Smart Business Growth with Nicky & Ness

The ROI of Coaching and Why It’s Worth the Investment

• Nicky & Ness • Season 2 • Episode 16

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In this episode, Nicky and Ness delve into the essential topic of creating a coaching culture within your business. They discuss the differences between coaching, mentoring, and training, and highlight the profound impact coaching can have on team performance and individual confidence.

Episode Highlights:

  • Definition of Coaching: Explaining what coaching is and debunking common myths.
  • Benefits of Coaching: Increased self-confidence, improved work performance, and enhanced communication skills.
  • Coaching vs. Mentoring: Understanding the distinct roles and benefits of each.
  • Practical Insights: How to incorporate a coaching culture without overwhelming your schedule.
  • Personal Stories: Real-life examples of coaching success and its long-term impact.
  • Building a Coaching Culture: Key indicators of a successful coaching environment in your business.

Tune in to discover how implementing a coaching culture can unlock your team's potential and drive exceptional business results.

Learn more about Nicky and Ness https://businesstogether.com.au

Buy a copy of Healthy Hustle: The New Blueprint to Thrive in Business & Life www.healthyhustle.com.au

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Connect on LinkedIn
Nicky LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/connectwithnicky/
Ness LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessamedling/

Give us a call
Nicky Miklos-Woodley 0403 191 404
Vanessa (Ness) Medling 0400 226 875

Or send us an email hello@businesstogether.com.au

Music by Jules Miklos-Woodley

Nicky:

Welcome to the Smart Business Growth Podcast with Nicky and. Ness.

Ness:

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Turrbal and Bunurong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nicky and I both work and live.

Nicky:

Hello, beautiful listeners. Once again, we are thrilled to be here and talking about something that is really close to our heart, that we're really passionate about. That is absolutely a critical success factor when it comes to driving peak performance in your team, and that's reflecting on yourself, that's reflecting on the people within your team, your leaders, those at the coalface, etc. Ness and I often have lots of passionate discussions behind the scene. That's actually one of the reasons we started this podcast, and something that's on our mind at the moment is the importance of coaching within your business. We call it creating a coaching culture, and we wanted to dedicate some time today to help you get really clear on actually what does that mean? Because you can look at the development and the upskilling that you're giving to your teams. There might be training, there might be mentoring, but that's actually quite different to coaching and coaching your team members, and getting coaching for yourself has a lot of additional benefits or it can really amplify, magnify the training development that you're already doing. So we want to help you get clear on what actually that looks like. And a really interesting timing, because I came across a stat from the International Coach Federation that talks about the benefits of coaching 80, 80%, 80, eight zero of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence. Think about that for yourself and for your team members. What would the impact be if their self-confidence was improved by 80%? And not only that, there's over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships and more effective communication skills. Now we are all about people. We're all about unlocking growth and potential within, and we're also very much about pragmatic business results. So what would that mean for your individual teams and yourself in terms of increased confidence and improved performance? And what would that look for your individual teams and yourself in terms of increased confidence and improved performance? And what would that look like on your bottom line?

Nicky:

One of the biggest challenges that we know you face is being stuck in the busy trap. It's juggling all the balls, it's being all things to all people, despite having a team. And this is why coaching is so important, because it can be the key that unlocks the way for you to get more time freedom back, for you to be able to, as I said, tap into and accelerate peak performance. And one of the biggest barriers I believe that people don't really lean into coaching is because, either they think they're doing it, as I said, and we'll go a bit deeper into are you actually doing it or is it something else?

Nicky:

And also, it feels like it takes more time. It feels like it's going to take more time. I don't have the time to do that. I'll just do the bare minimum and it's like one of those I don't really like this saying but the short-term pain, long-term gain, but the short-term investment. But we'll talk to you as well about how you can bring some coaching culture into place without it costing a lot of time. There's some pretty compelling reasons, ness, aren't they? To invest resources, time, money into coaching team members and self. Would you agree?

Ness:

Absolutely. In fact, I hadn't heard those stats before and yet, as you were saying them, I was reflecting on my own experience of the people that I've coached over the last eight years and realizing that actually that is the outcome that so many people maybe starting coaching they don't realize. It's not like many people come and say I'd like to grow my self-confidence and my self-belief and it's usually about I need to solve this problem but what happens along the way is they really understand themselves. They remove the blocks and the barriers that get in the way of them achieving what they want to achieve and therefore, with that achievement comes the confidence in themselves because they know they can do it.

