Elevate your Career: The Power of Coaching

In your personal life, when you’re in a rut, you might seek therapy. When you’re looking to move yourself out of a professional rut—or improve a particular skill to get you to the next level—you turn to professional coaching.

Anything you need help with, you can get coaching for—to help you with a goal you want to achieve, to remove a barrier from a situation you’re facing, or to focus on an area you want to improve, says Barbara Burgess, a consultant at Corluma Consulting.

When Kate Dockins, MS, CAE, senior vice president of membership experiences for Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) and executive director of Feeding Tomorrow Fund, was moving into a more strategic role, her CEO suggested she meet with a professional coach to help her make that switch from the more tactical side, where she had spent most of her career.

IFT already had a relationship with the coaching group, so they matched Dockins with three names, and she did informational interviews with the three, eventually choosing to work with Burgess.

Dockins went in with several goals. The first was being able to demonstrate increased proficiency in executive briefing “I wanted to demonstrate efficiency in sharing information and offering strategies, especially tying recommendations to strategy,” she says.

Second, while shifting into a more strategic role, she was developing more skills to expect and empower the team to drive outcomes.  Ownership did not mean doing everything but instead developing a team to do it.

And third, which was her personal goal, although she had experience and comfort in supervision and coaching, she needed to strengthen the management piece of holding people accountable.

What does a coach do?

All coaches will help you tackle your goals differently. Burgess has her clients do a life-mapping exercise, that walks through life’s milestones from early childhood through current career. Through that, Burgess identifies themes and provides scenarios to help you understand how your current mindset might be limiting and how to reframe that mindset to help you get what you want.

Through this exercise, Dockins learned that she often observes first, then acts, which could be perceived as not stepping into or leading with a strategic mindset. Burgess challenged her to be one of the first three people to speak in upcoming meetings, and demonstrate curiosity and active engagement.

In addition, Dockins, along with Burgess, developed an individual development plan. Then Burgess did a 360 evaluation of Dockins, with peers, key volunteer leaders and her CEO.

The benefit of a coach, Dockins says, is that although the CEO was her mentor and boss, she now had another sounding board to thoughtfully consider areas of growth and opportunity.

Finding the right fit

There are a few key pieces to finding the right fit. The first is knowing what you want to get out of the coaching experience. According to Sandy Stansfield, director of member and industry research at the International Coaching Federation, there are executive coaches, business coaches, life coaches, relationship coaches, etc.

Dockins suggests that you understand the organization’s needs and align your goals to accelerate the work, as well as be prepared to be vulnerable. “You need to show up prepared to work and to hold a mirror up to yourself, which was confronting and also deeply impactful,” she says.

Stansfield suggests not only knowing what you want to get out of it, but also your goals for the experience. These can help you narrow down what type of coach you need.

Joel DiGirolamo, vice president of research and data science at ICF, also suggests knowing how you would like to work with a coach. For instance, do you want to be challenged or are you looking for someone to walk the path with you? Some coaches might be more challenging and hard hitting and some might be more empathetic.

Do you want someone from a different industry background than yours to get an outside perspective?

ICF and Burgess suggest interviewing at least three coaches to find the best fit.

Have your objectives ready, Burgess says, and ask them each about times they’ve helped others reach similar objectives to yours and what their approach is.

“Find out how long it would take to help your reach your objectives,” Burgess says. “Good coaches will be honest on a timeframe and let you know what can be done. You’re looking for honesty and authenticity.”

And don’t discount the chemistry check. Dockins was drawn to Burgess because of her self-description as pragmatic, and Dockins was looking for tangible outcomes.

“Pay attention to your body,” Burgess says. “Did you feel more hopeful after the call or intimidated?”

And be prepared that what you thought was the issue you wanted to work on might not end up being the issue holding you back. “You might start off working on X,” says DiGirolamo, “and it could be that Y is the issue.”

As for Dockins, after her year of coaching was over, she asked to extend the relationship another six months to have a monthly check-in and someone to turn to if she had a specific issue to talk out. “It’s been a pivot point in my career,” Dockins says, “and transformative for me.”

For more resources on finding the right fit for a coach and interview questions to ask, visit the Find a Coach section of ICF’s website, www.coachingfederation.org.