Businessman collaborating with team

SUCCESS STORY: EXECUTIVE COACHING

Paul was a young, well-liked, bright star in his organization. His natural leadership style was humble, lacking authority and gravitas.

Paul was to be promoted to senior leadership, so he needed to transition from individual contributor and project lead to true executive, engendering respect from his peers and superiors, to fulfill his charter. He needed a new toolset to navigate the new world he found himself in.

He came to us to solve the challenges of how to:

  • Get his point across in highly-charged negotiations with authority, grace, and ease;
  • Gain the respect of his peers and increase his level of influence in political and high-profile strategic decision-making;

  • Remove himself from day-to-day tasks to leverage his strategic role effectively, including from a variety of legacy projects to focus on the charter in his new role and organization;
  • Evangelize his ideas and plans to senior leadership to acquire resources for key initiatives; and
  • Transform resistance among senior leadership about the group he was leading, a new discipline for the organization embracing concepts foreign to his traditional employer.

We focused on these areas:

  • Role-playing tough conversations and preparing speaking points and presentations to be compelling, comprehensive, commanding, collaborative, and authentic;
  • Reverse engineering successful leadership experiences he’d observed in executives he admired, and creating a set of actions and mindsets for him to use in high-profile, high-stakes situations;
  • Implementing a daily mindfulness practice to calm his mind and harness his observation powers;
  • Run experiments in various situations to see how he could best insert his perspective and have it land effectively with his peers;
  • Upgrading his networking within the organization by conducting drop-in meetings with his peers and workshops with business partner constituents to gain feedback on his team’s work; and
  • Building his visibility outside by attending and participating in industry conferences.

The Results:

In six months, Paul was able to:

  • Upgrade his wardrobe to reflect his new role, including meeting with a tailor to help him create a wardrobe to look the part.
  • Participate in a panel presentation at an industry conference showcasing his organization’s leadership in a key area of differentiation.
  • Remove himself from day-to-day work 80% of the time by bringing in an employee to be next-in-command and mentoring him to take over many of the responsibilities so he could focus on more strategic activities.
  • Within a year, he had delivered his first keynote presentation at an executive conference, to rave reviews.

Read More
Business woman outside looking up at buildings

SUCCESS STORY: CAREER TRANSITION

Jessica was frustrated in her current career, and wanted to make a change.

She wanted to get out of the field she was in as she did not feel meaning and fulfillment in the type of work she was doing or in the industry. The problem was, she did not know what she was good at, and which direction to head in her career to find more fulfillment and success.

She was overwhelmed, lacked focus and didn’t know where to start. She had come to the point where although she was fearful of change, she was more afraid of waking up a year later in the same place.

She did not want to make mistakes, lacked confidence, and was uncomfortable networking to find a new role in a new field. Plus, it had been years since she had interviewed for a job; she felt rusty and ill at ease talking about herself.

She came to us to solve the challenges of how to:

  • Clarify what she wanted from the next chapter of her career;
  • Crystallize what she was good at, and how to leverage it in her positioning, and her next role;

  • Determine a direction and role that would be fulfilling, use her talents, and fit her interests;
  • Overcome feelings of low self-confidence;
  • Upgrade her personal positioning to target her new career direction; and
  • Familiarize herself with a successful job search and have accountability to move on that front.

We focused on these areas:

  • Clarifying her vision for a career that would be a fit, one that honored her values and leveraged her talents in an environment where she thrived and in a way that brought satisfaction;
  • Exploring career options via informational interviews and research, determining the match for each option against her ideal, culminating in a decision of best career direction;
  • Practicing mindfulness and meditation techniques to help her become more facile at grounding herself in the present and detaching from destructive thought that was decreasing her ability to take action in the direction of her professional dreams;
  • Identifying core competencies and powerful language to use in her resume and LinkedIn profile to showcase accomplishments and present her as a powerful candidate for her desired role; and
  • Developing interview scripts and role playing various interview and networking situations to increase her self-confidence and eloquence, while maintaining her authentic voice.

The Results:

Within 120 days, Jessica:

  • Was focused, calm, and clear about her career target.
  • Had professional materials (resume, LinkedIn, headshot) that told a compelling story about her background and qualifications.
  • Could present herself in interviews effectively, showcasing her skills and experience in a way that landed with prospective employers.
  • Fielded multiple offers, negotiated the best deal, and accepted a position that delighted her.

Read More
Business man headshot

SUCCESS STORY: POSITIONING

Jason was eager to transition from his role in the investment arena into a new career in corporate business strategy.

Although his career target was fairly clear to him and he was already networking, he was not getting interviews and was having trouble making a compelling connection for potential employers to consider him a serious candidate. He suspected he would be a good fit, but was not sure how to package himself effectively to both acquire his next role and set him up for advancement over time into increasingly responsible roles in corporate strategy.

He came to us to solve the challenges of how to:

  • Tell his story effectively to describe his background and how he could contribute in a corporate strategy role;
  • Translate his skillset into a compelling package, making him an appealing, and qualified, candidate for his target employers; and
  • Determine an appropriate job title/level to pinpoint as the right entry point for his next role.

We focused on these areas:

  • Clarifying his favorite skills and talents, and matching them with what the market required for his targeted role.
  • Reverse engineering job descriptions to strip them down to core competencies, and then mapping his experience to reflect similar language.
  • Crafting a streamlined, modern resume, LinkedIn profile, and professional headshot showcasing his relevant experience, highlighting achievements he was most proud of, and framing him as a credible, qualified candidate for corporate strategy roles.
  • Strategizing his job search, educating him how best to network to land the role he wanted.
  • Increasing his professional self-confidence about his skills and experience, so that he had authentic, natural scripts to share in networking and interviewing situations.
  • Better develop his story and verbalize his accomplishments.

The Results:

Within 90 days, Jason landed a corporate strategy role in a software company, performing quantitative and qualitative evaluation of potential acquisitions, partnering with business teams on strategy development, and leading cross-functional teams to facilitate stakeholder communications and engagement.

Within six additional months, he was asked to take on a more senior leadership role, with a significant promotion.

Read More

Don’t miss the latest news & events