Kelly Laverty is a business coach in Calgary with FocalPoint Coaching. He recently won the company’s Coaching Practice of the Year Award.
Kelly Laverty, a business coach in Calgary with FocalPoint Coaching, recently won the company’s Coaching Practice of the Year Award.
Calgary’s Business: Describe what you do as a business coach.
Laverty: My role as a business coach can best be described as becoming a partner with the business leader. The approach I take encompasses a holistic view of the business with the business leader to diagnose the challenges they are experiencing. My responsibilities in the partnership are to guide, support, and teach my clients appropriate time-tested techniques and methods that will have them achieve the goals they never dreamed possible. I also provide the necessary focus when my client, the leader, becomes distracted by activities best executed by others in the business.
CB: Who needs a coach?
Laverty: Many business leaders engage a business coach for a variety of reasons. Among the most common that I have experienced over the last 10 years include:
- successful business leaders wanting a new perspective on how to move their business forward;
- business owners wanting to set a new direction and set measurable goals for their business;
- entrepreneurs looking to empower their team and keep them accountable for their actions;
- organizations needing direction on vision, mission, and long-range strategies;
- business leaders wanting more balance between work and the rest their life.
Every famous athlete, every famous performer has a coach who helps them put perspective on their performance; successful business owners should do the same.
CB: What are the key things that make up a successful leader and business person?
Laverty: A successful business leader is one who has a well-defined vision for the company and then goes on to passionately develop, communicate and execute the strategy he or she has designed to achieve these goals. An effective leader must also be able to articulate why he or she does what they do for stakeholders. A leader must be able to inspire, challenge, and acknowledge team members to be successful and to allow them to maximize their contribution to the company.
CB: How did you get into business coaching?
Laverty: I spent more than 30 years in the corporate world acquiring diverse and significant experience in profitably growing key parts of the business. I was introduced to FocalPoint Business Coaching, where I discovered the knowledge and experience that I had could be of value to complement the expertise other leaders have in their business. The opportunity to support the small-medium business segment, which drives our economy, was too tempting to pass up. It is very gratifying to see the smiles, get the handshakes, and receive the expressions of gratitude when you have helped make real change in a business leader’s life – it makes it all worthwhile.
CB: How do you create a workplace environment that leads to success for a company?
Laverty: There are several components that should be present to have an organization achieve success in today’s business world:
- Purpose – Defining the purpose of the business and knowing precisely how its products and/or services make the customer’s business or life more successful.
- Goals – Establishing and communicating key goals for the business with each department and employee having defined targets which support them.
- Empowerment – Leaders must effectively delegate and empower members of the organization to perform the roles they have been assigned. Successful leaders coach their employees to solve the problems that fall within their scope of responsibilities.
- Accountability – One of the most challenging attributes to master in running a successful company is ensuring all team members, including the leader, are accountable for their performance in the business. Accountability fosters positive attitudes and contribution to the business. A lack of accountability is counterproductive and leads to complacency within the company.
- Measured performance – A successful business environment establishes key results areas as well as key performance indicators to regularly measure the progress being made toward achieving its goals. This enables the leader to take appropriate and proactive action when the measurements indicate there are deviations from the plans that have been set.
– Mario Toneguzzi
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