions and group business coaching. Also, given the prevalence of business owners and staff members that now choose to work remotely from their home office, online business coaching sessions are becoming increasingly popular.
Bio of Tony Meredith
Tony Meredith, Director and Head Coach at Tony Meredith Coaching, has over 25 years’ experience working for some of the world’s largest corporations in a variety of senior sales and leadership roles.
Tony Meredith Coaching started in 2018 and works with hundreds of small-medium businesses across Australia, in the areas of Franchising, Retail, Services, Manufacturing, and Property. Tony Meredith Coaching focuses on helping business owners Grow Sales, Increase Profits, and Regain Time.