WELCOME TO THE THIRD OF A FOUR PART SERIES TO HELP YOU CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOCUSING ON THE FOUR MASTERY AREAS FOR EVERY COACH. THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES YOUR SENSE OF MASTERY OF BUSINESS.

This is the area that coaches tend to spend the least amount of time on in terms of their own development as it is often considered to be the most unattractive part of what it means to be a coach.

Most coaches must operate "the business of coaching" as the desire to help people through coaching often isn't enough to pay the bills, unless you're independently wealthy and aren't really concerned about charging clients for your service in the first place. Being a business owner requires skills and competency in vision, strategy, business development and administrative functions.

Even coaches who have a full-time job as an "internal coach" with an organisation still have to promote the services they provide to the stakeholders, so business skills development and competency is required here too.

The complaint I hear from coaches more than any other on this topic is, "I hate selling and I can't stand the idea of promoting myself."

Consider how that complaint could possibly translate to no clients at all. If you can't promote yourself then how does that make you attractive to potential clients who are looking to learn how to be more confident, or how to boldly pursue their goals?

I'm not trying to be mean here - just practical and realistic.

Below are a series of questions for you to explore about your business knowledge, skills and behaviours as they relate to the ability to effectively promote and run a successful coaching business or promote coaching services within an organisation.

You may want to write your insights in a notebook or some other manner that works best for you. As you increase your awareness, consider what decisions you want/need to make next. Then you can continue to work from there to establish a plan of action. Remember that if you're already working with a coach or have plans to start soon, it could be highly beneficial to share your insights with them and together co-design your plan.

• How well do you think like a business owner? (attitude and outlook; consistently considering your business when making decisions)
• How well do you act like a business owner? (consistently demonstrating the behaviours expected of a business owner?
• What are the characteristics of a successful business owner as you see it? Create a list under the sub-headings of Attitudes and Beliefs, Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviours.
• Now evaluate yourself against that list, using a scale of 1-10 where 10 is the highest.
• For each rating you put, define what the ideal (10) looks like.
• For each rating, what would you need to do to achieve 10, or if it's easier, what would you need to achieve for each point between where you rated yourself now and 10? For example, if you're at a six, what do you need to do to get to a seven, and then to an eight, and so on until you reach ten.
• What is reasonable to think that you must learn how to do well yourself, and what would be reasonable to be able to delegate to someone else?
• In most cases in the industry, coaches work for themselves, so effectively you are "the product". How confident are you at promoting yourself?
• What are the reasons someone would hire you?
• Would you hire yourself? Why or why not?
• What is unique about you, your style, services and/or business that really sets you apart for the competition? How do you know?
• Are you offering products and services your market wants? How do you know?
• How effective are your current marketing and promotion strategies? What works and what doesn't?
• Do you have any strategic alliances set up so that by working together you are more effective at achieving bot your individual and collective business objectives? What alliances could you consider?
• How many hours per month do you spend developing your business skills? Is that good enough?
• How many hours per month do you spend developing new business? Is that good enough?
• Are you receiving coaching or mentoring to assist you to grow your business? If you did, what would you gain?

There are numerous other questions you could be exploring here so this list is just to get you started.

The next instalment of this series will explore Mastery of Industry, or in other words what you need to develop in terms of understanding what's happening in the world of coaching, what are the latest trends, what's the current research, what are the new ideas and who's coming up with them (collaborate or compete?), and of course how you can get more involved.

Noel Posus is a master coach with 20+ years experience as a professional educator, coach and author. He won the prestigious "Coach of the Year" award in 2008 and 2009 and is an ambassador/leader for the coaching industry. www.noelposus.com