What is your Business Model?

What services will you offer to share your mission with the world? If you choose, a coaching business can go beyond the traditional 1-1 coaching practice. The key is to begin thinking now what your ideal business model looks like. Watch our video blog and consider all the different possibilities for yourself.

Teresia LaRocque, MCC

Teresia LaRocque, MCC, is Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Building Mentor for the Erickson Business Center – www.ericksonbusinesscenter.com at Erickson College International www.erickson.edu. Teresia is a pioneer in the booming profession of personal coaching, the first recipient of the International Coach Federation’s Master Coach Credential in Canada and cofounder for the Vancouver International Coach Federation chapter. Teresia is committed to supporting coaches to take their talent and passion for coaching and make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. 

Teresia is the founder and facilitator of the Passion into Profit Program, a customized business building program offered through the Erickson Business Center. For free business building tips and advice, join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EricksonBusinessCenter.

From the Inside Out

Energy Work & Coaching Community of Practice
Leader:  Rhona Post, MA MCC CIP
When:  Friday, October 19, 2012
11:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. (New York)
712-451-6000
Pin: 427724#
1 CCEU

My favorite coaching teachers demonstrated that coaching is both art and science. Science or strategy alone will not strengthen our core competencies, nor will art; rather we need practice in both arenas to confidently respond to life situations.   

Over the past 30 years I have studied a variety of learning tools that helped me better observe my relationship to self, others and to life. With regular practice, I have honed my instincts/skill to both observe and shift varied mental states to produce more spaciousness and openness. 

Most of the practices reveal insights we can use to release tension, discontent, stress, and most any destructive emotion. Our bodies harbor our histories, our emotional patterns, even where and how we hold or use our breath. As a somatic coach and mindfulness practitioner, I train to watch and work with breath, using the faculty of curiosity to better appreciate the state in which clients find themselves. Something as simple as watching our breath reveals multitudes about how we relate to our stories. The combination of mindfulness, somatic coaching and Core Individuation Energy work allows me to go more deeply into the experience(s) clients are sharing, and provides a witnessing posture supporting them to release and accept themselves as whole human beings. Over time clients experience more ease and equanimity despite the many challenges they may confront.

Tenzin Rinpoche, author of Awakening the Sacred Body, introduces readers to the power of breath, as it not only strengthens health and well- being, but also helps us change our relationship to ourselves, and others. In September we began using his text as we explored the power and insights of the throat Chakra. Breath work provides a gateway to reduce the obscurations caused by varied mental states.


Rhona Post, MCC

In October we will continue to work with Rinpoche’s book, as we explore the lessons and benefits of opening the heart Chakra—the true nature of mind. Whether you work in corporate or non-corporate settings, you are always working with opening the heart/mind. The addition of a breath work practice enhances your yoga and sitting practice and will inform your coaching so that you better harness the art and science of a profession that continually grows and changes. Additionally you will strengthen your capacity to ask powerful questions, listen with an intention to hear, modulate your emotions so that you experience greater ease and tranquility. 

If you want to build mastery in your practice, you have to be open to learning about yourself, working from the inside the out.

I encourage new and veteran community of practice participants to sign up for healer coaching sessions. You can email me at rpost@thehealercoach.com or call me at +1.941.554.8466 to set up your session.

Celebrating coaching excellence

During ICF Global 2012, three organizations were honored with the International ICF Prism Award. They were: Banner Health, United Nations Secretariat, and Roche Turkey. The Royal Australian Navy was awarded an honorable mention.

Banner Health was unable to join us in London.

This award is presented annually to organizations that have demonstrated high standards of excellence through the implementation of coaching programs for cultural change, leadership development, and more.

Banner Health, one of the largest, nonprofit healthcare systems in the U.S., has flourished despite major challenges. Their massive coaching program has offered leadership development to more than 2,000 employees through one-on-one coaching sessions and several classroom opportunities. Banner employees have seen improved conflict resolution, teamwork, productivity, patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes.



United Nations Secretariat

Coaching came to the United Nations Secretariat as part of an action plan to help managers deal with a tremendously complex global operating environment. However, coaching did more than help them deal with complexity; it has started to re-shape the culture of the organization. In 2009, Encompass LLC began developing a coaching program as a component of the UN Secretariat’s Management Development Program. In all, more than 1,000 employees have been coached. The program has had the greatest impact on job effectiveness. There was an 87.6 percent return on investment (ROI), which indicates for each dollar invested in coaching there is a $1.88 return.




