Running a business as an independent practitioner has special challenges and rewards. The most commonly expressed challenge is that the practitioner is working in the business and on the business at the same time.
Time and again I am told about the difficulty around keeping a balanced perspective and applying energy equally into providing, both a focus on the details, and a wide, big picture, focus. This is the cause of much stress from the point of the independent practitioner in business, who sometimes feels there is so much to think about, so much to do, and only one brain and one body!
The following text is a short piece taken from my FREE coaching program called ‘Business Success for Independent Practitioners and Consultants’ - It consists of 6 coaching sessions over six weeks and would normally be sold at £360, but you can get it free from my website. The coaching program introduces the coachee to 6 key areas of focus for business success, and is especially written for independent practitioners or consultants.
Each section of the coaching program has examples, and also provides coaching exercises. Doing the coaching exercises assists in applying the material to your own business and benefits you in the form of gaining insights and helps you, the coachee, to generate ideas about what actions you can take to make your business better.
The six areas covered in the coaching program are business culture, recruiting, marketing, walk that talk, development, and business analysis. This coaching program is Free, and can be attained by going to http://www.nottingham-therapy.co.uk/ and looking for the link to the FREE COACHING PROGRAM FOR INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONERS AND CONSULTANTS.
The two key aspect of focus for business success that I will write about here (taken from the 6 mentioned above) are ‘culture’ and ‘walk that talk’.
Culture
The organisational culture needs to be created and communicated throughout the entire operation. Even if you are an independent practitioner, it is useful to think in terms of your company (yourself) as an organisation. As we know, a firm, or company, has a mission statement and a clarified vision which are made overt.
There are many tools available to help write a mission or vision statement, but let’s keep it simple. We are going to call it a 'culture statement' for reasons that are explained later.
Time and again I am told about the difficulty around keeping a balanced perspective and applying energy equally into providing, both a focus on the details, and a wide, big picture, focus. This is the cause of much stress from the point of the independent practitioner in business, who sometimes feels there is so much to think about, so much to do, and only one brain and one body!
The following text is a short piece taken from my FREE coaching program called ‘Business Success for Independent Practitioners and Consultants’ - It consists of 6 coaching sessions over six weeks and would normally be sold at £360, but you can get it free from my website. The coaching program introduces the coachee to 6 key areas of focus for business success, and is especially written for independent practitioners or consultants.
Each section of the coaching program has examples, and also provides coaching exercises. Doing the coaching exercises assists in applying the material to your own business and benefits you in the form of gaining insights and helps you, the coachee, to generate ideas about what actions you can take to make your business better.
The six areas covered in the coaching program are business culture, recruiting, marketing, walk that talk, development, and business analysis. This coaching program is Free, and can be attained by going to http://www.nottingham-therapy.co.uk/ and looking for the link to the FREE COACHING PROGRAM FOR INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONERS AND CONSULTANTS.
The two key aspect of focus for business success that I will write about here (taken from the 6 mentioned above) are ‘culture’ and ‘walk that talk’.
Culture
The organisational culture needs to be created and communicated throughout the entire operation. Even if you are an independent practitioner, it is useful to think in terms of your company (yourself) as an organisation. As we know, a firm, or company, has a mission statement and a clarified vision which are made overt.
There are many tools available to help write a mission or vision statement, but let’s keep it simple. We are going to call it a 'culture statement' for reasons that are explained later.
So, Write just a couple of sentences to describe why the business exists.
A starting point is to answer the following question:
What is the core value or the daily purpose of this company?
Example of a Statement:
So, for me, Vauna Beauvais, the answer to that question would provide me with a statement about my organisational culture, and could be something like this,
“To provide exceptionally effective personal development services to a wide variety of client populations at local and national level - in person, and over the telephone - with the purpose of facilitating people to explore and resolve problems, achieve their goals, realise their dreams, and to get the happiest life possible”
There are 4 elements in the culture statement:
1). The daily activity of the company - Is to offer personal development services (coaching, counselling, hypnotherapy and psychotherapy)
2). The method of doing this – Is both, in person (all services) and over the telephone (coaching only).
