Let’s face it. It can be lonely as an entrepreneur. You don’t often have the peer group that women in larger corporations often have. And there are even fewer or NO female mentors.
Coaching requires another human being who knows and cares about you. It is a powerful tool for building self-awareness and staying on track to achieving your goals. But often times, entrepreneurs cannot afford to hire a personal coach. With self-coaching, however, you can have all the benefits of effective coaching without the associated costs. This is because you are taking responsibility for the process and just handing the appropriate tool from your toolbox to someone who knows and cares about you.
Here are some of the benefits entrepreneurs get from an effective self-coaching process:
1. Self-awareness: Self-coaching helps entrepreneurs develop a deeper understanding of themselves: their strengths, weaknesses, thought patterns, and lastly, your unique needs at work. This heightened self-awareness helps you craft goals that are unique to you. And with knowledge of your needs, you can also lessen your stress in the process.
2. Goal setting clarity: Through self-coaching, entrepreneurs can set clear and achievable goals for their businesses. By talking this out with someone else, you can easily break down these goals into actionable steps, thus creating a roadmap for success.
3. Improved problem-solving: Self-coaching encourages entrepreneurs to think critically and find innovative solutions to problems. When you voice your issues to another human being and they ask you questions in return, you gain clarity about ways around the obstacles in your path.
4. Increased Accountability: When you have to report to another human being how you are progressing on your goals or whether you actually did what you said you would do, you are more likely to actually do the actions. Research has shown this over and over.
5. Better decision-making: Self-coaching fosters a rational and reflective approach to decision-making. Entrepreneurs can weigh the pros and cons, consider their values, and make choices aligned with their long-term vision. They are more likely to do this when they have to explain it to another.
6. Time management and productivity: Entrepreneurs often juggle numerous tasks and responsibilities. Coaching, in general, and self-coaching in particular, can help you identify time-wasting habits and create effective time management strategies, leading to increased productivity and work-life balance.
7. Building emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence is crucial for successful entrepreneurship. Self-coaching aids in understanding and managing emotions, enhancing interpersonal skills, and fostering better relationships with employees, customers, and stakeholders.
In conclusion, self-coaching empowers entrepreneurs to take control of their personal and professional development, leading to more meaningful and fulfilling entrepreneurial journeys. The trick of course is finding the right person to have these discussions with and arming them with the right questions.
I have found that with the power of a good personality assessment, you can jump start the process of building self-awareness. You can just hand the results to your peer “coach.” It then is pretty easy to tell if a goal is suitable or how an obstacle might be handled. And with the other “right” questions in the tool box, all you have to do is hand the toolbox questions for a given situation to your “coach.” You then have the benefits of coaching without the expense.