Business coaching remains a rapidly growing profession and one of the impacts of this rapid growth is more scrutiny of the profession. There have been some predictions that business coaching and other forms of coaching will experience increased criticism. This criticism may come in many different forms and today’s professional business coach needs to be able to recognize the criticism and the opportunity or opportunities that result from that criticism. One of the areas of criticism revolves around ethics and personal conduct and it is essential that these two items receive the highest priority in the business coach’s practice.

I believe there is an opportunity that exists right now to turn criticism of business coaching into compliments for business coaching. Having identified the opportunity and the importance of ethics and the highest levels of personal conduct to business coaching, Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers the following Ten Commitments to Ethics and Personal Conduct to help turn the criticism into compliments.

Commitment #1: Commit to maintaining the highest ethical standards with your clients.

Commitment #2: Commit to maintain the highest level of honesty & integrity with your clients.

Commitment #3: Commit to being responsible and to do no harm to your clients.

Commitment #4: Commit to always putting the interests of your client first.

Commitment #5: Commit to maintaining the strictest levels of confidentiality with your clients and their information.

Commitment #6: Commit to avoiding conflicts of interest when being engaged by clients that may be competitors.

Commitment #7: Commit to the highest ethical standards in all your marketing practices.

Commitment #8: Commit to always conduct yourself in a professional manner and to avoid inappropriate relations with your clients.

Commitment #9: Commit to maintaining the highest ethical standards in all your public relations efforts concerning your business coaching practice.

Commitment #10: Commit to offering only those professional business coaching services where you have the appropriate experience and expertise.

Glenn Ebersole, Jr. is a multi-faceted professional, who is recognized as a visionary, guide and facilitator in the fields of business coaching, marketing, public relations, management, strategic planning and engineering. Glenn is the Founder and Chief Executive of two Lancaster, PA based consulting practices: The Renaissance Group, a creative marketing, public relations, strategic planning and business development consulting firm and J. G. Ebersole Associates, an independent professional engineering, marketing, and management consulting firm. He is a Certified Facilitator and serves as a business coach and a strategic planning facilitator and consultant to a diverse list of clients. Glenn is also the author of a monthly newsletter, “Glenn’s Guiding Lines – Thoughts From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach” and has published more than 225 articles on business.

Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to commit to the highest levels of ethical conduct in your business. If you would like to learn more about how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in creating, enhancing and/or fostering an environment that promotes ethical behavior and the highest standards of honesty & integrity within your business, please visit Glenn Ebersole through his web site.

To find out more about the benefits & rewards of effectively working with a strategic thinking business coach, please visit Glenn Ebersole through his web site.

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Business coaching remains a rapidly growing profession and one of the impacts of this rapid growth is more scrutiny of the profession. There have been some predictions that business coaching and other forms of coaching will experience increased criticism. This criticism may come in many different forms and today’s professional business coach needs to be able to recognize the criticism and the opportunity or opportunities that result from that criticism. One of the areas of criticism revolves around ethics and personal conduct and it is essential that these two items receive the highest priority in the business coach’s practice.

I believe there is an opportunity that exists right now to turn criticism of business coaching into compliments for business coaching. Having identified the opportunity and the importance of ethics and the highest levels of personal conduct to business coaching, Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers the following Ten Commitments to Ethics and Personal Conduct to help turn the criticism into compliments.

Commitment #1: Commit to maintaining the highest ethical standards with your clients.

Commitment #2: Commit to maintain the highest level of honesty & integrity with your clients.

Commitment #3: Commit to being responsible and to do no harm to your clients.

Commitment #4: Commit to always putting the interests of your client first.

Commitment #5: Commit to maintaining the strictest levels of confidentiality with your clients and their information.

Commitment #6: Commit to avoiding conflicts of interest when being engaged by clients that may be competitors.

Commitment #7: Commit to the highest ethical standards in all your marketing practices.

Commitment #8: Commit to always conduct yourself in a professional manner and to avoid inappropriate relations with your clients.

Commitment #9: Commit to maintaining the highest ethical standards in all your public relations efforts concerning your business coaching practice.

Commitment #10: Commit to offering only those professional business coaching services where you have the appropriate experience and expertise.

Glenn Ebersole, Jr. is a multi-faceted professional, who is recognized as a visionary, guide and facilitator in the fields of business coaching, marketing, public relations, management, strategic planning and engineering. Glenn is the Founder and Chief Executive of two Lancaster, PA based consulting practices: The Renaissance Group, a creative marketing, public relations, strategic planning and business development consulting firm and J. G. Ebersole Associates, an independent professional engineering, marketing, and management consulting firm. He is a Certified Facilitator and serves as a business coach and a strategic planning facilitator and consultant to a diverse list of clients. Glenn is also the author of a monthly newsletter, “Glenn’s Guiding Lines – Thoughts From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach” and has published more than 225 articles on business.

Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to commit to the highest levels of ethical conduct in your business. If you would like to learn more about how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in creating, enhancing and/or fostering an environment that promotes ethical behavior and the highest standards of honesty & integrity within your business, please visit Glenn Ebersole through his web site.

To find out more about the benefits & rewards of effectively working with a strategic thinking business coach, please visit Glenn Ebersole through his web site.

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“What business owner hasn’t been subjected to a brazen “”The customer is always right!”" thrown their way during the course of their working days? Whether you’re in retail, mail order or are Internet-based, and regardless of what you sell, you are going to hear this more often than you’d like to. So how do you deal with it? Do you cave each time something unrealistic or outside of your policy is demanded of you?

Here’s the deal: Every human on earth shares a lot of behavioral traits, which is why when things are good or bad to any degree, we can make a pretty safe assumption on how someone will act. When things are good, it’s universal to smile, right? Yelling and shouting are behaviors that pretty much guarantee something’s not going well. Sure, we all have variations and that’s what makes us special and different — but overall, we can’t escape the fact that we’re pretty predictable in a lot of ways.

Back to business. All of us business owners have also been customers, so the first thing to do when confronted with a belligerent or upset customer is to throw yourself into their shoes and forget that you’re the business owner. Listen to their complaint IN FULL, even if the first few minutes are grating your nerves because they’re overly emotional and attacking your character (which will happen when people act out of emotion.) Focus on the facts: Did they order something from you that was never sent, even after 2 weeks of waiting, when your policy is to ship within 48 hours? Did they send something back for a refund and have proof it was sent, but 3 months later their credit card still hasn’t been credited by you? Or were they confronted with an obnoxious salesperson who refused to help them in your store and instead was glued to the phone? In the grand picture of life, none of this is grounds for a public beheading — but, at that moment the customer is feeling taken advantage of by YOU. Mistakes happen every day, but sometimes one mistake will happen to catch a live wire, so to speak. And now you have to figure out what to do.

If what happened really and truly was an oversight, just fess up. You’re human and your customer will appreciate hearing it. Let them know you’re sorry, there was a shipping/billing/clerical error and you would like to fix it for them. Tell them first what you are going to do. Then, ask them what else you can do to make it better. Chances are, the only thing they really want is what should be coming to them — maybe a refund, or the product they already paid money for, or some basic customer service from the sales staff. Most people feel guilty even asking for extras they didn’t rightfully earn. But then you can over-deliver for them to make up for it; simply let them know you’ll be happy to overnight the missing course to them at no extra cost, and to make up for the trouble you’d like to throw in a special bonus trinket (this depends on what you sell, of course). Or even though you got the item back a day or two late, you’ll credit them because they’ve purchased from you before. Or you’d like to assign a special sales member to cater to only them and an extra 20% off if they come back to your store this Saturday. These things are all most likely outside of your standard policy, and that’s exactly what will help smooth any hard feelings over with the customer — if they were really acting on good intentions.

Believe it or not, if you run a reputable company you will rarely encounter a vicious, nasty thief only wanting to bleed your company dry. Those are easy to spot, because nothing you offer to do (short of handing a blank check to them and asking them to fill out how much they want) will appease them. Unjustified accusations, threats, and bullying are not standard customer behaviors — and because of that, you shouldn’t reward those types of people by accommodating them. You’ll be paving the way for others just like them to target your company because you’ll develop a reputation for being ‘scam-able’ — and they’ll spread the word to everyone. You would be amazed at how many blogs and forums exist with people who spend months on end just learning how to scam businesses… and looking for their next target.

So is the customer always right? Somebody who takes a chance on your company with their hard-earned money deserves the benefit of the doubt. If they prove otherwise, you reserve the right not to do business with them anymore. Again, you’ll be surprisingly pleased at how easy it is to maintain good customer relations as long as you’re running your company legally and ethically. The ‘bad seeds’ will come around every so often, but your good, solid customers more than make up for those.

Sonja Vukas for Platinum Acquisitions, INC

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You might think that it’s a no-brainer why one should live an honest life. But it’s apparent to me that a life of integrity is the exception rather than the rule. How many people do you know who are honest all the time?

We could make a case about the morality and the “rightness” of living honestly. Religious leaders have been advocating this for thousands of years. It’s doubtful that even they could provide a true model of integrity.

I believe in the moral and ethical value of integrity but I also think there are very practical and worthwhile reasons for living an impeccable life. Here are ten:

1. Trust. In order to be successful in business or hold a responsible job, a person must have a reputation of honesty. Resources are not entrusted to people who have proven themselves as untrustworthy.

2. Good Health. I have no research to support this, but I’d be willing to bet that people who tell the truth are healthier. They have less concern, less stress and feel better about themselves. This has to translate into better health.

3. Pride. I’ve yet to meet a liar who has any real pride in themselves. Any good leadership training will stress the importance and value of having pride in what you do and who you are. If your reputation is grounded in deception, your opinion of yourself is poor indeed. Being honest just plain feels good.

