Career & Leadership Coaching
My journey with finding a career leadership coach
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on …
NOTE : Today’s topic is not about technology but about Career & Leadership coaching. In today’s post I describe my thoughts prior to working with a Career and Leadership coach. As fate would have it, I was contemplating working with a coach, Mike Welsh who is now at Hudson Institute, wrote a post on an internal Berkeley MBA group offering to help. Ten weeks later here we are … If you are looking for an empathetic, kind coach with lots of experience, look no further! You can contact Mike at mike.welsh@hudsoninstitute.com. You will NOT be disappointed!
Meet Mike Welsh
Meet Mike Welsh
I thought I’d start off with Mike’s kindness. I (virtually) met Mike in 2016 when I’d reached out to him via an intro when he was at Intercom since I was interested in a Product Role there. Mike responded and we spoke about Intercom and Mike helped and followed through. While the role never worked out I always remembered Mike’s willingness to help!
When I saw Mike’s post on LinkedIn I reached out to him immediately, Mike responded immediately and suggested we setup time to chat (to assess whether I am even coachable! Turns out I’m not, Mike disagrees :)) I completed an intake form and after our intro conversation Mike and I started having a bi-weekly call. I’ll tease out below my experience, what you need to do, how to prepare and such but I think I’d like to step back a bit and talk about how I came to the conclusion that I need a coach.
How did I figure out that I needed a coach?
Over the past couple of years I have had so many LinkedIn requests from many Career & Leadership Coaches. I have never engaged (or almost never!). A lot of this was primarily because I lacked an understanding of what a coach could do and might help me accomplish. If I am to be honest, these were my own fears and hesitation.
My fears and hesitation was due to several things and my own personal reasoning of each:
What will a coach do for me? This is a bit cultural maybe since I grew up in India. For me hiring a coach came with the mental baggage of why can’t I do this myself. I’m a failure for not knowing how to navigate this. I’m smart, I can figure this out on my own. The truth of the matter is that each of us needs help and if you can disconnect that from how smart you are, I assure you, you will be miles ahead!
Can I open up to my coach? Talking about feelings is uh well touchy and feely. I’m bad at this. The key to breaking down this barrier is finding someone that you like to be your coach. When I first spoke to Mike, he made me comfortable with the fact that he isn’t here to judge me. He wants me to be successful but he doesn’t have a horse in the race; in fact there isn’t a race!
Falling into the same traps? Maybe you’ve been there, where you fall into the same trap again and again and go read an article or a book on “how to navigate …” and you try something and fall back into the trap and god knows I’ve been there SO MANY times! I recently (post coaching) read this article on Reforge by Elena Verna and Erika Warren : Grow Your Career Like You Grow A Product — Reforge. The article is great but I never tried to apply the same rigor to career development so I fell into the same traps which was not a good place to be. Key point is that I felt I can get out of my own traps without a coach; maybe I can; it's a LOT harder without that feedback loop.
At times when I have been curious I have Googled “career coaches” to see what turns up. Sadly for Google, I ended up never clicking on any of the links because I had no way to identify a good coach from a bad coach. You’re in luck today …
Why was I skeptical about coaches?
I wanted to provide you with my (initial) skepticism of career coaches. I think this is a good time to call out another point here -- career coaches v/s leadership coaches. A career coach (and I didn’t fully understand the difference) is someone who’d help with your career if you are mid-career. However if you are growing as a leader (remember it's all about people) then there are multiple dimensions to this : Experiences, Guidance, Understanding your own value system, what drives you, what does not, what does perfect look like for you? A job title/career guidance is only one part of the puzzle - albeit an important one.
The questions that mostly came up for me were:
What is this person going to do for me that I can’t already do for myself?
Well I say to myself, I am pretty smart, have a great network and know how to reach out to people so what is this that the career coach can do for me that I can’t already do myself. In thinking about this the one thing that kept nagging me was “Do I really know how to do all of the above?”. The answer is probably yes, but as a human I am limited by my own biases. Ok so then I should ask a friend right? Yeah well, friends can help to a certain extent but a good leadership coach can not only “career coach” but also do WAY more for you. A good leadership coach is able to take a bunch of shared experiences and distill down way better insights. I mean take a look at Blind:
The common theme is that all of us need some kind of help at times. The reason friends also don’t work for larger engagements is the time commitment -- both from you and the friend!
What is the guarantee that this will work?
As with all things this is expensive right? What is the guarantee card that I’ll come out from these sessions both “coached” as well as a “great leader”. I'm laughing as I write this. The more I thought about it, what's the guarantee anything will work? What does work even mean in this case as Mike rightly pointed out. Work implies a static end state. We’re all working towards multiple ends all the time. When we’re younger we’re working toward having a career, meeting a partner, trying to enjoy our lives. When we’re slightly older, work might mean growing your career and getting your now teenage child to pay attention to you and listen to you! When you’re retired work might mean toward your health and enjoying the fruits of your labor however you see fit to do. As Mike has aptly stated, “Life is fluid, dynamic, ever shifting. We NEVER arrive.”
I remember this scene from a movie long ago where a man and a woman are talking about marriage and she asks “Aren’t you scared of getting married?” and he says “Well, marriage doesn’t come with a guarantee card right? So what's the point of worrying about it”. As with all things in life there are no guarantees but as Jeff Bezos calls them, these are not one-way doors. These are two way doors. You can always walk out if enough time has passed and you don’t feel there is value. What is important to note is like any relationship this is an important relationship and so finding a career coach who you are willing to open up to is extremely important. If you are gonna try to hide things, or not be honest with what is worrying you, you will get less value out of it. You get what you put in. Fit is literally the most important thing and a good way to judge that is to see whether your coach will complete a short (15-30 min) session to assess if they are a right fit for you -- and you for them! You can also ask for a reference and see if the person is willing to give you a reference of someone who was successful -- or at least can vouch for the efficacy of the coach and the process.
Can my career coach help me really get to the next stage? Should I not be finding someone in tech who I aspire to be instead?
Getting to the next stage requires a mentor. If your aim is to get to the next level in a sustainable fashion then you need a mentor and a coach. A mentor can guide you on the “how” you might approach the “next level” question. A coach on the other hand understands the process of human change and development. A coach, as Mike puts it, is someone, who will be willing to hold up the mirror to you and does so in a way that you're willing to do something with what you see in that mirror. I think we’ve all been in feedback sessions where at the end of the year you get a piece of feedback from a boss that you don’t agree with but can’t really do anything with. This is sometimes known as a shit sandwich. Something good followed by something bad wrapped up in something good : You are great at communicating, but your communication did not reach everyone in time but hey good job! Keep it up! The difference here is your coach is trying to get you to see something in that proverbial mirror, that will be in an acceptable form so you can process it, internalize it, and make changes!
So .. this question should be “What is it that my career coach can do to get me to the next stage?”. The answer very well might not be introductions or internal referrals but rather a feedback loop on how one of those activities went, how to improve that process, or how to make yourself appear more confident in an interview. You see, we all have biases, and your close friends are not going to tell you biases (that easily anyway) and neither is a recruiter or a Hiring Manager. It's not their job.
Isn't Career & Leadership coaching for people early on in their careers?
I always thought Career Coaching is for people with fewer years of experience versus someone with more experience. As I think about this more, I think it's even more important as you grow as a leader. Why? Well it's quite simple. Early on in your career you are an Individual Contributor and for most of the part as an IC you impact things, not people. But as a leader of people you impact .. well people. And like it or not, people are not inanimate objects all with the same personality. When I started managing the team I thought ok let me setup this process of how I’d like to do things, but that's just completely wrong. As a leader, my job is not to create a process for how to interact with me. It is my job to meet them where they are and make sure they are comfortable. So what does that have to do with a career coach? Well, again, they can help you see some of these blind spots and help you address them along the way.
The coaching experience
I’ve completed nine sessions as of now and the experience was super interesting. Any coach assumes that you are resourceful, creative, and fully capable. A good coach will help you unlock these areas. To give you a more concrete example, one of the things I wanted to unlock with Mike was my fear of starting my own startup. Mike helped me unlock my thoughts/fears/concerns by following a structured methodology.
This does not mean that you have no work to do and this “unlock” will happen magically. HA!
As the coachee, you need to come prepared for each session with what is on your mind. You can’t just show up and expect your coach to wave a magic wand and expect a new you. YOU have to have a willingness to do the work, the thinking without which the conversations will not get you too far. The coaching session is the tip of the iceberg. You need to do a lot of work between these sessions. I took the time to document all this in a shared google doc which I used every session as far as possible. Your coach will also try to set these sessions apart so you get enough time to do the work you need to in between sessions. For me, 2 weeks worked amazingly well!
Where you face problems - whether that is with career growth, a work problem, or something else. Mike (and any good coach) will tease out why you are having that problem by asking very deep questions leading to the root causes of a problem - fear, impostor syndrome, a blind spot, or something else. The coach’s job is to help you identify a larger coach goal for the entire engagement and then during the sessions see if that goal remains the same, still relevant, dig, dig, dig and help you come up with a plan. This does not mean that your coaching goal can't evolve or change. In most cases your coaching goal will evolve as your coach digs further and helps you make these connections
Remember, there is no “map” for coaching. It's not a “get me from here to here”. Your coach should be able to tell you what is missing on your map rather than drive you to your destination. You may not resolve every question or thought in the same session but you will definitely peel at the layers. After these sessions I feel like I understand myself and the pitfalls SO MUCH better. Does this mean that I’ll never fall into one again? NO! But what it will do is make me more cognizant of the pitfall and learn from it even if it happens again.
Leadership and careers differ across every single person. There is no magic formula to get from where you are to where you want to go so be cognizant of that. You must know exactly what you want to achieve with each session and do the work prior so you are not wasting time. I definitely rambled a lot trying to make a point to a pointed question from Mike. Mike patiently listened as I rambled, at times probably not making sense because it was all there in my head but I’d never connected the dots. Mike helped connect the dots every.single.time. Mike says the rambling is valuable and it's you as a human, processing with him helping connect the dots!
Finally, take the learnings and etch them somewhere in your brain so you won’t forget them. Oftentimes during this process I have asked myself how many of these coaching sessions do I need? Here is a typical cop out answer: That is totally up to you. Coaching can be a one time process, a continuous process, or a start-stop-start process as your career, leadership growth, and challenges you face change.
The simple TLDR is; get a coach, a good one. Get yourself a Mike. Mike can be reached at mike.welsh@hudsoninstitute.com.
In the interest of full disclosure, Mike has not paid me to write about his coaching services; I wanted to since it benefited me greatly!
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)
Thanks for such an insightful post, Promeet! This post helped me look at coaching from a new lens!