ENSURING YOU FIND THE RIGHT MENTOR

FORMING A BUSINESS ASSOCIATION OR JOINT VENTURE

South Africa has some wonderful inspirational individuals who are successful in assisting you in developing yourself, your career and your financial status. The sphere of Personal Development is increasingly under the spotlight as people realise that attitude comes from within.

The scary fact is that we will test-drive a car before investing our money, but we tend to take people at face value. When in actual fact, investing in our self worth is far more important. The words “Life Skills Coach”, “Transformational Speaker”, or “Self help Specialist” do not automatically qualify someone as credible, or as someone who you should allow automatic access to your emotions.

We spend large amounts of time on research before choosing a wedding venue or a car dealership, yet we willy-nilly hand our emotions and/or personal selves over to a complete stranger. Seeing someone’s face on adverts does not mean that they are worthy to be a custodian of your inner emotions or business growth.

The following are pointers for people seeking a committed relationship with a coach or Personal Development Specialist. These are my tips to test-drive your potential Coach:

1. Check their qualifications; confirm that they still have a business relationship with their trainer. Have they maintained the criteria stipulated by their trainer on the use of their training materials and behaved in an ethical manner? An emotionally mature person will maintain a respectful relationship with their trainer and will possibly regard them as a mentor.

2. Have they built up a good brand name or do they constantly change their business identity. Do a web search and see how successful they have been. Remember to check on previous names or entities. A Coach is selling themselves, their emotional maturity and their problem solving skills. If you are being guided by someone on an emotional level that has problematic relationships and battles to sustain projects, you will most likely see yourself sliding backwards.

3. What community projects have they been involved in? Have they stuck with them or moved on? Have they achieved success with charity projects before or did the projects go wrong? Be cautious if the reason for the failure of the project is that it was lack of funding, lack of public faith, bad economy or bad business partners? A coach will understand the business principles of planning and therefore would have researched all of those things before starting.

4. Are they registered with a Coaching Association and are they accountable to an organisation? Will you have any recourse should anything go wrong?

5. Are they using qualified people to run courses on their behalf?

I believe that it takes commitment and persistence work to build business and personal credibility, and the same can be said to achieve success.
The above questions will either assure you that your new partner is the right person for the job, or have you reaching for your takkies pronto.

Written by Karen Kelly
Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape
082 320 3154
www.xtremeacademy.co.za
karen@xtremeacademy.co.za

Karen Kelly is an Accredited Emotional Intelligence Trainer and a Qualified Coach, previous Cosmopolitan Mover & Shaker Finalist, BWA member and Founder of The Xtreme Woman Club. She has been self employed since 1994, first as the owner of a successful national recruitment agency and now as the owner of The Xtreme Learning Academy.