Let me tell you something rather odd about business coaching. The entire industry seems to have convinced the corporate world that it’s about fixing problems with clever frameworks and accountability spreadsheets. What utter nonsense. That’s like saying the purpose of Red Bull is to quench your thirst. It tastes bloody awful, but the marketing is genius.
Business coaching, properly understood, isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about perception shifting – helping people see the same reality through an entirely different lens. You see, we don’t value businesses; we value their meaning. What a business is might be determined by balance sheets, but what it means is determined entirely by psychology.
The Psychological Edge That Actually Matters
Here’s the thing about business coaching that nobody wants to admit: it’s not the sophisticated models that create transformation; it’s the reframing of existing problems. Think about it like this – you’ve got people complaining that the lift in your building is too slow. The engineer’s solution? Spend hundreds of thousands upgrading the lift system. The behavioral solution? Put mirrors by the lifts. Suddenly people are checking their hair and straightening their ties, and the wait doesn’t seem nearly as bothersome.
That’s proper business coaching. It’s not about working harder or setting SMART goals (though I suppose they’re better than STUPID ones). It’s about finding the mirrors you can install in your business.
The Accountability Myth
Everyone bangs on about accountability in coaching. “It’s one of the most important elements,” they’ll tell you with grave seriousness. But that’s like saying the most important thing about a restaurant is that they bring you the bill at the end.
Of course accountability matters. But real coaching magic happens when you help someone see their entire business landscape differently. I remember that relationship coach, who was paralyzed by fear that people wouldn’t pay for dating advice. Seven months later, she’s running a thriving business. The transformation wasn’t about making her more accountable – it was about shifting her mental model of what was possible.
Why Traditional Coaching Often Fails
Most business coaching has the same problem as market research:
“People don’t think what they feel, don’t say what they think, and don’t do what they say”.
You can hold all the accountability sessions you want, but if you’re solving the wrong problem, you’re just efficiently traveling in the wrong direction.
Take the famous London Underground map example. Commuters were complaining about long wait times. The engineering solution would be more trains or faster service. But the behavioral solution? They simply installed electronic boards showing when the next train would arrive. With that tiny change, waiting didn’t feel nearly as painful.
The Power of Story Over Spreadsheets
Business coaches love their frameworks. GROW, SMART, CLEAR, and other alphabetical abominations. But think about this: 86% of companies working with a coach report positive ROI. Is that because the coach helped them fill out a GROW model worksheet?
Don’t be daft. It’s because good coaching is about storytelling. As one coaching expert puts it, “Everyone loves a great story. For thousands of years, stories have taken people on emotional journeys, changed their patterns of thinking, and moved them to action”.
The best business coaches know that transformative coaching isn’t about the framework – it’s about helping clients see themselves as the hero in a new narrative. That’s why a client of our like Gilda can go from overworked to generating $8,000 months without scaling her hours. The coaching didn’t make her work harder; it changed the story she was telling herself about what was possible.
What’s Actually Happening in Effective Coaching
When business coaching works, something peculiar happens. The client doesn’t just get better at what they do – they start seeing entirely new possibilities that were invisible before. It’s like those people who first saw bubble tea and thought, “That looks weird, I’ll never try it,” and then suddenly everyone’s drinking the stuff.
The psychology behind effective coaching is the same. One day you’re convinced your business has hit its ceiling, the next you’re spotting opportunities everywhere. This isn’t mystical – it’s the coach helping you overcome what behavioral economists call “functional fixedness” – our tendency to see objects (or businesses) only in their most obvious function.
Coaching as an Expectation Machine
Here’s where things get particularly interesting. The best business coaches understand that they’re not just advising – they’re in the expectation business. Like a good beer that tastes better when poured into the right glass, a business performs better when wrapped in the right expectations.
Consider these stunning numbers: coaching improves teamwork and communication for 67% of businesses and increases productivity for 53%. But these improvements aren’t just about new tactics; they’re about changed expectations. When people expect to succeed, they behave differently.
The Irrational Heart of Rational Business
The most fascinating thing about business coaching is that it operates at the intersection of the rational and irrational. Much like those medieval guilds or London’s black cab service, there’s a wisdom in what seems illogical at first glance.
Take the case of Paridhi, who was stuck below her $20,000 monthly revenue goal despite having expertise and working hard. By completely redesigning her approach rather than just working harder, she broke through her plateau. The transformation wasn’t rational in the sense of “do more of what’s working” – it was about changing the entire mental model.
What Actually Works in Business Coaching
The most effective business coaching isn’t about accountability or frameworks or even expertise (though that helps). It’s about three things that most coaches won’t admit:
- Creating psychological safety that allows for experimentation
- Providing new cognitive models that make invisible options visible
- Building confidence through small, strategic wins that compound
Everything else is just window dressing. In fact, 96% of businesses say they would engage a coach again. That’s not because they love filling out coaching worksheets – it’s because something fundamentally shifted in how they see their business.
Remember this: a successful business isn’t built on logic alone. It’s built on psychology – on understanding that humans don’t do what they say, don’t say what they think, and don’t think what they feel. The best business coaching acknowledges this messy reality and works with it rather than against it.
So if you’re looking for a business coach, forget the ones promising accountability systems or step-by-step frameworks. Find the one who can help you see what’s been in front of you all along, just from a completely different angle. After all, in psychology, unlike physics, the opposite of a good idea can be a very good idea indeed.
And that’s the curious truth about business coaching that nobody’s telling you.
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