3). The core values of supplying service – There is a part of the statement that insists that the services are exceptionally effective. What are the values underpinning that statement? The answer is that effectiveness is valued. In other words, it is important that the services offered have the effect of bringing about the results that they were intended to do, and the intention is that this is always in focus because it is a core value.
4). The purpose of the service - Is so that people explore and solve problems, achieve their goals, realise their dreams, and get the happiest life possible.
What is the core value or the daily purpose of this company?
Example of a Statement:
So, for me, Vauna Beauvais, the answer to that question would provide me with a statement about my organisational culture, and could be something like this,
“To provide exceptionally effective personal development services to a wide variety of client populations at local and national level - in person, and over the telephone - with the purpose of facilitating people to explore and resolve problems, achieve their goals, realise their dreams, and to get the happiest life possible”
There are 4 elements in the culture statement:
1). The daily activity of the company - Is to offer personal development services (coaching, counselling, hypnotherapy and psychotherapy)
2). The method of doing this – Is both, in person (all services) and over the telephone (coaching only).
3). The core values of supplying service – There is a part of the statement that insists that the services are exceptionally effective. What are the values underpinning that statement? The answer is that effectiveness is valued. In other words, it is important that the services offered have the effect of bringing about the results that they were intended to do, and the intention is that this is always in focus because it is a core value.
4). The purpose of the service - Is so that people explore and solve problems, achieve their goals, realise their dreams, and get the happiest life possible.
Go ahead and write a culture statement for your own organisation, using the guidelines of the 4 points above, and sticking to a statement of one or two sentances in length.
Ok, now that we have the culture statement, we have a guide as to how to conduct business. Any behaviour that meets the 4 criteria of the culture statement is in line with business objectives, and behaviour that doesn’t meet the criteria is not in line.
Aligning Behaviour with Good Intentions
Just because we have a culture statement, does not mean we have created a culture. A culture is created out of what is the norm, in terms of behaviours and attitudes. If you want your culture statement to be a description of what is the norm, behaviours will need to be in line with that statement consistently. Consistently (Yes, I repeated that word).
To assist in business behaviour being congruent with the culture statement consistently, reward behaviour that is accordant with the culture statement and confront behaviour discordant with the culture statement.
Example of aligning behaviour with good intentions
Using my culture statement as an example, and the core value of effectiveness particularly,
If one action that I took was not focussed on getting an effective result for the client, then I address it with myself, and I ensure that I do all that is necessary to ensure that I don’t do that again (I may need clinical case supervision or co-coaching, extra reading on a subject, or a training course of some sort).
Ok, now that we have the culture statement, we have a guide as to how to conduct business. Any behaviour that meets the 4 criteria of the culture statement is in line with business objectives, and behaviour that doesn’t meet the criteria is not in line.
Aligning Behaviour with Good Intentions
Just because we have a culture statement, does not mean we have created a culture. A culture is created out of what is the norm, in terms of behaviours and attitudes. If you want your culture statement to be a description of what is the norm, behaviours will need to be in line with that statement consistently. Consistently (Yes, I repeated that word).
To assist in business behaviour being congruent with the culture statement consistently, reward behaviour that is accordant with the culture statement and confront behaviour discordant with the culture statement.
Example of aligning behaviour with good intentions
Using my culture statement as an example, and the core value of effectiveness particularly,
If one action that I took was not focussed on getting an effective result for the client, then I address it with myself, and I ensure that I do all that is necessary to ensure that I don’t do that again (I may need clinical case supervision or co-coaching, extra reading on a subject, or a training course of some sort).
If the actions that I took were effective in facilitating a client to explore or solve a problem, achieve a goal, realise their dream, and this was leading to them getting the happiest life possible (using the clients framework of what is a happiest life possible), then I do reward myself for this behaviour.
