As your business grows, your decisions impact more lives with more money and consequently contain more risk. Many of these decisions will determine whether your business thrives or fails. This post will teach you how a Core Energy Business Coach helps you make better decisions for your small business.
It’s estimated that the average adult makes 35,000 decisions each day. This number seems contrived. Let’s just say that you make a lot of decisions each day. Most of these decisions are trivial. Do you wear a red tie or a blue tie? Do you take I-5 or the Boulevard to work? What should you eat for lunch?
If you own a business, you make about one hundred important decisions per year that determine its fate.
Hiring a business manager with a great resume is now pulling down your entire company.
Avoiding a troublesome client to see your competitor earning millions in profits from the same client.
Choosing to let your cash sit in the bank while others use cash for winning acquisitions.
These critical decisions make or break the success of your business. What is the formula for making the best business decisions?
That’s the question I’d like to answer in this blog post.
Core Energy & Deciding
Before I answer that question, I want to take a quick detour into Core Energy™. If you want to learn about Core Energy™, you can read my blog post, “What is Core Energy?” For now, we will dive right into the seven levels of Core Energy™ and how they impact your decision-making ability.
Level 1 – Victim
If you’re in a victim mindset, you’re reacting to the news you perceive as “bad news.” You may have lost a big sale; or your favorite employee just told you she’s resigning. If you decide while in this state of mind, you’ll choose to do “nothing.” Victims dwell on the lousy event and avoid action.
Level 2 – Conflict
In the conflict mindset, you also react to bad news and always act out of anger. This means that your decisions in this mode of thinking will be to harm the person or people who have hurt you. Nine times out of ten, this decision is a bad one that will cause more damage to you than you had hoped to cause to others.
Level 3 – Acceptance
Acceptance is the first level where you’re not reacting negatively or positively. You’re not reacting at all. Instead, you’re ignoring negative or positive. If you make decisions in this state of mind, they’ll often be focused on whatever you had planned to do regardless of what is happening in the present.
Level 4 – Compassion
Compassion is the level that is exclusively focused on others. In compassion mode, decisions will consider people’s feelings and reactions rather than the good of the organization.
Level 5 – Opportunity
Opportunity decision-makers will turn negative and positive events into win-win opportunities for everyone. Most win-win decisions are not made independently but rather with input from multiple parties. One challenge at Level 5 is that no decision will be made because the decision maker will be paralyzed by too many options.
Level 6 – Synergy
Synergy uses multiple inputs and intuition of how your decision affects the whole. A synergistic thinker will consider the impact of decisions on materials, manufacturing, world trade, local economies, climate change, power transmission lines, political nuances, and so many other topics. This is very rare and is not understood by the masses, who are often at lower energy levels.
Level 7 – Total Awareness
Total Awareness is a state of mind that invents while considering all the aspects of Level 6. Decisions made at this level revolutionize industries and economies.
Initially, you may think deciding on Level 7 is a great idea. Let me add that each increase in Core Energy™ requires additional time and effort to achieve. It’s also challenging to get an entire group of people to function at Level 7 for any length of time.
In my experience, the best and most timely decisions are made at Level 5. Most people can obtain this energy level, allowing for better group decisions.
Climbing the Ladder
Most decision-makers will not arrive at higher energy levels on their own. I use a tactic called “Climbing the Ladder” to help my coaching clients make their best decisions. This exercise allows my client to simulate a decision at each Core Energy™ level. I’ll share an example to illustrate what I’m talking about.
Francine’s engineering firm has lost an opportunity for the third time with the coveted architect client, Universal Architects. Francine created a proposal that had won with other architects but failed with Universal Architects. They picked ACME Engineers each time. Francine brings up this topic in our coaching session. I ask Francine to model this situation at each Core Energy level.
Level 1 – Victim – “If we can’t get a project with Universal Architects, I don’t see how we can call ourselves an engineering firm. We might as well give up.”
Level 2 – Conflict – “I’ll go to Universal Architects and give them a piece of my mind. How dare they continue to award work to our competitor when we are better. I know what I’ll do… I’ll tell Universal Architect’s customers that they’re losing out because their architectural firm is choosing favorites over value. That’ll teach ‘em.”
Level 3 – Acceptance – “We win some, and we lose some. It may not be a good idea to propose to Universal Architects anymore since we never seem to win.”
Level 4 – Compassion – “I’ll visit with the principle of Universal Architects to create a better relationship. After all, people buy from people they know, like, and trust.”
Level 5 – Opportunity – “This is a great opportunity to brainstorm with my team to see how we can improve our engineering offering. Maybe one of the ideas could be to partner with ACME Engineers to be part of the winning team.”
The Climbing the Ladder exercise highlights the decision-making modes available to the decision-maker. Francine will most likely choose Level 4 or Level 5 to decide on what to do with proposals to Universal Architects.
Groupthink
When making critical decisions, are two heads better than one?
It depends.
This is what happens when employees in a company make decisions. Each individual has natural biases formed by several factors. These biases result in decisions that aren’t always the best for the company. Such biases include job security, favoritism, personal benefit, cronyism, sexism, and all sorts of others. This same dynamic exists outside of the company with friends and family.
While groups can offer different perspectives, they can also create this monolithic groupthink that will be counterproductive.
Business Coach Objectivity
Why business coaches are the best resource to help business owners make critical business decisions:
- Job security’s not a problem – A business coach can get fired for telling a business owner something they don’t want to hear. However, it’s not that big of a deal for a business coach to lose one client among several clients.
- Objective view — A business coach sees the business from an unbiased viewpoint. They are not an employee worried about position or job security or a customer who wants a better deal. They are interested in how their advice will make a positive difference in their client’s life.
- Socratic Method — A business coach’s job is not to decide for the business owner but to expand the owner’s thinking to make the best decision. This is done by asking empowering questions. These questions give the business owner the ability to see their business objectively. The Climbing the Ladder exercise is a good example of expanding the client’s thought processes.
The one disadvantage a coach has when compared with actively engaged employees is that they don’t know as much about the details of the decision to be made. For this reason, it can be helpful to have a coach facilitate a team within the company to make critical decisions. This gives you the best of both worlds. The coach can ensure that groupthink is held at bay while employees engage their experience and knowledge in decision-making.
Jeff Schuster is the author of this post and is a business coach with Mechanics & Mindset Business Coaching. Jeff has published several more blog posts, podcasts, and videos on business mechanics, mindset, and coaching. Please set up a complimentary coaching session with Jeff if you’d like to share your business situation and gain insight into what may help you grow your business to the next level.
