Inner game coaching is often the difference between an entrepreneur with a successful business, and one who fails. Here are 5 areas which are often limiting to your client’s business success, where you can use your coaching skills to help them shift to a mindset which will lead to victory in business.

Be Careful About Assumptions

In Rules For Revolutionaries, Guy Kawasaki talks about dumping “your idols.” In other words, don’t assume that just because something has always been done a particular way, that’s the only way it can be done. Make sure your client looks carefully at what his assumptions are about his business and how it needs to run. With the endpoint he wants in mind, challenge him to make different assumptions and see what new and brilliant solutions he comes up with.

The Time Frame Might Need To Be Different

Inner game coaching is often about becoming willing to be flexible about time and schedules. To invite success in his business, your client might need to shift his inner time clock. That could mean pushing himself to work faster than his natural inclination. It could mean being willing to do tasks in a different order than the particular order he has in mind. It could mean delegating so that more than one task can be done at once.

Be On The Alert For Opportunities

Opportunities often come unexpectedly or at inopportune times. Like someone in a tennis game who seizes the opportunity to rush the net and slam the ball into the other side of the court, your client needs to keep his eyes and ears open so he can seize opportunities that come his way. If he doesn’t stay open to unusual possibilities and ready to move on a moment’s notice when one arises, the opportunities will pass him by. One key to successful business is the move not just strategically, but quickly and decisively.

Keep Your Mindset Positive

With inner game coaching, you can help your client stay positive even when things aren’t going the way he expects. Coach him to consider events and situations from a different perspective than he normally would. I recently heard business entrepreneur Steve Little say, “Winners see options. Losers complain.” Get your client out of the mindset where he complains and feels stuck.

If You Don’t Get The Result You Want, Change Something

Coach your client to get totally clear on the results he wants. Once he has that clarity he will know if what he is doing is working. And if it isn’t, he needs to change what he is doing. Tweak it; modify it; and see what the changes accomplish. The willingness to make changes is part of the mindset work you do in your inner game coaching.

The inner game is all about how your client thinks, how he approaches problems and how well he manages himself and his feelings. Get your client to keep these 5 keys in mind and watch him win.

Give this strategy a try and see for yourself that it works. If you liked this coaching tip, leave a comment or use the handy bookmark buttons below to share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. Thanks!

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach