Why I became a business coach.
Bill McDevitt
Founder at Top of the World Coaching, LLC
March 30, 2022
“Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is more often helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” – Sir John Whitmore
I worked for a franchisee that operated under a large franchising system. I started at 16 years old and by 21 I was a General Manager of a restaurant. To stay in compliance with the franchise system we had to follow their rules. The franchisor would send in business consultants to inspect our restaurants to make sure we were complying. The process went something like this, a scheduled visit of 3 days where all systems were scrutinized, followed by a recap, and action plan. We then had a certain amount of time to complete the action plan after which an unannounced inspection would be conducted. The unannounced visit would put a lot of stress on the restaurant management team, which would put a lot of pressure on my time. The team depended on me, and that dependency consumed too much of my time. To get my time back I adopted a coaching leadership style as my default. I realized if I could coach my managers and employees to achieve more than they thought that they could the restaurant would perform at a high level consistently, and the unannounced visitor would be just another guest there to do a job. Utilizing a coaching leadership style, I got my time back by not having to manage every detail and field phone calls off duty, and I watched employee confidence soar, execution improve, and managers position themselves for promotions. It was a great feeling knowing that my team could operate without me. Sales improved, customer satisfaction improved and of course profit improved. That is not to say that mistakes were not made. There were many of them, and that was ok. My rule was that if safety was not affected, make a decision. If you are wrong, we will fix it, and all learn from it.
That is not to say that using several leaderships styles is not effective. In fact, I still use assorted styles based on circumstances. I coach my clients to do the same. But, of the distinctive styles listed below (and there are more), as I stated above, coaching is my default.
- Transformational Leadership
- Democratic Leadership
- Autocratic Leadership
- Laissez-Faire Leadership
- Servant Leadership
- Transactional Leadership
- Situational Leadership
- Strategic Leadership Style
- Cross-Cultural Leadership
- Coaching Leadership
- Charismatic Leadership
The results that I witnessed from a coaching leadership style in my twenties helped me decide that my exit strategy from corporate America would be to launch my own coaching business when I turned 55 years old. Due to some life circumstances, that dream did not happen until I was almost 60 years old. That is when I founded Top of the World Coaching (Website).
I get to collaborate with business owners & leaders to help them summit their personal & professional goals through 1 to 1 & team coaching every day!
For more information regarding how I can help you, please take a minute to schedule a “coffee call” - https://calendly.com/totwcoaching - at your convenience.
Or connect with me on - LinkedIn Bill McDevitt MBA