Coaching During Covid—How Coaching Needs Have Changed

We’re already a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, and it has reshaped our world in every aspect; every industry, every area of business, and of life has had to adjust to our new normal.

Covid has brought on a multitude of new problems for everyone—on every forefront of their lives.

With the public’s problems and needs changing, business coaching in the time of covid has risen to the challenge and become a beacon of hope to those industries and individuals struggling to survive this crisis.

Coaching Needs Have Changed

From the start of Covid 19, we have all faced new obstacles in our personal and professional lives. From adjusting to changes in our workplace to coping with our new living situations, people have flocked to coaching with new problems brought on by our new normal.

Business Coaching for Adjusting to WFH

Before 2020, WFH was an acronym that nobody knew, but now we are all very familiar with it. While at first, it might have seemed fun and exciting to work in our PJs and skip the morning commute to work, we quickly found out it came with its challenges.

It has become a sink or swim situation; with the world changing so quickly; people need to adapt their resources to these changes and implement effective solutions to shift their work from a physical workspace to the virtual realm.

Small business owners had to quickly figure out how they would conduct contact-less deliveries and digitize their operation, restaurants have had to revamp everything from their menu to their customer service safety, high school teachers or people with office jobs had to figure out how they would stay on top of their work and collaborate with their teams virtually, independent contractors had to shift their whole operation to ensure clients and partners felt safe continuing their services.

The transition to WFH provided a steep learning curve for most, which led many of these people to seek out help from a professional business coach.

Mellissa's Story

I want to use the example of my friend Mellissa who had the resources to invest in a coaching expert when the pandemic first shut down the country.

Pre-Covid

Melissa is an independent insurance sales rep. Before the pandemic, she conducted appointments in her office or her client’s homes; she prospected mainly by door knocking and was starting to train her team of agents to start running appointments for her.

The covid 19 impacts on her business essentially closed the doors to running appointments and finding new clients. She became overwhelmed and was terrified of not being able to sell and make a living.

New Business Approaches

Melissa’s business coach created a coaching strategy and specific steps to follow, like a roadmap to adjust to the new normal.

They worked on a daily schedule that kept her on top of everything. Her coach instructed her to plan to keep training her agents through Zoom and a follow-up schedule to keep them motivated and relay status updates.

Melissa and her coach created an effective phone script to begin prospecting and finding new clients through phone calls and social media and then practicing how to make those inquiries stick.  

The most difficult part, says Melissa, is that most of her clients are seniors and don't have the mental resources to use laptops. So, her coach helped her create a PDF that the seniors would receive before the video appointment to help them in their learning to access Zoom.

Accountability was a key part of Mellissa’s success with business coaching. Now that she was working within the freedom of her home, she needed to practice organizational efficiency with her coach's help and for someone to hold her accountable daily to follow through on her new plan of action.

Mellissa’s experience with business coaching during Covid 19 is not unusual. Most people needed help brainstorming new ideas and the advice and support of a professional with experience in this crisis season.

Executive Coaching for Virtual Leadership

Organizations, teams, companies big and small everywhere need to think about how their leaders will continue to act as leaders, teachers, and mentors for their employees—from a distance and through a computer screen.

Like any crisis, this has been a critical time for anyone at the helm of an organization to implement effective leadership to support employees, keep them motivated, united, and working towards the same vision—despite limited resources.

Leadership coaching has been instrumental for countless businesses and companies in aiding team leaders, managers, and CEOs in keeping their organizations and employees intact and thriving beyond the pandemic.

Leadership Coaching Goals

Most executive coaches' main goal when guiding their clients during these turbulent times was to show them how to take the challenges the pandemic brought and see them as opportunities for growth and unity.

Leaders sought out teachers like executive coaches for help in directing their employees to collaborate virtually. They focused on practicing on different virtual collaboration platforms and resources to choose the best fit. Furthermore, they worked intently on mastering every facet of these platforms to use to their advantage.

Instead of hiding their problems on the back burner and waiting for the storm to pass, leaders have sought out the guidance of executive coaches to act as teachers to help with tough decision making and support them to take the innovative action they need to transform the team—instead of looking for ways to cut corners, cut costs, and sit and hope for things to improve.

Leaders are the people who dictate the energy and motivation in any team. Executive coaches doubled down on helping their clients inspire virtually—using technological tools at their disposal to inspire motivation, collaboration, creativity, and commitment—which is not easy to do on your own.

Life Coaching for Covid 19 Stress

It’s true that now more than ever, more and more people are admitting to feeling burned out. According to researchers at Harvard, burnout among most working Americans is really bad.

This is especially true for working parents who have had their kids at home for the past year and have had to share their work environment with their kids' virtual schooling and step in as teachers for them.

While increased time with a partner might sound like a lovely opportunity at first, quarantining with a partner for a long extent can bring on increased strain on the relationship and each other mental health.

Similarly, quarantining alone can also seem like an opportunity for self-improvement, but it doesn’t come without its own challenges to your mental health.

Whatever your living situation, stay-at-home orders have depleted people’s energy and motivation. A repetitive daily routine spent indoors has led people into a deep depression during this pandemic, driving them to contact a life coach's support.

Life Coaching Approaches

Life coaches have used their coaching sessions to give their clients tips on finding joy and peace in their quarantined life. Learning to find a way to separate things like work time, recreational time, and rest time is an important part of staying sane.

Learning how to process the unique stress that comes from finding a way to protect yourself and your loved ones from a virus is also a key part of what life coaches are teaching their clients.

Group video calls in which life coaches gather all of their clients and give them space within a group coaching session to share their experiences with life in quarantine has also proven to be an excellent way to start the conversation on healing and looking ahead with more hope.

For those who have increased economic stress due to a job loss or reduced income, business coaching and covid shouldn’t have to cancel each other out. Sites like CoCaptain offer affordable coaching services for every budget.

Bottom Line

Although the coaching industry exists to improve clients' professional and personal lives, coaching through covid has crystalized the importance of using coaching in times of crisis to aid in a client learning to trust in themselves and tackle obstacles by taking them as opportunities.

With all of these new problems brought to them by their clients, coaches have created an arsenal of new tips, strategies, and programs to best help their clients.

If you are still having trouble with something in your professional or personal life that the virus has impacted, reach out to the team at CoCaptain, who has been coaching people throughout the pandemic and will continue coaching people post covid.

How has the virus affected something in your life? Start the conversation on how you think a business coach could help with these changes: