by Caroline Leach | May 31, 2020 | Careers, Leadership, Social Media
A heartening trend is shaping up on LinkedIn.
Multiple people are posting with offers of helping others during these turbulent times.
It may be a LinkedIn reference for someone who lost their job due to the global pandemic. It may be an introduction to someone else in their network. It may simply be encouragement to keep pushing beyond rejection. It may be valuable ways of fighting the racism that is front and center in our national consciousness.
Shelley Zalis, CEO of The Female Quotient, recently posted an invitation inviting people to contact her for help and connections to her vast network.
Savannah Rayat offered to help people she knows who have been laid off, by putting them in touch with a company or sending an email putting in a good word for someone.
Randa Hinton and Anika Fisch are launching a new podcast. It’s called Opportunity Unknown They’re helping fellow job seekers by chronicling their journey as recent grads searching for meaningful jobs during a pandemic.
Karyn Spencer and Charlene Wheeless have offered their perspectives on what’s happening in the aftermath of this past week’s horrific events towards Black people in our country.
Men are part of these dialogues as well, and I applaud their efforts to help others navigate these difficult times.
As I sort through the truly disturbing news in our country this weekend, I am heartened by pictures of police in Camden, New Jersey; Flint, Michigan; Santa Cruz, Calif.; and other communities nationwide.
They are joining arms with protesters, sometimes taking a knee, and peacefully de-escalating tensions. This is so important to help us start listening to each other and making meaningful change.
As for me, I invite people in my network to reach out if I can be of help. I’m happy to make introductions, share perspectives, and listen to your journey.
Each of us has something to offer others at this time. It’s especially powerful if we help someone who is different in some way from ourselves. What are you doing to help make the world a better and more just and equitable place?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 26, 2019 | Careers, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
The end of the year can bring a lot of “shoulds” into our professional and personal lives.
We should do whatever it takes to hit those fourth-quarter operating goals. We should get every last item on our endless lists completed. We should count our abundant blessings on Thanksgiving and on every day of the year. We should enjoy the many holiday celebrations with our colleagues, friends and family.
Except, what if you’re not feeling it?
What if you’re not enjoying — or at least making it through, with a smile on your face — everything on your calendar? What if you feel overwhelmed? What if you feel tired, or lonely, or longing for some quiet time where you can just be? What if you feel angry, or afraid, or just plain sad about something (or many somethings)?
For my Thanksgiving week blog post, I was eager to share something inspiring and uplifting. A few drafts are still languishing in my files, unfinished. They felt forced. Inauthentic. And unlikely to inspire anyone.
So I eased up on my self-imposed deadline. I let myself play around with ideas. I let my mind simply be for a while.
And it came to me while I was driving today.
What do you do when you’re not feeling it?
At lunch with a group of people I met recently, one person said with a sigh that she just wasn’t feeling it that day.
Support immediately came from the people around the table, in the form of questions. “What are you experiencing?” one person asked. “What seems to be the trouble?” another asked. “What do you want?” yet another asked.
Bit by bit, the story flowed. Speaking it aloud began to neutralize its grip. The space opened up to just be with it.
You may find yourself in spots where you’re not feeling it. Yet you may not feel it’s acceptable to share those feelings with others. You may not even to acknowledge them to yourself. If you’re in a leadership role, you may feel pressure to maintain a positive demeanor, even if you feel miserable inside.
Being positive and uplifting others has been my north star as a leader. Emotions are contagious. It’s important for leaders to bring a realistic optimism, a can-do mindset, and an energetic environment to a team. That’s how I believe people do great work, enjoy the experience, and fulfill their deepest longings for purpose and meaning in their lives.
Yet, the leader has to feel it too. Authenticity has an important place in the mix. That can mean many things. It could be a willingness to experience discomfort and be okay with it. It might be a curiosity about what’s causing it. Or it could be reflecting on what’s important.
These are just a few things I learned from two intense November weekends with the Co-Active Training Institute. The co-active model focuses on “being in action … together.” With this series of coaching courses, I’m adding a fresh foundation to my business and leadership coaching business.
