Unlocking Growth through Effective Coaching: Insights for Leadership and Team Management in Small Business

As service providers, we often find ourselves in the role of coach, helping our clients to grow their businesses and teams. But coaching can be challenging, especially when it comes to leadership, team management, and growth. In this episode of the Collab with Kiva podcast, we explore effective coaching insights for small business owners who may not understand how to effectively coach their clients.

The Importance of Coaching in Service-Based Businesses

Coaching is essential for the success of both your business and your clients. Effective coaching can help your clients to improve their leadership skills, manage their teams more effectively, and achieve growth. But coaching can be challenging, especially when you need to have difficult conversations with clients. In the podcast, we explore the importance of coaching and effective coaching insights.

Having Difficult Conversations with Clients

Coaching often involves having difficult conversations with clients. Whether it's about underperformance, conflicts within the team, or addressing tough issues, having difficult conversations is an essential part of coaching. In the podcast, we explore strategies for having difficult conversations with clients, including active listening, asking open-ended questions, and providing constructive feedback.

Growing Ourselves to Grow Others

To be an effective coach, it's essential to continue growing ourselves. By investing in our own professional development, we can better coach our clients and help them to achieve their goals. In the podcast, we explore strategies for growing ourselves, including seeking out mentorship, attending conferences and workshops, and practicing self-reflection.

Actionable Takeaways for Small Business Owners

Here are three actionable takeaways for small business owners who may not understand how to effectively coach their clients:

1. Build strong relationships with your clients to create a foundation of trust.

2. Develop effective communication skills, including active listening and asking open-ended questions.

3. Invest in your own professional development to better coach your clients.

Tune in to the latest episode of the Collab with Kiva podcast to learn more about effective coaching insights for leadership, team management, and growth. Our experts share valuable insights and strategies for driving small business growth through effective coaching.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva.

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Podcast Transcript:

Kiva Slade 0:01

Welcome to Collab with Kiva, where we let our inner nerd geek out on all the non sexy parts of your business. I'm talking data and operations. Neither as flashy or glamorous, but both are foundational to your business growth. I'm your host, Kiva Slade, your strategy and analytics guide here to break down what feels complicated, so it is understandable and executional. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I'm your host, Kiva Slade, and today we're going to talk about unlocking small business growth, effective coaching, insights for leadership, team management and growth. And not only for your business, but in many instances. As a service based provider, we have to do this for our clients, in order for their businesses to grow. And so this is really about coaching our clients. In those three areas, leadership, team management in growth, and growth can take on a few different meanings. We find ourselves in this role of coaching, helping our clients to grow their businesses and their teams. So we're going to explore some effective coaching insights especially around having difficult conversations, and why we need to also grow ourselves so that we can grow others. So let's dive in.

Kiva Slade 1:36

First step, the importance of coaching. Okay, in service based businesses, excuse me, coaching is essential for the success of both your business and your clients. If you provide marketing services to a small business owner, you might need to find yourself coaching them on leadership, team management skills, that can help them effectively communicate with their team and align their marketing strategy with their overall business goals. Effective coaching can also help your clients achieve growth by identifying opportunities for improvement and development of a roadmap for success. In coaching, your clients can sometimes be challenging. How do you do that? Well, there's always the importance of open ended questions like what in how, okay, starting with those to really listen to what they're saying, and being able to repeat that back to make sure that they're actually hearing you.

Kiva Slade 2:42

But also, in addition to that, and we're gonna dive a little bit into this about growing ourselves, you have to know what it is that they're going to need the coaching on, or in, there are times when clients may come to you. They might be feeling blah, about their business, they might be feeling some sort of angst around some decisions and changes and things that are happening. Maybe they have had a difficult start with another service provider, and they're coming to you asking for your insights and growth and being aware of situations. Maybe you have some things to share with them around where they may have needed to grow or show up differently, or show up differently for them, or their team in order to show up differently for themselves in their business. So you want to make sure that you take time to invest in coaching for yourself. There are some great books out there. One of my favorites, I don't have it next to me, but another good one is the Coaching Habit. Say less, ask more and change the way you leave forever by Michael Bungay Stanier. And, yeah, so there's that one, there's another good one that I really don't see. But at any rate, there's some really good books out there.

Kiva Slade 4:10

Another one supportive accountability, really helping our clients do the best that they can with the teams that they have, with the businesses that they have created with the relationships that they have built, built in. That's all super important. And in some days, let's be honest, you're ready to burn it all down, get rid of the team get rid of everything, because that might feel easier. But the reality is, it's not. Studies after studies have shown and proven that retraining after firing is so expensive. So learning how to coach up your clients so that they step more into the leadership role the CEO seat in which they need to occupy.

