The decision to hire a Career Coach is an investment and a commitment you make in yourself. It is a decision that you are no longer playing small. You are ready to get serious, to go pro. You are ready to reach for your highest potential self!

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Transcript

Hi, I'm Tami.

The purpose of the Tami North show is to give high achievers actionable content to propel themselves to senior leadership while living a balanced life.

Women leading within corporations and government organizations who want to perform with authenticity at the senior executive level have found their community. All right, any of you that have gone to my website, genuindrivenwomen.com you will see there that I am a career and life coach.

And so I want to talk to you about the 10 ways that a career coach can supercharge your path. So first, let's talk about the difference between a coach, a therapist, a mentor, a sponsor, etc.

So what is a coach, especially in the sense of a career coach or a life coach? So. So a coach is a person who's trained to help you discover and achieve an outcome that you desire.

This desired result could be in any area of your life.

So if you Google life coach, you're going to find mindset, executive, career, sexual intimacy, relationship, health, wellness, weight loss, parents of special need, coaches, all the kind. Those are just to name a few. But there's all types of them that all kind of niches that life coaches fit in. A life coach is very general.

And most life coaches could probably coach you in any area of your life because the way the life coaches are trained and the way they're trained to help you with your thoughts and et cetera, that they could probably coach you on any challenge you're having. So if you have one that particularly resonates with you, feel free to reach out to them.

And they could probably coach on any area, but many of them have niched down to one particular area that they truly want to focus on, basically to an area where they feel they could offer the greatest value to a client. So. So a coach will not directly tell you exactly what you should do.

They work with you to find and discover the obstacles in your path, which are most often in your mind. And then they are very skilled at showing you when it's your brain that's blocking your results or when it's truly something external.

And they can help you develop strategies to deal with and overcome external obstacles as well. So what's the difference between a life coach from any of the subcategories and a therapist?

So the purpose of most therapies is to heal or ease symptoms of an issue or a condition that's troubling to the client.

The way I look at it is I believe that if an adult is functioning in the world, then in most cases a life Coach will probably be more helpful for them than a therapist.

If you're trying to relieve mental struggles that you're having, just, and that's like your whole purpose, then a therapist could be your best solution. If you are trying to achieve some type of outcome, like a goal or an aspiration, then definitely a life coach is probably your best bet.

And so it sort of depends on what your purpose is of searching this external assistance for yourself.

And of course, all of this is completely dependent on the specific therapist or the coach and their personality and the methods that they use, et cetera. If you're working with a therapist and you are not achieving outcomes that you want in your life, it might be time to consider getting a life coach.

But if an adult is non functioning in the world like they are a complete alcoholic, they have substance abuse issues, they're very depressed, or they have any other more serious mental challenges, then an ethical life coach should recommend that clients seek more intense therapeutic treatment. They should recommend that they go to a licensed therapist.

In my method of coaching, we will discuss, especially if it applies, we will discuss your past issues to figure out where you've been so that we can figure out what's holding you back. But we will especially do that if your past issues are creating thoughts for you that are not serving your desired outcome.

But I tend to be a very future focused coach, so I will take you on a process to take you from where you are, where you're stuck right now in your life, to the goal that you would like to achieve. And my primary focus is a combined career in life coach.

So I do want you to create a life that you love, and I want you to do that in a career that completely is in line with the life that you are trying to create.

And so the process I take you on will honor any past traumas you have and any hardships in a way that will fuel you while setting you up with the right mindset to accomplish your biggest aspirations. Okay, so then what's the purpose of a mentor? You might already have a mentor who you meet with regularly, and if so, that's excellent.

And it's definitely one thing I recommend, especially in a career. Or it could be any number of arenas, but I'm a career coach, so definitely in the career arena, I definitely believe you should have a mentor.

You can have multiple mentors, successful people who do take the time to mentor. Others are changing the world one person at a time and I think that they're angels.

I have a number of mentors in my own Life, and I am forever grateful to them. But a mentor is not a coach. The ideal mentor for you is somebody who has already achieved some goal that you are trying to achieve.

