Change is the only constant! The world is constantly changing, which means Business’ need to ensure they can adapt their services to meet this constant evolutionary cycle of development. Business Development is about moving forward and adapting. Development equates to growth and where there is growth there is progress and success!

Change is a word that most of us can say easily, but few of us embrace without some hesitation and some even with absolute resistance.  Any business needs eventually to develop in some way, shape or form. Everything is temporary, nothing stays the same!

The World Wide Web has introduced much change in the business industry, along with current economic downturns and the recent change of government.  Industries are changing, teams are changing, people are changing and business needs to keep up with this trend.

How Does Your Business Need to Develop?

“The key to change, is to let go of fear”  Rosanne Cash

It could be something as simple as a logo design if you have a website, or alternatively a simple change in the form of your company stationery or even image in the form of a uniform. Re-Branding is always a good idea, as it is a re-invention of your business image and informs the customer and partners, that you are constantly seeking continual professional development.   Customers can even get excited when there is development, remember, people are fickle!

My local pub/restaurant recently had a complete makeover. It was refreshing to return to, as there was nothing that resembled the old, the bar and even entrance had all changed. As a customer, I found it exciting and very refreshing.

Products are constantly evolving and business’ need to ensure that they move with the times or they could be left behind or even fail.

Does Your Business Need A Makeover?

Is it time for you to think about developing your Business in order to survive?

How would your Business, Staff  and more importantly Customers benefit from change?

Managing Change

Change is inevitable and it is crucial for any business to manage the change effectively.  Teams and Customers will need to be informed and even maybe consulted in regards to Business Development in the form of Focus Groups.

Would it be beneficial to ask your staff and customers what changes they would like to see?  My response to this question would be a resounding yes!

As a Business and Development Coach, I understand all to well the power of questioning?

Is it time for you to start questioning how your business would benefit and develop in this current economic climate, to give your business a fresh approach thus attract more customers?

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending”  Maria Robinson

For any Business and Development Coaching,  please visit my website

http://joyandrewsbusinesscoaching.co.uk/

As a Business and Personal Development Coach, I consider time to be the most valuable commodity man has at his disposal.  You can bank money, but you can’t bank time, so you need to be careful how you spend it!

Effective communication, is an essential requirement in the business world, so we need to be certain we get it right.  As a Development Coach, it is essential for me to be an effective communicator, as you buy my time, so getting direct to the point is my style! Some see it as refreshing, as they are more often than not surrounded by ‘Yes’ people and others find it a challenge to begin with, as they are not used to someone being so direct with them.

You can call me the ‘Simon Cowell equivalent of Coaches’, but this needs to be my approach, as my time is precious too and I need to be careful how I spend it!

I reflect back what I hear and see. I am considered to be a compassionate person by all that know me well, therefore, my honest communication is considered my strongest asset and will become yours too, if that is what you wish to accomplish. I must warn you, the requirement is to have a thick skin, as being authentic and true to yourself, requires not seeking others approval and an abundance of Self Belief.

Development = Change

Our business time is valuable and work/life balance in todays society is becoming more and more compromised. Stress is a killer, so we must all learn how to manage ourselves and our time, in order to overcome the biggest threat to people and to business’ during this current economic climate.  Sickness levels are on the increase due to stress. Business’ are losing thousands of pounds productivity every second due to sickness or the so called ‘duvet days’. Stress creates a symptom like that of a can of fizzy drink; if you shake the can consistently, we all know what happens when we pull the tab!!

Time is Money

I do not wish to waste my time or any others by ‘tip toe-in’  around any important communication deficiency I detect. Time management teaches us to prioritise and that includes our communication, as communication is the key to any successful relationship.

So now I have introduced my style to your business people out there, let us get straight to the point and here is my first question to you….

• How do you communicate to others in order to build and sustain relationships?

Communication Skills

Perhaps until now, you may have never reflected upon your style of communication. As you are aware, effective communication is the key to any relationship, be it with colleagues, business partners or more importantly, the customer.

