BUSINESS COACHING VS BUSINESS CONSULTING

Both business coaching and business consulting are relatively new terms, so it’s not surprising that many people confuse the two. However, they’re certainly not the same.

A business consultant is usually hired to assist on a specific project. The consultant usually has the specialist industry knowledge, contacts and expertise relevant to that client’s industry and the consultant do work for the client. It might be writing a report, conducting market research, reviewing a failing part of the business or many other tasks.

The consultant’s role usually ends with the delivery of that required task. They’re not asked to comment beyond the scope of that task.

Business coaching, on the other hand, relates to coaching key people, usually the business owner. The Business Coach'score work is to educate, encourage, assess gaps, strategise, plan and execute WITH the business owner.

It’s been said that coaching is 50% education and 50% accountability. Of course, the exact split will always be hard to define, but accountability is a core aspect of business coaching.

It’s not unlike having a personal trainer at the gym. So many of the barriers to improvement relate to your mind and restrictive mindsets through which you’ve set up artificial ceilings, blinkers and other limitations, often without even realising that you’ve done so.

Although changing mindsets and habits is a key outcome of successful business coaching, there is absolutely nothing ‘flaky’ about the profession whatsoever. Business coaching also involves diving deep into the numbers of the business. What gets measured gets improved. So setting specific, measurable goals, key performance indicators and other empirical measurements are critical to the growth of any business.

Good business coaches usually have extensive first-hand experience of owning or managing businesses themselves. Through this experience, they not only have often made similar mistakes and learning solutions that can assist their clients, but they also have genuine empathy.

It can be very lonely running a business, when it feels as though everything is resting upon your shoulders, from the livelihoods and well-being of your staff and their families through to complying with government regulations and winning through against tough commercial competition. Business coaches are there not just to listen sympathetically, but then, often through digging deep and asking the right questions, help the business owner see the best path forward.

However, a good business coach does not need detailed knowledge of each client’s industry to be effective. The principles of business applications across all industries. Often problems are similar too and might relate to staffing, cash-flow, generating sales, lack of profitability, owners working excessive hours and so on.

Hopefully, you can now see just how dramatically different Business Coaching and Business Consulting are. Which is right for you? Just remember that business consulting is typically short term tasks related to tightly defined parameters.

On the other hand, it’s not at all uncommon for business owners to continue getting significant benefits from business coaching on a long term, ongoing basis as you get an upgrade to not only your business systems but you and your team as well.