The first session of the new MaGa Coaching Group for Business Growth (MCGfBG) took place in Cambridge at the end of March. A total of 7 business owners in the high tech industry, spanning different sectors such as agile software development, hardware and software consultancy, development of applications for iPhone and web design joined together to be among the founders of this first group.
Running a small business can be a very lonely job, missing the support of partners, fellow directors and colleagues to share problems, bounce ideas and keep focussed on the main business objectives: this can have a very negative effect on the personal performance of the business owners and the organisations they run.
The MCGfBG structure offers the possibility, for businesses owners, to meet and exchange ideas, share experiences and help each other growing their own business. This is obtained by keeping in touch regularly and reasonably often: a monthly face to face meeting for a 3 hours session as well as a monthly one hour conference call. It is like having a board meeting and a brainstorming session at once. Somebody’s problems are often a past experience for others and the typical “have you tried x, y, z?” question is usually enough to unlock an idea for a possible way forward.
The coaching main contribution to this process is to help people to come out with their own answers by asking the right questions. The second and very fundamental one is to keep the attention and focus on the solution and maintain an accountability process for members of the group to report back at the next meeting.
MCGfBG is organised and run by a professionally trained and qualified business and executive coach. Apart from facilitating the smooth running of the meetings and ensuring that both agenda and structure are followed he trains members about how they can help themselves and others to work more effectively and improve areas that need attention in order to achieve they own goals.
Massimo Gaetani, Business and Executive Coach who designed, planned and executed this project for MaGa Coaching, declared: “I am impressed by the success of this first group and by the interest it is attracting among other business sectors: it is well beyond our initial expectations…” he also added “…the accountability process and the self directed approach that we implement in MCGfBG have a very powerful impact on the decision process of members and it helps them to focus on essential activities that help to grow their business”.
The indirect advantage is to build consistent and trustworthy relationships among the members of the group fostering a strong community of talented entrepreneurs.
Each MCGfBG is centred around a specific business area: it groups business that are compatible and complementary while avoiding direct competitions and big differences in levels of success of the members.
“High tech professionals have their own language and they communicate freely with others that understand them…” adds Massimo Gaetani who was a software and systems engineer for over 10 year, “…so we created this first group around this topic: it’s also preferable to have people that can relate to each other so we carefully selected businesses with similar size and background”.
Coaching programmes have a permanent effect when they are applied for a period of six months or longer therefore the suggested minimum participation to a MCGfBG is 6 months.
MaGa Coaching is now organising the launch of a second MCGfBG in the high tech sector as well as presenting the initiative and business model to a selected group of professionals and business owners in the Marketing and Creative industry on Friday 23 April.
Successful launch for the first Coaching Group for Business Growth
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This post was written by MaGa Coaching on 14 April 2010