Communication is a skill, which means it is something you have learn’t and therefore, you have role modeled from your early years, namely your parents. We may all wear our business hats, however, our style of relating to others has become a habit, therefore, if you have an ineffective communication style, this may have a major impact on the success of your business and career.

You would of undoubtedly heard of the ‘Dr’s bedside manner’ cliche, or lack of them in some cases, well this is a prime example of how we communicate to others, both verbal or non verbal, affects our Customer Relations.

The Solutions to Effective Communication

Listening skills are something that we all at one time or another, need to improve.

• How often do your feel listened too?
• How often do you actively listen to others, without interruption, interpretation or making assumptions?
• Do you question others communication, if you do not understand?

Listening Skills Exercise

Allow someone to speak to you, without saying a word. Simply listen to them without judgement, for as long as it takes for them to speak and then reflect back to them all that you heard and understood for clarification purposes.

I have asked many clients to undergo this exercise with another, taking it in turns to allow each other to speak for two minutes and the other to listen and reflect back verbatim what they heard. The feedback from them was as follows:-

The Listener

• How difficult they found it to listen and not to interrupt or respond, or make interpretations or assumptions.

Essentially, you have to just listen, therefore, you can not think because you are listening hard in order to reflect back verbatim.

The Speaker

• How difficult they found it just speaking for two minutes, as they were not used to being totally listened to.
• How empowered they felt after the verbatim reflection, having been listened too and understood.

The Freedom of Speech

The freedom to express ourselves, is something we are given as a human right and the right to be heard is a profound development tool. Customers need to be heard, we all need to be heard and understood, it is essential that we hear the needs of others, more importantly, the Customer.

We as human beings need to communicate, as it is essential for our wellbeing. Stress is more often than not, a direct cause of miscommunication or not being heard and understood, along with the inability to communicate effectively with Confidence.  We have evolved into communicators, we no longer beat our chests or grunt!

Communication Coaching

As a Coach, it is important for me to empower people, which is something I am extremely passionate about. Communication is empowering and as we are the only species that use words, we need to ensure we use this privilege wisely. I believe we need to select our words with due care and consideration for others, in order to build and sustain effective business and personal relationships.

Change

For those of you who have followed my blogs, you will recognise how much emphasis I place on Change. Change is inevitable; my metaphor for change is ‘like a worn out pair of ‘old faithful’ comfortable slippers you are reluctant to throw away, its time to go buy yourself a new pair, when they start falling apart and smelling!

Comfort Zones

We all have communication comfort zones, which we believe are comfortable, but if you actually take time to reflect, you will notice they are actually not comfortable at all. More often than not, they are actually a hinderance that is preventing you from developing your business from becoming  one of the most successful business’ in your skill set.

Let us not forget – its good to talk but more importantly, it is just as important to listen to the needs of others, namely the Customer!

http://joyandrewsbusinesscoaching.co.uk/

Where would we be without the World Wide Web and Modern Technology?

You would not be reading this business coaching blog and we would all be oceans apart in terms of accessible information in relation to many areas of our lives.

For Better or For Worse, In Sickness and in Health

Libraries would be busier, local high streets would not have so many empty shops,  obesity and heart disease may not be such a threat to our nations health; outdoor leisure and exercise would be more entertaining than a Wii! Divorce rates would not be so high – last year, it was documented that 50% of Britains divorces were as a result of social networking sites!

Grammar would be better, rather than abbreviated writing as written English; children would be out playing and their interpersonal skills would be more advanced; public houses would not be closing down at an alarming rate – thanks to social networking sites and instant messaging. Also, we would not have to listen to peoples conversations on their mobile phones when on a train, albeit, some of them are quite entertaining, just to help break up the journey! These are just a few of the downsides to modern technology!

Now for the bonus sides – We do not have to go out shopping in the pouring rain or snow and we can make purchases at more competitive rates. We can bank and pay bills on line. We can access valuable information at any time. We can visit many countries from our living room in order to decide where we want to holiday. We can study at home. We can contact friends and family abroad. We can listen to a wide variety of music. We can read any information we desire. We can catch up on current affairs. We can advertise our business’ much more easily, in fact, we can click away to our hearts content.

