Growing Yourself and Your Small Business in Ann Arbor

Growing Yourself and Your Small Business in Ann Arbor

Changing your small business for the better often involves personal change.

This is why I firmly believe in transformational, not transactional, coaching.

Transformational coaching is a commitment to developing your capabilities and self-reliance, so that you can meet future challenges and changes in your business independently. Key to developing this self-reliance are the six steps for change featured in this great post.

These six steps aren’t just limited to business—they’re a model for how we function in all aspects of our lives, whether starting healthier habits or learning a new skill. Small businesses are often intimately tied to the lives of their owners—business affects your personal life, and your personal life affects your business.

We all think we know how to change. But we often get in our own way when we forget steps in the process. Many people think they can simply start out by taking action, without having spent time in pre-contemplation, contemplation, or preparation. This is not setting yourself up for success!

Learn more about readiness for change, and get ready to change yourself and your small business in Ann Arbor for the better!

Changing Yourself and Your Small Business in Ann Arbor

Maintenance: Staying on Track

Pre-Contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, and Action are all vital stages for change.

But it’s one thing to recognize the problem and do something, but another thing entirely to make it a sustained part of your routine. At this stage, consistent and frequent action is key. 

If you’re not getting immediate results, or getting bogged down in the details, remember your sources of motivation, and the problem you’re trying to fix.

Keep in mind that relapsing into old habits can and will happen—and that’s ok! If you do find yourself going back a step, it’s not the end of the world. Your goal at this point should be making sure that your moments of relapse become less common and happen further apart. Change won’t happen overnight, so don’t worry about perfection.

If you're interested in growing yourself your Ann Arbor small business, read more about the stages of change on my site!

Negative Feedback and Problem Solving

Negative feedback happens when you run a business, but you have a choice in how you deal with it.

When you are feeling emotional about negative feedback, it can be hard to see or hear anything except every negative word now associated with your business. But, often, the people who leave you negative feedback might include some solutions to the issues they experienced. 

And this is true for employees, too. Conducting exit interviews are an excellent way to collect feedback about your organization from a different perspective than your own. But you should be prepared for the possibility of negative feedback. Employees who have front-row seats to these problems are also likely to have ideas about how to fix it. Maybe an employee felt as if the job they do isn’t the one they were hired for. Solutions could include updating job descriptions or hiring different people for differing aspects.

If this was useful to you, continue reading at my website!