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Self-Coaching for Family Businesses 
None of us, as they say, is smarter than all of us. Some peer groups may have the desire for a professional facilitator, but for many, a practical, hands-on guidebook can be just as valuable.
Doing It Right is an excellent starting point for peer group discussions, and we recently had an opportunity to hear some thoughts on peer groups from its author, Daniel Elash.
The best way to learn something complex is to talk the idea through. To be able to explore the idea by thinking aloud, by having other people respond to what you're saying, and to respond to the ideas of others.
"We all look at things from our own point of view. The word "mind set" is illustrative of this point: it informs us that, besides setting our mind in a direction, we can get rigid. We can become set within that perspective. And whatever we can do to help take us stretch our point of view can help us learn. "One of the things that people get out of using a coach is to have someone with a different perspective listen to us talk about our ideas-- What we're trying, what we're thinking, what we're assuming, and how we're going to apply these ides to their business and use them to add value or capture the value that's already in their organization. "When a group of people get together for the purpose of thinking about ideas, they have really opened the door for creativity and innovation. Whatever they use as a spark will have a lot of influence on how that creativity evolves. For example, if they pick a book called "Guerrilla Marketing," that book is focused on a specific area of business, and it will provoke their thinking in that area. "One of the things about Doing It Right is that it combines both a complete range of business issues and practices faced by small and mid-sized businesses with the additional benefit of exploring how people work together to create those outcomes: how people work with partners, how people work with customers, how people work with the marketplace, with employees, in order to do those things which will add value to their business. "Instead of a very narrow focus on one sort of business practices, finding a broad vehicle allows people to think together about a lot of things over time. What they'll find is that they develop thought partnerships. They're thinking together, stimulating ideas, bouncing ideas back and forth, and what they learn about each other and each other's perspectives doesn't end with one topic or one subject. By having a comprehensive framework to use as their thinking guide or coach, they'll see that their thinking matures and evolves, and they will understand different issues at different levels at different times. "One of the things that I've found with Doing It Right is that a group of people can get together and go through a section, and some people can focus on the tools, some people can focus on the stories, and others can focus on the practical advice in the chapters, and when they come together with their different perspectives, they'll have a really rich conversation about the implications of what they've read. Different people will read the same story and take different things away from it, and when they get together to talk about what that story meant to them, they'll have a much deeper experience then they would have had if they had just read it themselves. "Whenever we read a book that's designed to teach us, we only get a portion of what the author is trying to say. We only get the stuff that resonates with our current point of view. The first time through, you may get so much out of it, but once you digest it and it becomes part of your thinking, you'll go back and revisit that same section and find other insights and ideas that you new perspective is able to latch on to. It's a process of continued self-generation. This is what coaching is all about. You can't always have an expert on call when you're ready for the next round, but if you're part of an ongoing support or study group, you have those resources ready whenever you're ready. "Many people wind up using a professional coach because a coach has two things: broad business knowledge, and an understanding of behavior. All business is competition, and all businesses use people as the vehicle for conducting business. A person with that background can help you stretch your thinking, not just in the specific tactics within your industry, but within business in general. And not just with your people, but with people in general. If they can help you can evolve your ideas and discover new ways to put your resources together in ways that create value you weren't creating before. "But a lot of people don't have a coach with those qualifications available to them, or they just can't afford what it would cost to avail themselves of a coach. That doesn't mean that they can't have their thinking stretched. One of the ways people can do this on their own is to get together with some friends, family, or trusted advisors and talk about the business. They can use a book or an article-- something that provokes their ideas, which gives them fresh ideas and fresh ways of thinking about what they do ordinarily from a different stance. "The reason people use a coach-- whether they're an athlete or a musician is this: When you are learning an art or a skill, and I do believe that business leadership is both an art and a skill, a coach will push you to go further. You'll run faster, you'll swim harder, you'll put out more effort on your instrument when a coach is their listening to you, watching to see what you'll put out this time, and critiquing your effort. We tend to push ourselves further and get more out of it when we're engaged in a collaborative effort than we do if we're operating by ourselves. When you're working alone, it's very easy to get distracted, to procrastinate, to say `Ok, I've gotten this far, now it's time to move on.' A lot can get left behind without a coach.
