Legal Marketing & PR

Thinking of Hiring a Coach? Make Sure You're Ready

By Tom Kane

In my almost twenty-five years as a legal marketer, the biggest drawback to success in developing business has been the failure by lawyers to follow through on the strategies they develop. I've seen lawyers make stellar efforts in planning effective goals and objectives, only then to fail for the lack of implementation.

That's where a coach comes in. You can use my search engine to the right and type in 'coach' or 'coaching' and see a slew of posts on the topic; and how a coach can help you develop business faster and more effectively. But, a coach can't do it alone.

Last week, Ann Daly had a post on her blog identifying four factors that result in coaching failures.  As you can see, the reasons she mentions ain't the coach's fault. They include:

• Squeezing in coaching calls and not focusing because of other distractions;
• Expecting unrealistic results from the coach;
• Failing to follow through with agreed-upon action items; and
• Agreeing to new ideas and approaches, but hanging on to 'broken habits of thinking.'

If you are not committed to avoiding these pitfalls, you're not ready to hire a coach.

Full post as published by Legal Marketing Blog on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).