Last week, I attended a business development training offered by iPEC Coaching for its graduates. At the beginning, Bruce Schneider, the founder of iPEC Coaching, asked how many of us belong to a mastermind group that's dedicated to building our businesses. Surprisingly, very few coaches raised their hands. I myself belong to a coaches mastermind group that meets once a month. We hone our skills as coaches and share resources for building our businesses. It's wonderful to have my mastermind group keeping me motivated and updated on the coaching business.

One of the exercises we did was to identify our key talents and skills in running a successful business. Four key areas were identified: speaking, networking, marketing and sales. These are the four basic skills or areas an entrepreneur needs to be successful.

Next step, we were asked to identify our #1 skill and the one area that we have the most challenge with, and wrote them on our name tags.

We all have at least one or two things that we can do effortlessly. Perhaps you are a great public speaker. Perhaps you are an amazing "connector", a brilliant marketer or a convincing salesperson. Oftentimes we take our gifts and talents for granted, because they come so easily for us. We underestimate our gifts and talents, because we can do them effortlessly. We thought "everyone else" could do just the same. It's often when we hear others' compliments over and over again, that it begins to dawn on us that perhaps we do have some unique skills that others don't possess.

At that training, we were asked to walk around the room and find people with complementary skills. We were to find people we could partner for projects, mastermind groups, or even become business partners. The point is, instead of trying to be everything and do everything ourselves, it's much more effective, not to mention more enjoyable, if we could just focus on doing what we do best, and find someone else to do what we're not so good at. That way, everyone gets to leverage his/her unique gifts and talents, and everyone wins.

So, we were walking around the room looking at everyone's name tags, trying to find those who possess skills we don't have. Soon it was obvious to everyone that we've got a roomful of speakers, and very few salespeople. That didn't come as such a shock to me. Well, think about it, we are all coaches, and most coaches are also speakers. However, it presented a great challenge not to have enough salespeople in the room for us to partner with. We all got the point. Obviously, we all need to reach outside of the coaches community and look for other qualified marketing and sales professionals to complete our mastermind & business teams.

So, this is what I've been working on lately - looking for strategic alliances as well as admin help to complete my team.

How about you? Have you identified your key strengths? Are you leveraging your unique gifts & talents? Do you have your A-Team assembled?

P.S. This post is included in the following blog carnivals:

Twelfth Edition of Carnival of Improving Life hosted at ImprovedLife.ca

Carnival of Healing #140: Questions to Ask Yourself is hosted by the carnival owner Phyl at the Carnival homepage About.com About Holistic Healing.

Labels: accountability, coaching, getting support, mastermind, personal development, productivity, stress management, success, time management