Ness:

And that's what I love so much about the work that I do and why it's so rewarding to coach people because they can really start to accelerate in the areas they want to life, business, whatever it is, because they get out of their own way and start to realize actually they have the answers themselves. I'm not there telling them, but they are unpacking and discovering wow, actually I had it within me all this time and that is such a gift as a coach to be able to have the skillset to give that to somebody else so that they can have that self-discovery and grow and shine from that. But it's also it's just such a great experience of life when you start to realize and this is something that the more I've done coaching and the older I get, I guess you just get to a point where I just see the world so differently to what I did in the past pre-coaching version of me and even younger version of me that perhaps saw the world through a very different lens.

Nicky:

Yeah, I agree, and I often think, wow, I see businesses, all the clients that we work with. They're investing in this, in their business, by working with us. And I often reflect and think far out imagine if I had the opportunity to work with a coach, to be coached, when I was in my twenties. Wow, the impact that would have made on me as a younger person, or even in my 30s I think it was around 30s actually that I started to get into coaching and learning about it as a leader, to be able to then coach my team. And I've never, ever looked back, and I often think back around to that to think, well, what could that look like? Because there's no doubt that this will impact your people and yourself in your business. But there's a ripple effect because we are a holistic human being. So not only is this going to help your bottom line, it's going to help your profit because you're the return on effort in terms of where your team and you're spending your time, the improved performance, as I talked about, the stat over 70% benefit. It's also going to help with engagement, with culture, and it will give you your time back. Ness said if they can come up, if your team can come up with answers themselves and they're not coming to you for anything, for everything. Sorry, they'll still come to you for some things.

Nicky:

Again, we were talking to Michelle Gregory, who shared her story that she her and her family moved to Spain for 12 months and she left her team to run the business. Now there is so much empowerment that would have been coaching and development and belief and support, and you can get that back as well. Actually, I just want to share another stat, same kind of group International Coach Federation 86% of companies so almost 90% of companies reported that they recouped their investment on coaching and more. Now that also comes down to the quality of coaching. So that's a pretty damn good stat. If you ask me that, it's not just being short-sighted around what can I get or give? Right now it's how is this affecting the long-term sustainability of my business? So I think it's important let's define what actually is coaching. What?

Ness:

is coaching. We've just talked it up a lot.

Ness:

So we really need to get clear on what it is coaching is, and I probably want to start with a bit of myth, busting around what it isn't. And that's going to help us understand what it is. Having a conversation with one of your team around how they're progressing to meet their KPIs, for example, their performance measures, and sitting down and talking about the stats isn't coaching. That's really having a conversation about someone's results and generally that conversation will go one of two ways You'll get a congratulations for getting good results or you'll get a little bit of a rap over the knuckles potentially for not getting good results. That certainly has been my experience in my career prior to coaching. I think the other thing to keep in mind is that coaching is not mentoring, and mentoring is more a more experienced person in a role in a career in life who is able to share some of their experiences with you and guide you into an outcome, a solution for your problem. So often what happens is when I even for me personally you think about going to people who might be further ahead on the journey of whatever that looks like for you, maybe in their career or whatever and you'll have a conversation saying I want to achieve this kind of result and then often it will be. These are the things that I did to get there. You could try this or you could try this, or you could try that, and we're learning from them and that's amazing, but it's not coaching. And we're learning from them and that's amazing, but it's not coaching. It's very much specifically mentoring, which has its place, absolutely. It's amazing. We have a mentor and her help Janine Garner shout out to her. Her guidance and help really is amazing for us in our business. But it is mentoring.

Ness:

And then I think the other myth to bust is that training is coaching. So training, oh yeah, I coach my staff. I send them off to training sessions so that they can learn. Maybe even it's learning about not the technical side of business, but it could be personal development or growth. They could be going away to understand and learn more about how to step into understanding your mind better, or it could be about we talk often here about behavioral profiling, so understand yourself better. So those are fantastic tools and definitely have their place and training's really important, but it's not coaching. So if it's not all of those things, then what is it Can?

Nicky:

I just jump in, I'm just going to jump in there before you move on, because another one that came up to me as you were saying that coffee chat a coffee or have a chit chat, talk about the weather, just asking how are you, how are things? Oh cool, great yep, not coaching, not what we're talking about and I think a lot of people think that that's coaching as well absolutely.