So if you want to start a business, become a CEO, learn how to be a homeschooling mother, if you want to get into a prestigious school or a club, if you want to lose 30 pounds, if you want to have a net worth of a million dollars or more, then what you should do is find somebody else who already achieved that goal and then spend time talking with them and asking them questions. How did they achieve this? What steps did they take? What did they learn? What would they do different?

Did they have to take any education to become who they are? If so, what kind of college degrees do they have? Did they work in different organizations? What other roles have they had in the past?

You know, those kind of questions, and then let them hear about your aspirations for your career or whatever, and then let them give you advice based on what they know it would be based on their experience.

And by doing that, a mentor technically speeds up your path a little bit because they share information with you that helps you take different actions should you choose to. You don't have to do exactly what your mentors say. They give you information and they tell you how they got there.

But as I've already said in other podcasts, you shouldn't directly follow a path just because somebody else did. You need to create your own path.

But it's okay to find expertise along the way and gain lessons learned from others and to get their advice on what they would have done differently. Okay, so what's a sponsor? I'm going to talk about a sponsor in the sense of a career sponsor.

And I don't hear people use this word outwardly very often, other than in content like the theme of today's podcast. But still, sponsors should exist, and they do exist.

In fact, I think that as we do the work to move toward a more powerfully inclusive workplace, that sponsors are going to play a huge part in that role. They're going to be required to do a lot of the heavy lifting. A sponsor is literally somebody who actually kicks down doors.

They pull somebody up to the table. They provide direct access and knowledge, they provide access to inner circles, they open up a strategic vision.

A sponsor is not necessarily a mentor and that they might not meet with you regularly, they might not give you advice, but it's possible that you could have a mentor who is also acting as a sponsor, but there is somebody who just realizes you have Something special. You have high potential for senior leadership in the organization, and they use their position and their leverage to remove some of your barriers.

Simple as that. So they might not ever even meet with you at all, but yet they're like, oh, we should invite Jill. Jill should come to this meeting.

Jill, what do you think about this? You know, to be like that, where they constantly are helping you get a piece of limelight so others can see your value as much as they do. So.

So you can see that all of these people can and will help you, depending on what you're looking for.

But only a life coach is going to gain a deep understanding about what you want out of life and then work with you to develop a custom plan that will help you achieve the outcome you desire. A life coach also has the skillset to notice when you're taking actions that are not in line with your goals.

And they're gonna work with you to make sure that you also notice when you're taking actions that aren't in line with your goals. Because often we just go about our life.

And frequently, a week, a month, three months pass, and you literally did nothing toward your goal, even though January 1st happened and you had this big, brilliant idea of what you're going to do with this year. Now here we are, it's going to be March before we know it. And so how is your goal going? And that's what a coach.

If you meet with them regularly, they will help keep you on track. They're kind of accountability in that regard.

If you really wanted to stay on your path, then a life coach can help you figure out why you took the actions that you didn't want to take. And they can work with you to create your mindset to stay on your path more often. And it's easy.

One way I like to think about this is in the concept of, like, a golf pro. Okay, so golf, the sport of golf, is actually a very mental sport.

So early in my life, I had a friend tell me that before anybody ever even picks up a set of golf clubs, they should hire a golf pro.

And the reason is that once you start swinging the club the wrong way, it's much harder to correct than if you just learned properly in the first place.

So you can go somewhere, go to a driving range, and you can watch people swing clubs, watch them over and over and over, and compare the swing to the result of where the ball goes compared to what they intended and the person swinging the club. They will continue to make changes to their stance, their grip, the club.

They're using the way they read the wind depending on the previous result they just had. But the question is, did they make the right adjustment?

There's so many adjustments that you could make, and if a person's making changes without any outside observation, they could be missing the adjustment that would make the biggest difference of all. And the golf pro watching from the side will notice and can immediately make adjustments to the the ones that would make the biggest impact.

