Goals are like rails. Without them, our claim to success will never find expression in reality. Just as a train must stay on the rails to complete the journey, our dreams, our ambitions, and our desires must find expression in goals that are clear, realistic and timely.

When we have well articulated and clearly defined goals, the journey towards success becomes lighter, even less tiring. This is because goals help us to (i) stay focused (ii) be realistic in our expectations (iii) gauge our progress (iv) avoid being overwhelmed (v) re-evaluate and redefine our strategy to ensure conformity and consistency with our objectives.

Stay focused
John Maxwell says “obstacles are the things you see when you take your eyes off the goal”. How true! Every time you take your eyes away from the goal at hand, you will surely wander off into troubled waters. If you get to a point in your success journey where you can’t see your goal, you are definitely headed into failure territory.

Goals constantly remind us that there are tasks that need to be done, and within a particular time frame, for us to make progress. Without goals reminding us of where we are and what we are supposed to do to get where we ought to be, we will only be working hard and achieving nothing. Hard work, as Maxwell says, “is the accumulation of easy tasks you did not do when you should have”. The easy routine tasks that we sometimes ignore feeds into our success. Failure to perform these tasks will translate into failure.

Goals must be realistic
Goals must be firmly established upon unflinching reality. If you want to go to New York and you only have ten dollars, it would be foolhardy to start packing for your journey. The reality is that boarding a plane to New York from Nairobi costs more than 10 dollars! But you say, “I have faith in God”? Well, faith is not foolish, neither is it an emotion. No amount of goose bumps or frenzied hysteria will take you to New York on ten dollars. Be real or you will miss the deal.

Goals are yardsticks
Like yardsticks, goals help us gauge or measure our progress, or lack of it. Without goals constantly reminding us where we are and what we should be doing to get where we ought to be, we will be running wild. No amount of sticking our head deep into the sand will help us achieve success. We must stick it out to the end by daily attaining the goals we have set for ourselves. This can only be done if today’s tasks are ‘done’ today!

To post pone to tomorrow today’s task will only mean one thing: a clog up tasks. The result is that we end up breaking our backs trying to accomplish both yesterday’s and today’s tasks; resulting in sloppy and unfinished tasks.

Goals help us avoid overwhelm
To de-stress our lives, we need to learn how to work smart by finishing our daily tasks on schedule.

This is important if we are to avoid being overwhelmed by tasks carried over from yesterday.

One of the leading causes of burnout and depression is the failure to tackle simple tasks on time. As tasks pile up one after another, we end up having to work overtime and sometimes overnight; pushing our body to limits it was not designed to go. To avoid overwhelm, learn to decongest your life by doing what must be done today, today! However if you want to work hard and up stressing yourself, go ahead and let the tasks accumulate.

Goals help us re-strategize
Finally we need to re-evaluate and redefine our strategy to ensure conformity with our objectives. Strategies help us achieve our goals faster. However, some of the strategies we use are sometimes rendered obsolete by the passage of time. When this happens, it is important to redefine or tweak them a little.

Strategies must always remain relevant and in line with the desired goals. When they become irrelevant or obsolete, they should be discarded and new ones invented.

Strategies help us save time by crowding out irrelevant tasks; those that only take up our time but which do not feed into in to our goals. Strategies also help us to concentrate on priority tasks; those that are crucial to the attainment of our goals.

Coaches may or may not have specific knowledge of a given subject area or industry. Those who do have knowledge in other areas can use it to illuminate the coaching process but do not use this particular knowledge to identify, direct, or design solutions for the client. The relationship between the coach and the client is not based on the client’s position or performance but is characterized by a growing and mutual appreciation and respect for each other as individuals. Information provided to the coach is used to promote the client’s awareness and choice of action and not for evaluating performance or producing reports for outsiders. Coaching can be used to address a wide variety of subjects ranging from personal to professional as determined by the coach and the client. It empowers the client with a greater capacity to produce results and have a greater confidence in their ability to do so.

The business coaching process starts with the assessment of the business’ current potential and challenges, defining the scope of the relationship, identifying priorities for action, and establishing specific desired outcomes. Apart from creating awareness about business processes, business coaching also provides a yardstick for creating coaching goals and actionable strategies, and offers a method for evaluating progress. In follow-up coaching sessions the coach supplies supplementary resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments, or models to support management policies and actions. The duration of business coaching depends on business needs and preferences.