Ness:

That's connection, that's building a relationship building, rapport building trust yes, it's important, but it's not coaching.

Nicky:

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Ness:

All of these things have their place Having a discussion around how someone's performing mentoring, training, having coffee chats they all have their place. But when we talk about coaching and the kind of results that, nick, you referred to earlier from the ICF, it is about the coach's place is to ask questions in order for the coachee to be able to come up with the answers themselves. So much in our society, not just workplace. So much of what happens is people never have the opportunity to sit and think through the answer to a question because they get rescued so quickly. I see this particularly in the corporate culture and I could probably reflect on my parenting journey and say the same thing because we see somebody else struggling to answer and we want to rescue them, we want to solve the problem, we want to help them understand what result they need to understand. And the space that I love in coaching is that uncertainty as to what the answer is, where people sit in a little bit of discomfort. We've hit a little bit of a spot right, because they're not sure what the answer is and therefore they have to dig deep for that answer. And it's so rare, and you think about it the next time you notice this happening in your workplace. Just notice how quickly you or other people jump in to fill the space, fill the silence. So for coaching to be transformational, to make a big difference for me, the way I see it is a client will come to me and they'll want to resolve a problem.

Ness:

Mainly, sometimes it's about I want better results, there's an opportunity.

Ness:

But initial stages of coaching is usually I have this problem with a person, with a project, with my career, with my partner, whatever it is.

Ness:

I want to solve a problem and coaching really is about removing the barriers and the blocks that are in your way to resolving that. Because I truly believe most people know logically what they have to do, but often there's a mental barrier that's stopping us from moving forward and the skills of a great coach are to ask the really high quality questions that have people unravel in their own mind what their block is and shift a belief or shift a way of telling themselves a story or challenge the story that they're telling themselves. Sometimes it is in the learning of some of the great quotes that we bring in or the stories that we tell, but often if it's in their own self that the change, or the stories that we tell, but often it's if it's in their own self that the change or the realization comes. Then you can't unhear that. You can't learn something through coaching and then pretend it's never happened and you didn't know about it.

Ness:

And there are some days I wish that awareness was not there because it's really frustrating that you actually have to do something with it. So I hope I'm doing it justice in the way that I'm explaining it. But it really comes down to the one of the things we tell when we're training people in organizations to do coaching coach will speak 30% of the time and the coachee speaks 70 percent of the time. Now you just stop and think about in a normal conversation at work what is that percentage, and I'm going to pretty much guess it doesn't sit, like the other person spending 70 percent of that time speaking. And so in order to help people come up with answers and speak, you've got to ask really good questions, and I'm on a bit of a roll now.

Ness:

The other thing I would say is which I love about coaching and this again is where the skill set of the coach comes into play is that often in a conversation we will be thinking I don't know whether you do this, I know at times I do this because it's in my conscious awareness.

Ness:

But someone will say something and you'll go, I really want to tell them that story, and then you're listening for them to wrap up, because you just want to say the thing that you want to say, and so you really stop listening to them, right, and you go. You're sitting there going no, I've got a great question, I'm going to sit on that question. I know what the question is. Come on, wrap up the story. Wrap up the story. But I believe the skill set of the coach is to listen in the present moment and then the right question comes. But it does take skill and practice and understanding of coaching to get there. But that is where we talk about these kind of figures, and the transformation that people get is when we really help them to solve their own problems.

Nicky:

Oh, so much in that, and I trust that this is challenging our listeners thinking to, as you're hearing what we're talking about here. I invite you to reflect on your own coaching, development, mentor, training experiences and that of which you are providing to your team, because, again, a lot of people think they're coaching, but you can hear the nuances in what coaching is actually about. So that chit chat, that KPI catch up, that mentoring session, which is essentially advice, giving A really good way to wrap your head around this is coaching, is asking. It's asking questions, mentoring and training is telling. So it's giving advice. It's giving information. It's asking questions, mentoring and training is telling. So it's giving advice. It's giving information. It's telling, and again, it has to happen. You need to train your people. That is fundamentally really important, and then the next evolution of that is actually coaching them, so asking questions around what they've learned and to build on what Ness has said. It's also.

Nicky:

Then, your coaching is absolutely about unblocking roadblocks or limiting beliefs, and it's also about continuing to upskill, but in a way that really challenges your team members' thinking and helps them lean into their own knowledge and get out of their own comfort zone to find different answers when we can change our and our team's thinking.

