However well designed, courses are general principles which usually run into conflict with every day realities in the business world. The difference between the coach and the course comes down to learning styles. Courses make you feel as if you know something or have learned something. When you come to apply this to business, your learning can quickly vanish into thin air. So what did you actually learn? Courses give you principles, but they cannot give you application. That is something you have to do personally. When you can't, you need a coach. Coaching is a different type of learning. A coach helps you to achieve application of principles or knowledge that you cannot put into action. Sometimes this is because you have personal resistances that you cannot see. At other times, it is because your business environment is far too hostile and brings down all the things you have learned on the course. The coach aims at personalising your learnings, materialising your goals, and "making it happen". This requires insight, knowledge, understanding, and most of all, a sense of judgment and perspective that you cannot have because you are in the middle of everything. The best sports coaches are never world champions or title holders. Their coaching is based on seeing what is needed. That "sight" is actually "insight". The coach is a reflective mirror who sees you as you are, not how you like to think you are. They are armed with techniques and toolkits that can release you into your own progress in well defined stages. They also "see" the resistances in your business context. These can depend on company size or how you manage critical business relationships with staff and customers. And they know how far they can take you before you need another coach. If courses are working for you, keep going. But if you're reaching the end of the road, make sure you make the smart move and find coaches to help you on your journey.

Who needs a coach when you can go on a course? The business world is awash with courses. Online, webinar, YouTube, blogs, company seminars, in-house, out-sourced, professional/ institutional accredited qualifications, certificates and diplomas, continuous professional development, books. There are a myriad courses within each of these outlets for which a business person becomes a consumer target. So who needs a coach when you can figure things out yourself? The idea that you can do everything on your own is a specific mental state. And it's not "narcissistic". It is a state known as "omniscient fantasy" – the feeling that you have a God-like ability to control your future and create it alone. It is a hugely driven, manic, high-energy, high-octane, secretly determined, obsessive lifestyle. Your mind is constantly filled with noisy lists of things to do, emails to read/write, calls to make, goals to set, goals to reach, customers and staff to please – and courses to go on. Courses can have a very beneficial impact on broadening your horizons or opening new possibilities. Sometimes they are professionally necessary. They demand discipline and sacrifice of time that can bring rewards and returns to your business world. In the short-term, they can get you through a stuck place. Strangely, this does not apply to professional sports. In sports, the coach is absolute. The coach literally defines your professional capacity, level and ranking. The greats in the sports always speak of the coaches who mentored or inspired them to move to the next level. They are also unafraid of changing coaches when the time is right to do so. So why does the same not apply to business?

Success in sports has always been based on who trains you. A good coach paves the way to your future career. The same principle applies to business coaching. But how do you spot the coach?

Social media bends our minds into trends. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) rules. The trend is now the cash cow that no business can afford to miss.

For companies who have emerged intact from the Covid crisis, new strategies of adaptability, innovation, and getting ahead of the curve have been allowed in previously unthinkable ways. Every company and organisation had to invest in their workforce and customer base requirements and make changes under duress. It became clear without doubt that the workforce and the client base define the existence of any business. Stimulus cheques aplenty have appeared like unicorns, even though we can’t find the magic money tree where those unicorns live. The unicorns have shown where business ‘value’ resides. Researchers at McKinsey are predicting that after the euphoria and triumph, there will be a huge cost to businesses regarding the wellbeing of their workforce that may continue for the next two years. The adaptability and change, including the intrusion of work into private homes and private life, have created an increase of stress, exhaustion, depression, anxiety and complete burnout. This is predicted to result in withdrawal from work through illness, absenteeism or poor performance. It is aggravated by managers and Board members who proclaim triumphant results when the workforce is depleted. Covid provides an opportunity for leaders to reconnect with their workforce in new and different ways. Leaders can find new interactions that recognise and support the mental and emotional realities of what their own people have lived through. Innovative solutions to make use of mental health strategies (EAPs as a minimum) along with group work can restore or revive a leader-team relationship after the crisis. The shift in leadership is from the braggadocios to empathy. What can you do to connect with your workforce? If you are a business leader looking for strategic implementation, transformation or a business review, get in touch now.