Success stories- an entrepreneur

M has been an entrepreneur for a few years. He runs a simple business, in a field that is guaranteed to stay in business, but he was deeply affected by a number of events: at the advent of the financial crisis his associates left the company and the business figures dropped. M was left alone to run the business, to sell services and to manage the affairs. He had become the jack of all trades!

Here is the context in which M and I met: He told me that he didn’t have the possibility to invest in coaching, since it was a difficult time for him, and that he would try to make it on his own. After 3 months have passed he returned and we signed the coaching deal. The goals of this deal are the following:

- To improve the business figures by 10% each month, until he will reach a steady business figure;

- To improve the quality of the services offered by the company;

- To increase client portfolio and to maintain the existing customers;

-To improve M as an entrepreneur manager, to be capable of leading a profitable company, at the standards of his choice.

This project was intended for 8 months and it consisted in individual sessions with M, as well as team sessions. For starters, we focused on building a strategy to help M reach his goals. The strategy building represented the goal of a number of sessions, as we had to rehearse, learn and implement a new behaviour pattern.

A very important aspect of coaching sessions was acquiring new behaviour patterns, such as: organization, discipline, planning. M came to coaching as a disorganized and hectic person. He used to speak a lot and very fast and he did not have the patience to build anything. As we continued coaching sessions I noticed remarkable progress in this respect, and this represented the base for reaching his goals.

In this goal -achievement process we included a few consulting hours dedicated to analyse the process and the type of business M’s company was involved in. This allowed us to optimize the operational, sales, but also management and coordination processes. This analysis also helped us understand that the employees needed training in order to develop a few basic competencies to help them sustain our goals. M also realized that he was eager to please everybody, forgetting about himself in the process.

This project is not yet completed, as there are a few months before the contract time is over, but there are results that speak for themselves; the business figure is rising, the quality of service has improved (they have implemented a Customer Care Service system) and M feels that his leadership is at the level he has always wanted to be.