Nicky:

We can absolutely change how they see the world. Therefore, the actions that they take will be different and the results that they get will also be different. So, you and your team members, you're getting the results you're getting now, and by results I'm not just talking about revenue targets. I'm talking about a business that is running the way that it is, that is taking as much time as it is of you, that is allowing you to have breaks and holidays or not. All of that is results. Everything that you have done up until this point, what you know is getting these results. For you. Right now, the only way that you can change you and your team's results is to actually start doing something in a different way, which starts with thinking in a different way something in a different way, which starts with thinking in a different way, 100%.

Ness:

It's interesting. As you were saying that, it helped me to remember my son. He's 21. He's just started a job doing sales, never done anything like it in his life, so he's completely out of his comfort zone. He's finding it challenging but fun because the business that he's working for are very much. They have a coaching culture and they have the mindset of building people up to succeed rather than the stick they go with the carrot kind of approach.

Ness:

And he said to me he'd gone interstate to do a particular week where they were doing sales. So he's been trained. He can read his script in his head verbatim, he knows exactly what to say, he knows the pitch. But he was saying that towards the end of the week he was away with a lot more experience people who's only been in that business for four weeks. And he said towards the end of the week he wasn't hitting the target that he'd set for himself and he called it negging which is cool kids talk for just speaking badly to yourself, negative thinking, negative spiral thinking, whatever. And then he said that the thing that happened was his next level up.

Ness:

So he calls him a mentor, but the conversation they had was all about removing the mindset blocks and the way that he was perceiving himself that he was being a failure because of this, and to have that conversation that shifted that focus around to actually know what I'm doing is achieving great results, given where I'm at.

Ness:

So that's a perfect example of how all the training in the world could be there. It could be the best quality training that they could offer that people could come straight in, read scripts and go the scripts could be amazing. Best quality training that they could offer that people could come straight in, read scripts and go the scripts could be amazing. But if that mindset block isn't dealt with, then that impacts his results. It was just such a great example around how the two worked together really well for him to realize what was going on so self-awareness but then also to reframe that and shift that through the questions he was being asked. So I guess he's fortunate to be working in a business that has a coaching culture. But, nick, if you're a business out there and you are unsure, what creates a coaching culture, what are some of the other I guess he triggers or something that we would be looking out for to understand whether we have that in our business or not.

Nicky:

Great question, Ness, Because again, it's really good to be clear on what coaching is and I really absolutely trust and hope that everybody's reflecting on their own businesses and you actually said one of it already earlier around. Reflect on your conversations. Do you find that every conversation you have, you're telling or talking most of the time, or are you finding that there maybe are some little coaching sessions happening and the way that you know if that's happening is you're taking the time to ask questions instead of rushing in? Oh my gosh, when I first started coaching in 2010, I found it so hard to just zip and not say and not give the answers, and it's all exciting and I've got the answers. If you resonate with that, do you actually have dedicated time with your team members individually? Where? No, actually, I think there's a really important point here. You might have a KPI catch up that's great or a results catch up, a one-on-one where you talk about results Amazing and if you don't, then please get onto the hat Now. That can turn into a coaching session. So, from that, it might be that you start asking opening questions, open-ended questions around the results either what's driving them or why there's a lack of results. So it can turn into a coaching session, but we really like to just keep it separate in terms of clearly understanding that there's a difference.

Nicky:

Reflect on if you're having those one-on-ones, those coffee chats, those one-on-ones, the KPIs is it just a pure tactical running through an agenda, or are you creating the space to ask questions, to allow your team member to come to those conversations with anything that they want to work on? That is a coaching. We call it open coaching, where someone sits down and says we say what outcome would you like to get from our 30 minutes today? And they say I want to work on this particular area and it could be skill-based or it could be mindset, or it could be block. They might not call it mindset, but you could be uncovering that. So that's the first thing. Are you actually having coaching conversations and like actual coaching conversations, as we just talked about?

Nicky:

The other telltale sign is that there's an open not just an openness to, but there's also this seeking out of feedback. Do your team members find it really quiet? Maybe it's not easy all the time, but they're comfortable enough to come to you to ask for feedback. Or when you give them feedback, they're open to it, they implement it, they apply it. That's another really good telltale sign of a coaching session Sorry, not coaching session coaching culture. And then the third one there's quite a few, but I'm just going to narrow it down to three things is that people in your business are actually invested in their development. That's how you can tell if you've got a coaching culture.

