I had a special session with my business coach yesterday. That’s unusual. Typically we meet just once a month to cover my goals and objectives, and see if I am on track.
This time we met for the specific purpose of helping me prepare for an upcoming presentation in Las Vegas. I’ve conducted the workshop (“The Seven Sins of an Entrepreneur”) before, but I wanted to make it more interactive, with a few exercises “thrown in.” I say that with perfect understanding that throwing such things into a presentation is a good way to fall flat on your face.
Andrea coached. That is, she didn’t ask what I wanted to add, or what my exercises would be. Instead, she asked what I wanted from the audience. What role I expected them to play in the workshop, and how I wanted them to behave. Within an hour I had sketched out the ideas for several exercises, and realized that I needed to trim a dozen slides from the deck.
That’s what a great coach can do. She didn’t tell me what I needed to accomplish. I had a general idea of that before we started. Using a kind of mental ju jitsu, she got me to see my situation from a different perspective, and to tie it together with an overarching purpose and theme.She added some of her own skills, suggesting a few techniques drawn from her experience. The result was a blend of the best use of my abilities, enhanced by hers.
In an hour I went from struggling with a task that worried me to being energized, and anxious to get started as soon as possible. The interactive exercises improve the presentation immensely, add to the learning, and will exponentially enhance the learning experience.
In an hour she turbocharged what was good information into something that can help change the perspective of scores of business owners, improving their businesses, their lives, and the lives of their employees and customers. That’s a pretty powerful hour.