Roche Turkey

Roche Turkey, a subsidiary of a multinational healthcare company Roche Group, coached high potential leaders to become “internal” coaches, then offered another 45 high potential employees, 12 coaching sessions with an internal or an external coach. Roche Turkey has dramatically increased employee engagement from 55 percent to 66 percent; expanded its talent pool by 22 percent; developed its leadership talent and enhanced internal promotions and international assignments. As a result of the coaching initiative, Roche Turkey has been rated as a “high-performing” company rather than being in the “indifferent” zone in terms of engagement.
 

Royal Australian Navy

In 2009, the Royal Australian Navy shifted their focus. They wanted to move their culture from one of “can do at any cost” to focusing on “balancing the needs of people and task to achieve the mission.” To accomplish this goal, they focused on a leadership development program, which offered a three-day workshop that fed into individual and group coaching options. The coaching programs were adopted to accelerate the transition of learning into the workplace and achieved an astounding ROI of 723 percent. A total of 460 people were coached and the results included improvements in trust between ranks, the effectiveness of communications, and the sense of professionalism held by Navy personnel.

Learn more about the International ICF Prism Award and its recipients, past and present.

Automate with Respect

If you're a small business owner or the manager of a company, chances are that the thought of leaving the country or signing off for more than a week terrifies you. Without you at the helm, won't everything fall apart?

Although that used to be the case for many business owners, automation is an increasingly sought after goal, thanks to the popularity of books like "The Four-Hour Work Week." The more you can outsource your job, the more free time you have to enjoy the rest of life.

From utilizing cloud software for tasks like calculating payroll and invoicing to installing processes into your business's operating system, streamlining the way a company operates can reduce the number of work hours needed and free up time for travel and family.

Unfortunately, with most good things come side effects. Before establishing automated systems in your business, keep the following repercussions in mind:

1. Marginalized Employees
Workers generally grumble about new processes. If someone is used to passing a report to one person, requiring an additional level of approval can cause more work for everyone. Furthermore, adding process requirements can stifle and discourage creativity. Balance your desire for a consistent, productive structure with the ability for employees to remain flexible.

2. Reputation Control
Let's say you've just switched all of your bookkeeping over to a mostly automated system. There's no longer a need to keep your part-time bookkeeper, so you unfortunately have to let them go or reduce their hours. While that sort of small-scale layoff may have no effect on your business, replacing multiple workers at once with a more efficient machine can have lasting effects on your company's image amongst peers and the local community. Be careful with layoffs.

3. Diminished Quality
Any time you remove a human element from a task in favor of less time-consuming alternatives, you create standardization but risk compromising quality. There is a reason that 'handmade' carries value in products. People value the time it takes to create something, from a sweater given as a gift to a personalized service like social media marketing.

4. Fast Growth is Not Always Good Growth
Let's say you're a company that sells soccer balls. For years, you've always kept enough balls in stock to handle the orders that come in each week on the phone. Eventually, you decide to put an order form online, eliminating the need for someone to answer calls for orders all day. Your site quickly gains traction with people searching for soccer balls, and your orders triple in a month.

Unfortunately, you are unprepared to meet the demand, and you lose customers as quickly as they come in due to backorders.

Anita Brady

The lesson is this: before automating a process, make sure that you fully recognize the effects it will have on your business. Be prepared for both growth and backlash, and prepare your employees as well. With everything properly in place, it's possible to automate a business, maintain quality and free up time for everything else in life.

Anita Brady is the President of 123Print.com, one of the foremost suppliers of online business cards, and other office supply items for small businesses and individuals. Anita has overseen strategic marketing and other efforts for many different companies.

Top Priority! Live Your Ideal Life

As an entrepreneur you can design your life any way you want. If you are not living the lifestyle you desire, you have the power to change that. You are the CEO of your business and your life. Check out our video for tips to ensure that your business serves your ideal life, rather than you being a servant to your business. There is ALWAYS something to create, do, organize, or strategize as an entrepreneur. If we do not decide that our personal desires are priority, they won’t be. When you live a life you love you become your greatest marketing strategy!

Teresia LaRocque MCC

Teresia LaRocque MCC, is Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Building Mentor for the Erickson Business Center –  www.ericksonbusinesscenter.com at Erickson College International www.erickson.edu. Teresia is a pioneer in the booming profession of personal coaching, the first recipient of the International Coach Federation’s Master Coach Credential in Canada and cofounder for the Vancouver International Coach Federation chapter.  Teresia is committed to supporting coaches to take their talent and passion for coaching and make their entrepreneurial dreams come true.

Teresia is the founder and facilitator of the Passion into Profit Program, a customized business building program offered through the Erickson Business Center. For free business building tips and advice, join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EricksonBusinessCenter