Reward yourself for good behaviour!
If you know that the work you are doing is congruent with your culture statement, there will already be reward in the form of high self esteem and feelings of satisfaction from doing a good job. However, actively doing something to reward good performance is something that independent practitioners often miss, because they don’t overtly acknowledge and reward themselves to themselves (or to other people for that matter).
Don’t undervalue yourself, its really not good for the soul you know! It will affect your morale in the long term and may lead to burnout. – See my see previous blog post, Jan 2008, Burnout - You got it? What to do?
Be Appreciated and Know It.
You owe it to yourself (and to your clients) to feel valued and appreciated, and to demonstrate that by giving rewards.
I know for me, that for each little behaviour that is accordant with my culture statement I give myself a metaphorical pat on the back, and a tad of praise, “Well, that was a clever, useful, insightful, powerful, intervention and really met your clients needs – Well done!”. (usually I try not to talk to myself out loud, just a bit of internal dialogue will do!).
Periodically, I ask myself, “How am I doing? Is my work on target?” If the answer is yes, then a reward is given. What works for me is giving myself a gift of a lovely experience, for example I might buy theatre tickets, or arrange a days walking in the countryside with someone that I really enjoy being with. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do these activities anyway, but the point is, that arranging them is connected to my acknowledgement of my behaviours being in line with the culture statement. That’s how to create the culture that you intend to have.
You owe it to yourself (and to your clients) to feel valued and appreciated, and to demonstrate that by giving rewards.
I know for me, that for each little behaviour that is accordant with my culture statement I give myself a metaphorical pat on the back, and a tad of praise, “Well, that was a clever, useful, insightful, powerful, intervention and really met your clients needs – Well done!”. (usually I try not to talk to myself out loud, just a bit of internal dialogue will do!).
Periodically, I ask myself, “How am I doing? Is my work on target?” If the answer is yes, then a reward is given. What works for me is giving myself a gift of a lovely experience, for example I might buy theatre tickets, or arrange a days walking in the countryside with someone that I really enjoy being with. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do these activities anyway, but the point is, that arranging them is connected to my acknowledgement of my behaviours being in line with the culture statement. That’s how to create the culture that you intend to have.
As stated at the beginning of this article, this is just a small sample of the content of my FREE coaching program called ‘Business Success for Independent Practitioners and Consultants’. This coaching program consists of 6 coaching sessions over six weeks and would normally be sold at £360.
The actual coaching program has coaching exercises for you to do. Doing the coaching exercises assists in applying the material to your own business and benefits you in the form of gaining insights and helps you, the coachee, to generate ideas about what actions you can take to make your business better.
To benefit from this coaching now, go to http://www.nottingham-therapy.co.uk/ and look for the link to the FREE COACHING PROGRAM FOR INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONERS AND CONSULTANTS in the coaching section of the website.
If you think that private coaching would enhance your life, or assist in identifying problems and / or generating solutions for you, please do get in touch, by giving me a call on 0115 962 230 between 8 am and 10 pm Monday to Friday, or email me vauna@nottingham-therapy.co.uk
I work to a diary of set session times, and the start time of these sessions are Monday to Friday 07-45 am to 9-10 pm. I would love to arrange a time in your diary that suits us both.
As you know, I am an independent practitioner myself, offering personal and business coaching, counselling, psychotherapy, and NLP to people in person, and offering coaching to people over the telephone.
Additionally, I design and facilitate workshops, seminars and training courses in the field of personal development.
I can also do a Training needs Analysis for you or your organisation and design a learning and development solution for you based on the findings and conclusions of that process.
VAUNA BEAUVAIS
Telephone 0115 962 0230
between 8am and 10 pm
Monday to Friday
vauna@nottingham-therapy.co.uk
See a different professional profile of Vauna Beauvais 
Copyright 2008, Vauna Beauvais January 2008.
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