Choosing Between a Business Coach and EOS Implementer to Help With Growth and Performance Issues
By NewsbrkChi | Posted August 12, 2015 | Denver, Colorado
Growth of the business coaching industry has reached explosive proportions, generating between $3 billion and $4 billion annually. Choosing the right business or executive coach requires some knowledge of what services these professionals offer and how they deliver them.
According to a recent Harvard Business Review survey, the reasons companies engage business and executive coaches today are different than they were just 10 years ago, when most companies engaged a coach to help correct destructive behavior among top executives. Today, most coaching is focused on developing the effectiveness of high-potential employees.
Due to the evolving role of coaches, companies looking to hire one should first establish an understanding of what they need a business coach to accomplish, and what credentials they should look for in selecting the right professional for their team.
Business or executive coaches are being employed by a wide variety of entrepreneurs, established business owners and even celebrities looking to leverage their brands and build their companies. Even the largest corporations are engaging business coaches to help improve declining production, correct underperformance, facilitate transition and enhance professional growth.
Most businesses benefit from the experience and objectivity of a qualified and experience coach hired from outside the organization in order to lend objectivity. Within this highly specialized and competitive field are two distinct types of advisors: the business coach and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) implementer.
EOS Implementers and business coaches generally focus on achieving the same goals: to steer the company and its staff in a beneficial direction, provide an outside perspective and draw from years of experience to help stagnant businesses move forward, increase productivity and support overall growth.
A certified business coach can offer guidance, support, encouragement and accountability to a company or professional. The relationship between a business and a business coach is ongoing and one-on-one, generally between the coach and the owner or CEO. The business coach focuses on supporting the company for the long term through each change, major decision and growth opportunity the business experiences.
EOS implementers, on the other hand, are graduates of an intensive training program in the methods of EOS, a systematic process that is applied to a business through six key components: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction. Where as business coaches employ a variety of approaches and tools to help companies grow, EOS implementers all follow the same process, customized to each individual business.
According to Chris Hallberg, a Denver-based certified EOS implementer, the implementer’s obligation is to the organization’s leadership team; the goal is to create independence and establish future growth skills using the tools and discipline and foundation established for the company’s leadership team. Once this goal is achieved, the implementer is able to move on.
“Professional and certified EOS implementers have to complete an intensive, three-day training boot camp and become involved members of the EOS implementer base camp to regularly sharpen their skills,” Hallberg says. “That means participating in weekly and quarterly collaborative meetings with other EOS implementers, as well as actively implementing EOS for a minimum of five clients at any given time.”
In addition to meeting the active implementation requirements, EOS clients must rate the implementer above an 8.75 (on a scale of 1 – 10) on the improvements the clients achieve. Once an EOS implementer teaches business how to continue to grow and apply the EOS training to the company’s routine operations, their coaching is no longer needed.
Deciding between a business coach and an EOS implementer depends on the goal of the company seeking help. Some managers and business owners prefer to have a business coach for the long term, one who comes to know the business’s idiosyncrasies well and becomes a long-term advisor that stays with the company indefinitely.
Others prefer to have coaching support for a defined period of time, to learn the six key components of EOS and how to keep them functioning effectively over the long term, even after the implementer has left.