Nicky:

And actually I will also say that the coaching that's happening is of value, and what I mean by that is it can be 20 minutes. You can do a 20-minute, 30-minute, 40-minute coaching session, but the coachee, in other words the team member, actually is walking away, going. Ah, that was time well spent. And if I can just quickly also share a bit of a story around, just to give context, having worked with so many different sales teams and customer service teams and support teams, like a classic way to think of this is there might be a KPI, a benchmark of success, to do 20 phone calls as an example. Now you can sit down and do an inverted coaching session on how to do those 20 phone calls. There might be a barrier. They want some assistance and support on that. You can coach them on right.

Nicky:

Let's look at your time. Let's block out an hour. Do an hour of power, Get through 10 calls in an hour. This is what you say. Like you said, there's a script, there's this and that, but if you don't actually understand what the hesitation and the avoidance is around that and having been in this space for so long, I know that a lot of the time, with outbound calls as an example, they don't want to make the calls because they're scared of rejection. They don't want to annoy people. It feels really uncomfortable. Now, if you can coach on that, yes, you can give them the external strategies and still do you want to coach on that? But it's only limited because that block is still going to be there. That hesitance to not be rejected will still be there. So if you can coach on both the external and the internal, this is where your results and performance of your team will absolutely skyrocket.

Nicky:

And I I'm going to go as far as saying, okay, I'm going to. This might be controversial. I'm going to go as far as saying if you're investing in one-off training workshops, if you're investing in ad hoc external people coming in or you're doing it yourself and you don't do any follow-up and by follow-up, coaching your team members on what they've learned, how they're embedding it? What are the continued blocks? How to make it even better? You may as well donate that money to charity, because it's going to do better. That money will be doing more good in the world than if you just do ad hoc, every now and then, one-off workshops. This is one of the reasons we don't work like that. We always have to make sure that there's training, facilitation, workshops and coaching. This is serious stuff for the bottom line, the profit of your business, the engagement of your team, and we want to help you get time freedom back. I'm on a soapbox now. I'm up here. I love your soapbox moments and it's so true.

Ness:

I'm up here. I'm up here. I love your soapbox moments and it's so true. It's actually a really good advice to just don't think that the occasional training session, training day, sending somebody off to some skilled person in that particular area, is going to create the kind of transformational change that gets the results you said right at the beginning of our conversation today. So, in wrapping up, nick, what is the one actionable action that our leaders out there could do within the next 24 hours? And trying to narrow it down into what's the cycle that needs breaking or the thinking that needs changing, what would be something that's doable.

Nicky:

So I've got one. In your conversations with your people, your team members, I just want you to ask an extra question Before you give an answer. Ask a question, that's it. Wow, just get into the practice ask versus tell. It doesn't even matter the quality of the question at this point. It's breaking the cycle of going straight into advice giving and telling and practicing. Because also, I will say coaching sessions. You can have an informal coaching session that's five, 10 minutes, at your team members desk, or it could be like a 45 minute sit down. There's different ways of conducting this.

Ness:

Just ask a question before you give advice, or tell Love that and a hot tip on the back of that would be an open-ended question.

Nicky:

Yes, great.

Ness:

As opposed to so for those out there, a closed question is where somebody can say yes or no or just a one word. Answer An open question. Tell me more about that or help me understand your thinking behind. That is something where people open up, and so that one question you ask before you tell is ideally going to be an open-ended question Absolutely.

Nicky:

Another example that will probably be quite relevant to a lot of instances could be what have you done so far to help whatever the problem is they're coming to you with? Or, like you said, just lean into the curiosity and yeah, good, oh, I'd love to hear, please let us know, how you go with this.

Ness:

This is important. Thank you so much. We will be back in your ears again next week. Have a great day. See you later. Thanks for listening to today's ep. If you loved what you heard, connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there. Nikki and I are obsessed with helping businesses install smart business growth strategies and leveraging people leadership for peak performance. We bring two business minds and two perspectives into your business, and our number one goal is to make sure that your business is thriving, your team are thriving and you are thriving. We offer a 30-day business diagnostic, taking you from chaos to clarity in just 30 days. Are you curious to find out more? Send us an email or go old school and give us a call. Until next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and in life.