In my previous post, I had written about How Brands Can Deliver What They Promise. This post, Connecting the Dots – How Coaching Can Help Keep Promises Your Brand Makes – explores the difficulties, you face as a brand to keeping those promises and how coaching can come to your rescue.

As an individual, you wear multiple hats in your professional and personal lives – entrepreneur, executive, employee, parent, friend, sibling, etc.

As a business owner, you set business goals, create the action plan, line up your team comprising of employees, vendors, and partners and get busy with execution.

Along the journey when the target projections slip, you face huge attrition, or there are too many customer complaints, you realize that “things are not going your way.”

So where is the disconnect?

According to me, the disconnect often comes down to these crucial parameters: values, beliefs and attitudes of the individuals in your team. Either they are not clear on the business values or they often unknowingly operate, in ways that do not align with them. Your direct team and extended ecosystem are thus not able to keep the promises made by your business.

“Your response to smaller day to day activities (however insignificant it may appear that that time), determines how you will respond to bigger defining moments.

As an individual human being, you have an integral set of beliefs, values, characteristics, habits, an attitude that develop over a period, right from your birth to the present day. It is your value system, beliefs, and behaviors that shape your personality and defines who you are; based on the decisions you make, how you respond to situations and how you treat others. These factors play a substantial role in defining your success as a professional and as an individual.

Now, things get complicated, as your organization comprises of scores of individuals from different walks of life, each coming with his or her value system and beliefs. So how will you handle the situations and moments that arise because of the clash in their personal values with your business values?

“Its important for your to understand that like you, any individual who joins your business, has the desire to get more out their career and life.

If you were to change your values, beliefs, behavior and habits drastically – you would resist. You are aware that it is not an easy feat to achieve. The hundreds of self-help books, videos, articles you may have access to, did little in bringing about the desired change in you. So expecting overnight changes from your team is unrealistic. This is a journey, and it is your role as a coach to guide them along the journey.

As a coach, you play a primary role in helping these individuals, who are an integral part of your organization success. You need to get in touch with their core values and align it with the core values of the business. By doing so, you ensure that they gain clarity on their roles, purpose, and goals, and soon everything will be easy. This will help them in making decisions, deciding next steps and recognize early in the game if they are going off-track and make necessary course corrections.

“As a coach you are very much accountable for their success as you are guiding them along the journey. As a coach you need to set the example to your team and ensure “You Walk The Talk.”

Achieving Results Or Success Is A Process

My thoughts on, how as a leader and coach, you may go about to create, clarity, focus and balance for growth in your business. This will help your brand keep the promises you make.

Assess the current situation –gauge the current situation, and get an insight of the undesirable conditions that is inhibiting growth. This will help you plan the coaching and training programs to free up what’s holding you or the organization back.

Develop a winning mindset and Setting Realistic Goals – The viewpoint of where you are today vs. your desired future will determine the choices you make and expected results you will set. Setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) involves looking at the environment and the future from multiple perspectives, one that provides numerous alternatives and approaches. Clarity on the direction, what is the expected result and by when replaces any doubts and fears they may have with confidence, enthusiasm, and positive attitude. A healthy winning mindset opens your teams mind to fresh ideas and possibilities that help achieve the growth.

Discover possibilities– Your business and each individual associated with your organization have their own definition of success and what it would look like and how can they contribute to the success. You need to work with individuals and teams to help them perform at their peak while meeting their personal and organizational goals.

Design, plan and execute actions and priorities – By aligning business goals with individual goals, you can help individuals focus better, prioritize activities and execute to deliver consistently. They can be held responsible for their actions as they have clarity on the goals and comfort that you have got their back, with all your support you extend with the necessary course corrections, based on the progress in the review sessions.

Create a continuous learning environment – It is important for you to help individuals realize that the business can only provide the umbrella. They need to learn how to hold the umbrella and protect the brand and themselves with the different adversities they will face along the growth journey to excel in their jobs. Moreover, each person needs to make a commitment to his or her development.

On a side note, it is imperative that you as business owner/coach, know what your core values are. By knowing what matters to you most, will help you

Redefine your goals,
Align it with your core values
Set realistic expectations for your team.

Achieving results is a process. Look at it from this perspective, it would help ever develop a plan that allows you to achieve repeatable and predictable results, and keep your promise you make as a brand.

If you are new to coaching and don’t have time you could engage the services of a professional coach, to act as a catalyst to support your change and growth objectives.

Look forward to hearing your views and your experience.

Innovatus Marketers Touchpoint LLP is a customer experience, marketing, service design, design thinking and business innovation consulting firm, based in India. We offer go-to-market and digital strategy consulting and help our clients rethink and redesign customer and employee value in the digital era. We offer design thinking workshops and consulting, tailored to enable, accelarete or transform your business. We are laser-focused on the problem at hand and your opportunity space, and optimize process to make design thinking and service design principles accessible to your employees who’ve never done it before or stuck-up, and provide “just adequate” theory to help you get moving and achieve outcomes.

You may reach out to Vidya Priya Rao @ +918080015500 or email @ vidyapriya.rao@marketerstouchpoint.com

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