Often the things that get left behind are the things that seem most difficult, or the things we don't know how to do, but learning comes from focusing on the things that are hardest or don't make sense. "That's where the peer conversation comes in-- it gives you an opportunity to talk about these issues and get advice from people whose advice and experience you trust. "Even seasoned musicians and athletes go back to receive coaching for the opportunity to be pushed further than they'd push themselves on their own. If you're working with a group of people, and everyone knows what everyone else's goals are, it's awfully difficult to just skim and shrug it off when your peer group asks you how you're progressing! The more you engage in these conversations, the more you are able to develop as a business leader. "Many people in business will ride the wave of their current successful effort right in to shore" but then they find themselves beached! The energy has dissipated, they're not in a position to catch the next wave, they're not in the position of generating more energy, and they have to start all over again. There are so many businesses that start off with a great idea, they're riding a great wave, but unless they are really disciplined, it's just human nature to just continue to do what you're already doing even though conditions are changing. And right now, the business environment is constantly changing-- the market has evolved, customers are expecting different things, new technologies are creating new options. There's always someone who's willing to reach out and take the first step in establishing a group, be it an internal group, or a group of equals across the state or country. Once you've found like minds, it's important to remember to keep focused. "One of the things that kills small study groups is that the agenda can get hijacked by the most dominant speaker or by the person who has the most pressing problems. When a group falls into this trap, the topic that gets focused on ends up being a topic that is relevant to very few members of the group. People will lose interest and pull back or pull away. "That's why I think the first chapter in Doing It Right, `Your Business Idea' is an ideal starting point for your new peer to peer group. It's a discussion of creating boundaries with your business, and that leads everyone to step back and examine the assumptions underlying their business, and what they feel makes them most valuable to their customers. Because business conditions evolve, every business ideas need to evolve, so it makes sense for everybody involved in the study group to begin with a deep conversation about the nature of their business. "Understanding that, and being challenged and provoked to think bigger, broader, and from other perspectives not only gives you food for thought, but it creates a common frame of reference for the group. In this way, all the future discussions can be tied back to this original idea of each member's business idea and value proposition. Those get translated into a brand promise to customers, and it's from there that our business strategy really unfolds. "Once the group has this foundation piece, this common starting point, they can use the tools together and really deeply explore someone's particular business. They can take a couple of businesses a week, and as a group, work on that business idea. In a matter of a few weeks, the group can really touch on things that are fundamental for everyone, and they'll be able to give each other the value that will get them to continue to participate and to keep working. It's critical to understand what make the other people in your group tick, and to look for those commonalities. "As other people bring issues to the group, members find that "well, that sounds like what Bob was struggling with," or "This is something that Marion will have to tackle in her business, too." They can think from each other's perspective, even if they're in different industries, and that's a fundamental ingredient to building a successful partnership. "Many people stay away from these peer group situations because they don't want to second-guess or question themselves. They're afraid that they may look stupid to the group, and that's an unwarranted fear. The reason people need to continue learning about business in general, and their own business in particular, isn't because they've been "stupid" in the past, it's because the state of what we know has grown and evolved and changed, and that wasn't true before. "Fifty years ago, if you got a college degree or an MBA, you knew all there was to know. If you were raised in the business, you knew what there was to know about the business and all you had to do was execute well. But there's more information now. The face of business is changing in faster and greater strides. In four years, half of what a person knows about business can be obsolete. What used to be sufficient just doesn't cut it anymore." Let's say that a person seriously wants to grow their business, and they choose a book like Doing It Right to facilitate that on their own. Another person gets together with a few of their contemporaries and develops a study group. Another person decides to hire a business consultant. In any of these cases, it sounds like a huge amount of work. What is the payoff? "The payoff is that new knowledge allows us to create more value with our tools and resources that we were able to create before. Sure, it's more work. But most people who have devoted their lives to a business tend to be passionate about that business and are intrigued and excited by finding ways to make their life's work more productive and more effective. "The payoff in doing this work, no matter which way you choose to go about it, is that you're securing your future. You are building your own competence and getting the maximum benefits out of the effort you have put in. "In the case of a peer group, you're really talking about strengthening relationships. You're talking about interacting with others in ways that bring about our better selves, and we like people who do that with us. There are personal benefits simply in terms of the quality relationships that are developed. We don't always talk about that because it almost seems like a secondary benefit, but it really is an important part of the peer group experience. What are the most important factors to remember when creating a peer group? "There are three fundamental ingredients necessary for partnerships to thrive. One is shared purpose. If the purpose is just to fix Bob's business, that's a lot more limited than if the purpose is all of us wanting to learn to be better businesspeople. The second is that there has to be an impact available to everybody that wouldn't be available to them on their own. To this end, people in a peer group will naturally work to ensure that everybody will see benefits sooner rather than later. The final element is familiarity. Lasting partnerships are made up of people who can think from each other's perspectives, who understand each other's needs. When those three elements-- purpose, impact, and intimacy-- exist, then you've really created a partnership within the group.
Daniel Elash, PhD. can be reached via email or at http://www.syntient.biz. Dr. Dan Elash is a principal at Syntient, a strategic consulting firm. He is a writer, coach, speaker and consultant. He specializes in helping companies realize their potential on the leadership level or as a total company. To learn more about Dan's work or to preview his recently published comprehensive learning system, Doing It Right: Realizing Your Company's Potential go to www.syntient.com. More background information on Dan Elash can be found at www.Syntient.com << Back to Homepage |