And then as they go along further reps and sets, they'll check the results and they'll make further adjustments based on data, knowledge, maybe some mindset coaching in there, whatever they need to help their client improve the game. And this is exactly the same thing a career coach can do for you.

Have you ever met somebody in the workplace who seems oblivious to the behavior that they're doing and it's making everybody else crazy? Have you ever had a leader who gets sidetracked, talks too long, has no sense of time?

Do you ever wish somebody would tell them how much this is harming not only their own productivity, but also the productiv the entire organization?

Have you ever resolved that you want to be a leader in your organization, but that you definitely want to be much more self aware than these other leaders are or than they seem to be? Well then, very much like a golf pro, a career coach would help you in more ways than you can imagine.

So let's talk about three types of people who should definitely not get a career coach. One is anybody who is not willing to know the hard things about themselves. If you have no intention to improve or change, then do not get a coach.

If you're not interested in improving and if you're not interested in growth. If you're satisfied with the status quo, then a coach is not a useful investment for you.

The second type of person who should not get a coach is anybody who's not willing to make the coaching session a non negotiable appointment in their schedule. If you're not willing to find the time to do the work outside the session, then don't hire a coach.

If you're going to hire a coach and then cancel or miss appointments or blow off the work they gave you for self improvement, then you're just throwing your money in the trash. Coaching will absolutely change your life if you're willing to do the work.

In fact, coaching like this will 100% improve your career more than another degree or more than further education. Especially if you have any kind of doubt that you were literally meant to achieve the goal that you've been chasing.

Sometimes people start feeling insecure about their goal, so they start taking more education and more education until they educate themselves to death.

And yet they, they could have PhDs, they could have multiple master's degrees, they could have certifications, lengthening out their resume for days, and yet they still have a disbelief that they were meant for the dream that they're chasing. And that is absolutely a way that a life coach could help you. So the third type of person who should definitely not get a career coach is.

Anybody who's looking at coaching has just a commodity, meaning you're just looking for the cheapest coach you can find. You don't see the value in hiring a coach and this is definitely a situation where you will get what you pay for.

If you're truly interested in getting a career coach or a life coach, then look for the value that this coach brings instead. What do you know about the coach, the one you're considering to hire? What expertise do they bring?

What do you know about their approach and their process? Coaching, by law does not require a certification. I just want you to be aware of that.

There are many organizations that do regulate and certify coaches of all different types of disciplines.

And those coaches are allowed to use their credentials and basically puts a stamp of approval to say that this coach right here achieved some kind of training. But Honestly, even an 18 year old who maybe did or didn't even graduate from high school can make a website and call themselves a life coach.

There's no law against it. If that's what you're looking for in a coach, they're certainly out there.

I actually do believe that some of those young people that are life coaches, they are going to help somebody. No doubt. They're going to have their clients that they appeal to and they will help people. I have no doubt about that.

Depending on what you're looking for, then just make sure that the coach you are considered to hire has the value and, and the expertise that you are looking for.

And then it's very likely that depending on the expertise you're looking for, that the cheapest coach is probably not going to be the coach that's for you.

So just make sure you know why you want to coach, the specific outcome you're looking to achieve, and then consider their personality and yours, consider their expertise and then consider the time you spend with them. One of the best investments you could ever make in yourself. Okay, so what are 10 reasons that you do need a career and a life coach?

One reason is you have A goal or dream that you really want, but you're afraid or you don't believe in yourself enough to actually move toward it.

This has happened to me in the past where, especially when I was probably in my late 20s and early 30s where I had achieved enough success, but honestly, I was still underselling what I was capable of and I felt super insecure and I had imposter syndrome in a lot of cases and those kind of things. And a career coach would really help with some of that. Okay, so the second reason is, do you have a really big goal?

Do you work somewhere where you feel like they undervalue you, you're working your rear end off, but you don't really see how you're ever going to get promoted in that organization. Maybe it's personality based, maybe something else.

