Business Coach Tip: The Secret To Getting What You Want

I often thought running a Venture Capital fund ruined me when it comes to being able to focus on only one company but provides a natural platform as a business coach and mentor.

With that birds eye view in mind, lets use todays topic to help your business grow.

I know that this will sound counter-intuitive but stay with me awhile and see what you think at the end. In order to achieve and meet your needs, you need to listen first.

One can use this gem of a tip in any part or interaction in your business, across all your stakeholders (staff, customers, shareholders, regulators, suppliers and more). Listening to others compared to talking most of the time can achieve some of the outcomes mentioned below. By listening you can understand what is going on for that person – what are the current challenges they are facing, what they need, what they are expecting from you and others.

This can help you with your expectations of them. For e.g. if its your employee and you find that they are very emotional and distracted at the moment, by understanding what is going on for them (e.g.they have just had a death in their family), you are able to understand and cater for their current performance.
You will be able to integrate their needs with your goals. For e.g. if you are selling them a service / product you could them map it to their needs.
You would be able to produce the goals that meets their needs. For e.g.
if they are the shareholders in your business, once you understand what return they are looking for you are able to direct your efforts in the right direction

If you need further convincing, have a look at the book written by Dale Carnegie, “How to win friends and influence people”. Its such a powerful book, more so in that it is written many years ago (in 1936) but still the key principles remain today.

Ultimately we are caught up in our world even if our focus is on keeping everyone else happy – we are still caught up in our story which is keeping everyone happy. An aside note, even hear if you wish is to keep everyone else happy, if you don’t listen to others and understand what they need, you might end up wasting time and effort on something that doesn’t achieve the results you were looking for.

How about we take these insights a step further and see how you can begin being your own “business coach” right now? Lets start with these
steps:

– As you start your next conversation, begin with an inquiry question to the other person.

– What’s have you been experiencing lately?

– What frustrations / challenges / successes have you been experiencing lately?

– What challenge, if magically solved overnight, would have the biggest positive impact on you?

– When last did you celebrate a success?

– What was the success?

Listen to what they say and don’t say. Continue to be genuinely curious compared to judge. Being curious leads you to ask more to understanding, judging leads to solve problems and tell them what they need.

May your words be few and your insights many 🙂