In addition to (hopefully) making me a more effective coach, there are some welcome side effects. It’s brought new perspectives to my social media consulting, my community involvement, and my family.
It also helped me identify three important questions for when you’re not feeling it.
What are you experiencing?
What’s happening with you right now? What else is going on? This is about creating space to simply be with the experience and acknowledge its presence in your life.
What’s important to you?
Not feeling it is an opportunity to step back and reflect on what’s important to you. What do you want? If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?
What do you want to be doing instead?
Maybe there’s a hunger in your soul to be doing something completely different. Perhaps you miss doing something you enjoyed earlier in your life, or there’s something new you want to try. What are they?
The same goes for your social media
Much of my writing focuses on how to build your career through social media. One of my first consulting clients said how excited he was to be getting consulting and coaching all in one from me. Consulting was expressly part of our work, but coaching was not explicitly in the mix. That experience was one of several catalysts for becoming a coach in an “official” sense. Thank you, and you know who you are. 😉
The co-active coaching model also helped me tap into some new wisdom about social media. If you’re not feeling it about a specific event or a certain post, don’t feel obligated to share it. It’s ideal to help your network by sharing the best of your perspective and expertise on social media. If that means skipping a post or not sticking to a schedule because they don’t feel right, that’s fine.
It’s okay — and even desirable — to post selectively, take a break for a while, or set aside a posting schedule. Yes, consistency is important on social media. And so is the quality of your content and the way you feel about sharing it. Like most things in life, it’s a balance.
And more importantly, what do you do when you’re not feeling it?
by Caroline Leach | Jul 22, 2019 | Careers, Change, Leadership, Work/Life
photo credit: iStock.com/wildpixel
“I’m in the process of changing my brand. I love what I do and I’m thinking about creating some new avenues for myself. I would love to get your thoughts. Let me know if you have some time to chat.”
“I appreciate your latest blog post, as it makes me contemplate my own situation. I think I’m making a difference in my work, but I’m under appreciated. I know you were in the corporate world for a long time, and I truly value your opinion.”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do next in my career. I’m focused on survival where I am, while feeling a bit of imposter syndrome. I want to make sure whatever it is I choose to do next is totally worthwhile. What do you think?”
These are a few samples of different notes I got this year from different people in different roles at different companies. Yet for all the differences, there’s a definite theme.
People ask for my advice on making changes in their professional lives. Whether it’s moving up where they are, shifting direction into a new area of interest, or clarifying if they’re really doing what they want to do, the obvious pattern finally hit me.
People want to know how to successfully navigate change, sometimes reinvent themselves into someone new, and make their professional lives more fulfilling.
Finding a Perfect Coach
Early in my corporate career, I wanted a coach. I was intrigued by leaders in business, sports and the arts who had coaches helping them be their best. I wanted one too.
I was looking for someone who could guide me in making difficult decisions. I wanted someone who could help focus my efforts. I was eager to achieve my initial career goal of becoming a VP of Corporate Communications.
But how to find one? It couldn’t be just anyone. It had to be someone who I felt a strong connection with. Someone who I felt really “got me.” Someone who could help me figure out the next steps on my path and nudge me in that direction.
The law of attraction came into play. It often does when you declare an intention, mentally file it away, and then subconsciously take steps toward it.
When I was a communications director in the early 2000s, my supervisor gave me an opportunity to attend a week-long leadership development program at the Center for Creative Leadership.
To say it was life changing is a major understatement. Along with fellow participants, I completed multiple leadership assessments, joined team-based activities to further uncover our leadership styles, and got one-on-one coaching.
My coach turned out to be the person I’d been looking for and more. We had an incredibly intense afternoon session. It uncovered some of my deepest fears and called into question many of the beliefs and assumptions I had let guide my career to that point.
At the time, I was struggling with integrating an ambitious corporate career with being a loving parent of two young children. I looked around the company and my community and didn’t see a lot of role models who were combining both. I felt isolated and alone, not to mention overwhelmed. I was almost ready to leave the corporate world to focus exclusively on parenting.