We need to change, change is inevitable, therefore, we need to consider how we adapt both in business and personally with an abundance of consideration for the consumer and for our loved ones. Everything is temporary and we need to adapt in order to survive to the ever changing world of modern technology.

E Commerce will be the Future!

Whether we like it or not, technology is the future, in our life time anyway, as long as our fuel resources can cope and we are most definitely buying more and more on line.  Can your business cope with this change, or do you need to change your business approach in order to adapt?

Business Coaching Questions

• What do you need to change in your business approach in order to adapt?
• How will your consumer benefit from the changes?
• Do you need to update your skills in order to adapt?
• Does your company have a website? If so, how do you advertise your website?
• Does your business name reflect what your business sells?

Fail to plan, Plan to fail. Be cautious in your decision making processes and take your time and research the trends that match your business ideas. SMART planning is the way forward.

The Steps To Success

1. Have yourself a goal.

2. Take Action

3. Notice what is working and what is not working.

4. Change direction if it is not working.

5. Never lose sight of your goal.

Whether it’s losing a major client, folding a business or not getting a job that you’ve interviewed for, the repercussions on your confidence levels can be devastating.

The internal dialogue can haunt you for a long time and the little voice in your head can scream failure at every new idea you have.  Your thoughts scan every decision made, every conversation had and question your belief in yourself; ‘why did this happen to me?’

Success, however, is not without risk and a successful person has had to overcome temporary defeat at one time or another. Richard Branson is a prime example of someone who has failed multiple times but has bounced back, setting himself a larger and larger challenge every time.

Jo Geraghty, managing Director of “Beyond the Ladder” and one of the UK’s leading coaches for executives and entrepreneurs, is not immune from failure either.

“The first time I lost a client, I was in total disbelief. I quizzed myself; ‘I have lots of happy and satisfied clients who are achieving their objectives, making their targets and are happy with the positive influence I’m having on their life so why did this happen to me?’. I felt that I was using my “guaranteed success formula to coaching”. So, why hadn’t it worked this time?  After this incident, I listed three things that I could do differently next time and decided that my own failure would actually lead to much greater future success. And it did.” explains Jo.

So if you’re dealing with a “failure” what do you need to remember? Jo has three key pieces of advice;

1) You get results where you focus
Your project/business/career/relationships etc. need a 100% of your attention to succeed. If you’re not totally committed to what you’re doing then don’t expect others to be. Focus and refocus on your goals and the steps that you need to turn them into a reality. Taking your eye off the ball is the first step to your downfall.

2) Ask for feedback & accept the need to change
We know what we’re good at, we have case studies galore of things that have gone according to plan but the world evolves, as does the market and our clients. We need to know that we’ll be as good tomorrow as we are today.  Constantly ask for feedback and if your employer/client/partner wants something different, the key to success lies in our ability to adapt.

3) Use the full toolkit
Alas there is no one model or formula for success. You need to use the most appropriate style, skill or technique for each, individual situation. Just because one method may work with one client, don’t assume it will work with all.

Nobody likes to feel that they’ve failed but it really is the only way that we learn. We refine our internal model and do something different next time. Failure is really the very first step to success.

It seems that people experience change in these ways initially as disturbance, perhaps as a shock then coming to accept its reality, testing it out and engaging in a process of mutual adaptation.  They come to terms with it.
Self-esteem and performance vary, initially declining and then growing again.  The “engine” for rebuilding performance is self-esteem of the people involved.

I do not suggest that people go through these stages neatly or that everyone goes through them at the same time or rate.

The important point is that people do seem to experience significant changes in these ways and that this leads on to a number of practical ways in which the problem of coping can be handled.

Coping with the process of change places great demands on the individuals involved, whatever their circumstance or level in the organisation.

As a leader you will be required not only to deal with your own reactions but also to assist others in rebuilding their self-confidence and self-esteem as preliminary to lifting performance.

Business Coaching with Carole Davidson Coaching

Carole Davidson is a qualified life and business coach based in the UK.