4. Peace of Mind. If you cheat on your income taxes, you may get away with it, but you’ll probably always worry that you’ll get audited and face fines, extra charges and even jail as a result. Your reputation would also be tarnished. When you deal honestly, you have peace of mind. It’s impossible to worry and be happy at the same time.

5. Remembering. It’s been said that no one has a good enough memory to be a good liar. When you don’t tell the truth, you have to INVENT it. When you do, you’ll often be asked to recall your rendition of the truth, and you may not be able to do so because you forgot what you said. You KNOW the truth, but you can’t remember your version of it. Very embarrassing. Besides, it’s hard work to continually come up with false stories.

6. Good Sleep. If you lie-unless you have no conscience at all-you’ll often lose sleep because of your fears of being found out. Your worry and your guilt will keep you awake. A good night’s sleep is one of life’s many pleasures and honest people sleep better.

7. Confidence. Many people have excellent “bull” detectors. They know-at least at some level-when you’re being fake. If telling lies is your modus operandi, you know that these people will often see though your façade. There’s no way to have real confidence in oneself when you’re walking on “bull”.

8. Good Relationships. Relationships are the jewels of our lives. Some would argue that relationships ARE our lives. And breeches in trust are the death knell of relationships. When trust is gone, there is no foundation upon which to build. Relationships lacking in trust seem hollow and shallow. They lack joy.

9. Legal Problems. We don’t have to look very far to see the legal trouble people get themselves into from dishonesty. Lying in a court of law or to an officer of the law is literally AGAINST the law. Conversely, if you have no secrets, you can rest easy and its hard for anyone to blackmail you.

10. It Doesn’t Work. All too often our deceptions and duplicity are discovered. In the information age in which we live, it’s even more likely that lies will sooner or later be seen for what they are. Dishonesty is just plain inefficient.

The right thing to do is seldom the easy thing to do. But it’s worth it.

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Tags: business, coaching, ethics, personal, work

Every Monday night a group of 7 committed individuals who are considered to be business coaches, executive coaches and business consultants meet via teleconferencing to mastermind. During these 90 minute masterminding sessions, weekly successes and missed opportunities are shared. We learn so much from each other. For reinventing the wheel is truly a waste of time.

The mental energy and output from this masterminding process is incredible, but the email threads that are shared provided even greater opportunity for reflection and learning. One of the coaches revealed a conversation that he had with another business coach who belonged to a local chapter of a national coaching association.

During their conversation, the other coach made the statement that “”executive or business coaches who coach other business or executive coaches were preying on their own by taking advantage of all the problems currently existing within the business coaching industry.”"

Everyone within this mastermind group has head similar statements before, but my enlightened colleague took this opportunity to truly reveal the ethics of this coach. So he replied, “”Gee, you make that sound like a piranha preying on their young.”" The other coach responded, “”Well isn’t it?”"

My colleague continued with “”I guess that assumes that we either prey on our own if we work with coaches, or, instead we prey on our other clients, and the latter must be OK. And does that mean that coaches just prey on the weak?”"

The coach who started the conversation staggered backward, stammered a bit and said, “”Well no. I do help my clients.”" At this moment, my coaching friend then asked the other coach, “”Does that mean that you are implying that I don’t help mine?”" Her response was, “”Of course not. Who are your clients?”"

Before my friend answered this question, he responded with a question, “”You said that you help your clients. Tell me, what kind of measurable differences do you provide to your clients.”" Again, she heed and hawed a bit, and answered, “”Well…….ummm……most of them get better.”" He quickly followed with “”How much better?”"

The coach responded with “”I have so many different clients that I really have no idea.”"

Then my friend quietly concluded with “Well, let’s see I prey on a few small business clients who typically double their business in 3-4 weeks…..but of course I also have a few of my young that I prey on…coaches I mean. Would you say that preying on someone might have a different perspective depending on whether you are helping them to secure measurable results or not?”"

The other coach was stunned and walked away because she had no answer.

Given that research revealed less than 5% of all coaches make over $100,000 a year, my colleague’s niche market of helping other coaches is valid. What also makes this coach different as well as the other 6 coaches in this mastermind group is that everyone can share actual measurable results. For their ethics and values are all about delivering a positive return on investment for their coaching services. Without such core values, why would anyone hire any of us?

The simple reason is that most coaches fail to earn more than $100,000, fail to have more than 20 clients during the course of their practice is because they cannot consistently deliver measurable results. This failure is truly one of ethics and core values. So the final question is: Are your ethics as a business coach centered around just helping people or securing measurable and sustainable results?

Leanne Hoagland-Smith, M.S. is a business coach and executive coach with offices in Indianapolis and near Chicago. She writes, speaks and coaches people in businesses to quickly double or triple results through the creation of an executable strategic plan along with the necessary leadership skills “”to pull it off.”"

One quick question,if you could secure one new client or breakthrough that one roadbloack holding you back from success, what would that mean to you? Then, take a risk and give me, Leanne, a call at 219.759.5601 to experience incredible results.

Visit this site and explore everything from free articles to connecting with Leanne.

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