Business coaching derives its concepts, models, and principles from varied sources such as behavioral sciences, management literature, spiritual traditions or other fields of the arts and humanities. These are then used for fostering shifts in perspective, promoting fresh insights, and providing an effective framework for managing opportunities and challenges. Coaching can also be based on an appreciative approach that focuses on what is right with the current business, what is working, what is wanted, and what is needed to get there. Through this approach, a coach can develop constructive communication skills and methods that the individual or team can utilize for enhancing personal communication. This approach is simple and offers a huge potential to harness creative thinking and goal-oriented action.

Business coaching is required both at the executive and the managerial level for understanding the organization’s current position and to decide its future growth patterns. Apart from effecting educational development and experience, coaching also provides objective feedback and acts as a critical tool for successfully engineering organizational change. For adapting to the rapidly shifting marketplace, organizations need to change their approach. However, this is often difficult to implement as people and organizations are naturally resistant to change. Business coaching has become a very effective tool for initiating productive changes in individuals, teams, and systems by enabling leaders, managers, and employees to uncover potential that might otherwise go untapped.

With the growing realization that profits, productivity, and customer satisfaction are the outcomes of performance rather than the cause, business coaching courses have started focusing more on leadership issues, cultural factors and the learning and development practices that drive performance. The goal of business coaching is not to be an alternative vehicle of managerial control, but rather it concentrates on empowering and delegating to create a culture of responsibility and self-generated, commitment-based actions. Coaching is certainly more than just a technique as it involves viewing the organization in a different perspective and working through relationships, dialogues and feedback for harnessing future potential and growth. It provides organizations with the capability of altering or shifting current work methods, internal and external communications and the framework within which employees normally operate. Business coaching has thus become very critical for modifying or creating an effective work environment that is more adaptable to change and growth.

Business coaching allows managers to play the role of professional business coaches for meeting organizational challenges and motivating others in their work environment. It creates the awareness among managers that by acting as coaches they can transform or create an organizational culture that is more receptive to change and open to new possibilities. Managers as coaches learn to increase self-awareness decide when and how to take action, find creative solutions, consider opinions and feedback from fellow employees, set targets, make appropriate requests, decrease hostility, and reduce stress and negative emotions in the workplace.

Coaching managers provide many direct benefits to the organization as managers get a clear idea about their commitments as well as those of the organization. They learn how to generate and maintain effective relationships, which in turn increases the levels of trust and accountability in the organization. Their understanding of organizational and interpersonal dynamics is increased considerably, allowing them to empower themselves and others to achieve organizational objectives. They learn how to take calculated risks for producing results aligned with organizational vision. They also learn to develop the right kind of unity and team spirit that will powerful work relationships that help achieve extraordinary results.

Business coaching should not be considered as some kind of therapy. It can only help develop plans to achieve goals and targets. It helps business owners communicate in a better way with their employees and customers and it teaches them to work smarter. The biggest misconception about business coaching is that just anyone would make a good coach. Anyone aspiring to become a business coach requires solid experience, a mastery of communication and people skills, critical thinking and a commitment to the business.

When starting a business, the need to deal with everything can leave the new business owner bewildered. There are many pitfalls and problems to overcome. Trying to set up a business without any help can only lead to disaster. Very few people can succeed in business without any outside help. Never start a business without knowing how to target your market, as it would only be a waste of time, effort and money. Getting into the wrong business with too much competition and not enough demand is another common mistake made by most amateur business people. The fastest way to lose money and valuable time is by jumping from one business opportunity after another, month after month. Money cannot be made in a short time if there is no hard work involved.

Business coaching has been designed to help businesses increase sales and profits. A major aspect of coaching is to identify what works in different companies and then to duplicate these processes in other companies. Coaching provides businesses with powerful marketing skills and techniques. It teaches, facilitates, informs, clarifies and supports the business owner. Coaching is challenging, exciting and focused. The right business coach can streamline business processes and transform the business with growth. With good guidance, business owners can be transformed into good and effective leaders. Coaching not only helps owners deal with conflicts rationally but it also helps them manage employees better. A coach listens, encourages and breaks down everything into simple, concrete steps. He also evaluates and separates the strengths from the weaknesses and uses the strengths to accomplish the goals.

The goal of coaching is to make the optimum use of organization resources. Coaching is part of the development training for executives and talented new comers. It provides an opportunity for getting new insights and viewpoints. The benefits of coaching can win over the most critical of clients within a short period of time. Coaching looks at all the aspects of business like lead generation, marketing, sales, operations, distribution, product mix, finance and personnel.

Business coaching programs are of two kinds – change-oriented, which are aimed at changing specific behaviors or skills, and growth-oriented, which is aimed at strengthening performance. Business coaching is applicable to any field of commerce. What started out in the corporate world as a method of helping stressed out executives with their professional and personal lives has evolved into a technique and practice of increasing productivity, motivating the personnel and improving profits.