And you think, I could change careers, I could change, or I could change to a different organization, but that seems kind of uncertain and you don't really know how to go about it and you're not sure that you're worried you might make a mistake and regret it. So you end up just staying in the same spot for like 10 years.

That would be a good example where you do want to change, but yet you never do take the steps to make the change. That a career coach can definitely help you with that. That's a definite place a career coach can help you.

And then a fourth thing is a career coach can dramatically speed up the path to whatever outcome you desire. Maybe you're on a path and it's kind of going well, but you fall off a little, you trip up, you slip backwards, you go forward.

You know, all that, that if you get a coach, they can help you stay focused, stay on your path, be your accountability, help you to see where some efficiencies can be gained and help you believe in yourself enough that all of a sudden it will supercharge your path. No doubt. The fifth thing is if you're overwhelmed at where to start and you just feel like you're going in circles, you know what you want.

Just get overwhelmed every, every time you start thinking about it. Definitely a career life coach can help you with that.

The sixth reason is if you feel like your life is a mess, you know, money, family, career, you want more, but you don't even have enough time to get the basic things done, let alone plan for something better. Life just seems really hard. Then definitely a career in life coaches for you. The seventh reason is let's say you are successful.

Let's say you're making a six figure salary or more, but you hate your job and you really want to move toward a more purpose based career career. But it's kind of hard for you to believe that you could find something that would ever replace your current salary.

That is a great reason to get a career in life coach.

Okay, the eighth reason, let's say you accidentally, quote, unquote, accidentally spend so much time with electronics or in anxiety, stress or spinning and you know, if you could just learn to manage your mind more often that you would find the time you need to make your path forward. That is a perfect reason to get a career and life coach.

Okay, nine, A coach will save you money and will increase your lifetime earning potential if you do the work. And that's like direct.

No matter how much a coach costs you, it is highly likely that within one year of hiring your coach, you will see the results of that money return to you tenfold. It's highly likely and there's a number of reasons for that and I could go into all of them with you.

But you know, mindset, belief in yourself, very clear and decisive action toward your path and your goal. I mean, all of these things, you will get your money back, I promise you.

I have a good example for my own personal life, which is in the past three years I've gotten quite a lot of coaching and I can promise you that also in the last three years, my income has risen much more than the amount I've spent on any coaching. It definitely works, it is definitely an investment in yourself.

And the 10th reason to hire a coach, the decision to hire a coach is a decision that you are no longer playing small. You are ready to get serious, you're ready to go pro, and you are ready to reach for your highest potential self.

Make no mistake, you're heading for the big leagues. So I want you to think of some of the greatest people of all time and so many of them had coaches you can Go Google this. Just go Google.

Google a list of famous people who have coaches or successful people that have coaches. People like Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. Here's what Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, said on this topic.

He got advice to have a coach and Eric said that he resented the advice because he was already a CEO. He said, I was pretty experienced. Why do I need a coach? What am I doing wrong?

My argument was, how could a coach advise me if I'm already the best person in the world at doing this? And then Eric Schmidt said, that's not what a coach does. The coach doesn't have to play the sport as well as you do.

They just have to watch you from the outside and they have to get you to be your best. And in the business context, a coach is not a repetitious coach.

Like for instance, perhaps if you were a soccer coach, you might have your people do drills and that type of thing.

But a coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, an external set of eyes, and they describe it to you in their words and they discuss with you different ways to approach the problem.

So it's definitely like kind of a mirror of your thoughts, but then an external look at what's going on so that you don't over rely too much on your own perception of the way things are. I get the question a lot about why people should get a life coach.

So that's the point of today's episode, is just to give you my thoughts on the topic. Definitely.

I love the 10th reason, which we already discussed, that if you are ready to go pro, if you're serious, if you're ready to reach your highest potential self, then I definitely recommend you get a career in life coach. If you're interested in working with me, go to introvertedexecutive.com and you'll see options for working with me there.

You can connect with us on Facebook at Introverted Executive. Or to learn more about what we offer, check out introvertedexecutive.com.