The only problem is that would have been a disastrous choice for me. My leadership profile is one who likes to be in charge – planning, building and orchestrating large-scale activities. (In the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, I’m an ENTJ, affectionately known as “the commander.”) I needed to figure out a way to make the work/life situation work for me, my family and my career.
And that’s what my coach helped me come to see. I was so happy with her guidance that we worked together for seven years. Sometimes I had a boss who approved a company payment for her services, and sometimes I paid on my own. Because it was just that valuable.
Either way, the impact was incalculable, both for me and the company where I worked. Within two years, I achieved my goal of becoming a VP of Corporate Communications. And I accomplished other important goals as well, although some still proved to be elusive.
Reaching a Painful Inflection Point
Fast forward another seven years and I found myself in another difficult place. “Bored and burned out” was how I described myself to a new coach. A life and leadership coach, Tina Quinn had long been someone I admired in my community. We connected through a friend who was trying to help me move forward with my life.
For a time, though, I resisted meeting with Tina. I just didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to confront the issues, because that would mean making a change. And change can be painful.
Although the funny thing about change is that in retrospect, I can say that every major change in my life has ultimately been a good one.
We began with my one-year goals and an assessment of my energy leadership, a tool that surfaced how I viewed my work and my life. From there, Tina and I explored ways I could change my view of the world and consciously choose to show up differently.
It’s thanks to this work that I’m where I am today. I’m still striving toward newer and invigorating goals and dreams. And I have a set of tools to better show up in the world and make the journey a more joyful one.
Navigating Waves of Change
In reflecting on change, I’m grateful for some of the changes in my own life. After a few difficult early years in the work world, I chose a new career in corporate communications and took a series of steps to get there.
When another employer was acquired, I had the opportunity to move into marketing analytics. And while I didn’t choose that role, it did give me the view of marketing I wanted.
More recently, I made the leap from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial life. I’m not sure I would have been able to take the steps I did without everything I learned in working with a coach. Talk about a life lesson in feeling the fear and doing it anyhow!
Along the way, I always enjoyed the opportunity to inspire and uplift others. One way I do that is through speaking.
One of my favorite volunteer roles in a philanthropic group called National Charity League was being the inspiration chair. I opened each meeting with encouraging words and stories to uplift fellow parents, professionals, and community leaders.
And my corporate roles gave me opportunities to help others with their development. It was deeply gratifying to put together the first-ever leadership development program, a week-long experience for top executives, at a former employer.
Later, I got to work with HR colleagues to create a marketing leadership development program, to develop future-focused skills among high-potential marketers.
When I was launching my business to write, consult, speak and teach about what successful people do on social media to build their careers, some of my colleagues and friends suggested that I offer coaching as well.
At first I resisted. It didn’t seem core to what I was doing in the social media space. And back to my ENTJ profile, I confess that sometimes I like being the field marshal, organizing and directing a team toward a common goal. Coaching felt a little bit behind-the-scenes to me.
And yet …
The requests kept coming. One of my first social media clients told me how excited he was to be getting social media advice and coaching all in one. Several other people wanted to bounce ideas off of me.
And I found I loved our conversations. It was energizing to help people solve problems in their work lives. I enjoyed asking questions that could help people see new possibilities for themselves and begin taking steps to get there.
Which is a long way of saying that I’m launching a new service with leadership coaching. The focus? Successfully navigating change and transition to achieve big goals.
Introducing a Coaching Practice to Help You Navigate Change
What does a coach do? There are many definitions. An especially good one comes from the International Coach Federation. ICF defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
With my background and experience, my focus is on helping people successfully navigate change in their professional lives. This includes:
- Changing careers by choice or by necessity
- Navigating a corporate merger or acquisition
- Moving up to the next level of performance and responsibility
- Managing life as a high-performing leader and a dedicated parent
- Leaping from the corporate world to the entrepreneurial life
If you’re contemplating how you can change, reinvent and transform your career, I’d love to hear from you. We can work together on a short- or long-term basis, depending on what you want to accomplish.
If it involves reinventing your personal brand, we can couple our work with a customized social media plan to launch and build your new brand.
And wherever you choose to navigate your career, I’m wishing you all the best on your journey!
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