Kiva Slade 5:01

So the second thing though, is when you have those coaching things that sometimes might lead to difficult conversations with your clients. Oh goodness. And this can be so tricky, because I think that sometimes we feel as service providers that were in an awkward space, because we have to tell someone who is paying us money, something difficult. Some are very open and receptive in some, maybe a little bit less so. But if you're, for example, coaching client who's struggling with employee turnover, you may have to have some difficult conversations about like the root causes of the turnover and develop a plan to address the issues, the turnover might be result of their leadership. So how do you go about that conversation, and it's really important to active ly listen to the client in what they're sharing. But also, I feel that so much of this is built upon having already established a good client relationship.

Kiva Slade 6:12

People are so much more willing to hear hard things from those that they know have their best interests at heart, or at least close enough to it. And so actively listening, after you have built that really good, strong relationship is so important. Also, again, asking the open ended questions giving that constructive feedback, when things have maybe gone awry, you sometimes have to be that voice of reason, that voice of discernment and wisdom that the client needs at that moment. And in many cases, for many of us, they're looking to us for that. They're craving that from us. So don't shy away from the difficult conversations, they are necessary for growth and for change in many instances. And for those clients that you have that have teams, it's a ripple effect, it actually is a difficult conversation that really is for the benefit of others. And maybe not necessarily yourself because of your relationship with the client. But it's really important for the success of many businesses, especially small businesses, to be able to have those difficult conversations, you want to start them always with empathy, understanding, so that you make sure again, that solid foundation that's built upon trust in maintaining a positive relationship with your clients is still present. Again, there is no magic elixir on having difficult conversations, you might want to roleplay it out with someone else, if that's something that is of you find this helpful for yourself.

Kiva Slade 8:11

You painting on your face, you might want to brave and just really measure your words. When you are speaking, it's really not about you and feelings and emotions, you really want to get to root causes, or you know, they say like in therapy, peeling back the layers of the onion. Know that whatever situation, it didn't just appear. It's probably been things before you started with this client. There might be things after you leave with this client, but what can you do while you're there to make things better. And so sometimes you do have to peel back those layers of the onion, in order to get to a root cause in that is when you can get to a plan that gets people out of like that repeat of the root cause because it's never been addressed. Okay, but again, in order to do this, we have to grow ourselves, like you can not exceed What's that you can't pour out of an empty cup. But also you have to work on growing yourself, in many cases in different capacities. Whether it's conferences, workshops, books on leadership and management, mentorship from others, you have to develop your own coaching skills, your own

Kiva Slade 9:41

toolkit of how you work with clients, and how you work on yourself. Because as you better yourself, you are putting yourself in a better position in which to coach your clients and help them actually achieve their goals. And that's it really important, you want to seek out those avenues, whether it's mentorships, or conferences, workshops, your own self reflection, you know, thinking of how you've handled things, how things could have been handled differently. Hindsight is 2020 for a reason, like, we can always look back and give ourselves a fair assessment of what took place and what we could have done different and better for the future. And so I believe life gives us lessons, sometimes, more than once, because the first time we might not have gotten it right. But if we take that time for self reflection, we can get it better the second time.

Kiva Slade 10:43

So as I begin to close out, I really want you to have some actionable takeaways, do you understand how to effectively coach your clients? Again, you want to first build strong relationships with your clients, that creates a foundation of trust. So from the get go, whether your engagement with them is short term, long term, medium term, you always want to do your best to create a foundation of trust, because that makes the rest of this so much easier. Number two, develop effective communication skills like active listening, asking open ended questions. If a client is struggling, you know, like, what are the biggest challenges you're facing with the team? What are some potential solutions you've considered? You know, sometimes we're eager to jump in with what our thoughts are, take time to actively listen, what have they already done? Okay, maybe something they've done. They might have done like to that fifth degree when it needs to go to the sixth degree. So actively listen, then you can only do that by first asking questions. So that's part of your own communication toolkit. So make sure you built it.

Kiva Slade 11:58

And last, invest in your own professional development. Again, there's so many different avenues available to us nowadays, you have score mentors who are amazing and free, if paid coaching is not something that you can do. There's obviously masterminds conferences, workshops, and so many things that you can take advantage of in order to stay up to date with trends and best practices and all the good things that you need. And there really is no shortage of opportunities out there in which to better ourselves in the area of professional development. And hey, it's a business right off, so it's a win win. So again, as we close out, just remember, like effective coaching requires building strong relationships, having difficult conversations and continuing to grow ourselves so that we can grow others, especially those that are our clients. So thank you for tuning into this episode. I hope you found it informative and actionable. And feel free to share with me some tips that you have for effectively coaching your clients. So I look forward to talking with you next time. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I'm wildly cheering you on as you go forth and execute data and operational efficiencies in your business. If you need additional support, connect with me via my website, the516collaborative.com. Your reviews on Apple are appreciated. See you next week.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.