As I continue my transition and rebranding effort, I’d like to share some insights on how I’ll work with you as an executive leadership coach. I’ll contrast that with my experiences as an innovation management consultant. For completeness, we’ll also discuss the roles of management and mentors.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Coaching
Coaches use the spiritual gifts of encouragement and teaching. We recognize that you are in charge of making your own decisions. I can’t possibly know all the factors you need to make choices; however, my experience in business can help you to ask the right questions. Hopefully, these questions will aid you in looking at decisions and actions from a 360-degree perspective.
Service (Work)
In my approach, I ask leaders to look at four arenas of their life to achieve “balance”. Note that balance does not mean equal hours in each life arena. Instead, balance should guide you to what gives you fulfillment and joy as an individual person at that time and place.
We spend a lot of time in group coaching examining business principles. Questions are often associated with marketing and resource utilization. Collaboration brings forth ideas for systematizing operations and reaching the right customers.
I like to call this categoryService instead of work. Too many people view “work” as a dreaded chore to earn just enough money to pay the bills. Service is what we do as Christ-followers to help one another become the best that we can be. That includes providing goods and service with excellence, and yes, earning a profit.
Relationships
The second category we “balance” in leadership is Relationships. Whether we like it or not, our personal lives bleed into our business lives and vice versa. Healthy relationships at home, at work, and in our community and friend groups allow us to see alternate perspectives. Interacting with different people in various circumstances helps us become better at trouble-shooting problems. Sharing a laugh with friends gives us joy that spills over to treating our customers with extra special attention.
Health
It should go without saying that being physically healthy helps improve every aspect of our lives. Getting enough sleep allows us to approach tough business decisions with clarity. Brains are muscles, too, and need bursts of exercise to increase blood flow and purge build-ups of negativity and self-doubt. Balancing health with the other arenas in our lives might be as easy as having walking meetings at work or riding bikes with your family in the evening. Great leaders will prioritize their own health and the health of their teams to achieve creative dreams and goals.
Faith
In my own life, I’ve witnessed the blessings of exercise and faith. Studies show that people with faith in God are more at peace despite turmoil in the world. Faith increases our hope in the future and gives us grace when things don’t turn out how we planned. Above all, faith is the antidote to worry.
My approach to life and coaching leaders is based on my core values and “balancing” service (work), relationships, health, and faith. As business owners and executives, we might spend more time probing solutions to business problems, but our service is supported by friends and colleagues, physical activity, and trust in the Lord.
Consulting
While the direction of coaching is set by each individual, my work as an innovation consultant is directed by best practices. With 20-plus years experience under my belt in innovation and project management, my toolkit is filled with applications to address a variety of issues around creativity, quality, and change management. Good consultants stay on top of emerging practices to share cutting edge technologies with clients.
Instead of asking questions to let the client direct their own path, a consultant investigates and diagnoses problems in an organization. (As an aside, trust is the number one issue.) As business consultants, we recommend a specific solution and timeline for implementation of change. The client company typically implements the advice in their own way and using their own resources.
For my innovation consulting business, my specialty has been instituting teams and processes to ensure effective and timely new product development. This includes managing the overall product portfolio from new ideas entering the pipeline to retiring commercial products from the marketplace.
Management
Internal corporate management is the tool consultants use to get the work done. Managers assign tasks and activities to staff while monitoring schedule and budgets. Managers tend to utilize numbers and reports to demonstrate progress toward a pre-determined goal. Managers are successful when projects are completed on time and at cost. They should be motivating employees and staff to achieve business objectives within their area of functional expertise.
Mentoring
Finally, mentoring is advising and observing the growth of another person. In peer group business coaching, we naturally serve as mentors for one another. Mentors are available outside of formal coaching or consulting arrangements. In my own experience, I’ve had mentors in single subject areas of my life: a senior manager when I was a new engineer, spiritual mentors to guide me through different trials and seasons, and a financial advisor who tells me he can’t put a price on mental health.
Unlike coaches, mentors are not necessarily offering a holistic approach to helping you develop: service, relationships, health, and faith.
Now a Coach
Assessments show my spiritual gifts are teaching, encouraging, and knowledge. As an innovation management consultant, I have enjoyed identifying the best project management process for each organization and innovation maturity. For true success, it’s like fitting a jigsaw puzzle together: culture, strategy, resources, and brands. My approach always has involved asking lots of questions in addition to analyzing data and reading technical reports.
Transitioning into a new season as an executive business coach, I am building off these longtime consulting skills. Every new product is a business in and of itself. Business leaders and entrepreneurs must tackle many of the same question and balance service, relationships, health, and faith. What is the firm’s culture, strategy? Where do you find resources? What are the impacts of brands?
I’m excited about my transition and I’d love to hear from you as I move to helping leaders become the best they can be!
Do you want to know more about managing your business as a Creative Christian Leader? Email me at info@globalnpsolutions.com for additional resources or to schedule a 30-minute chat.
** This article was written with no AI content.**
