Unleashing and Channeling Your Power To Succeed

Archive for the ‘Career Coaching’ Category

I have created a new video that speaks to my passion for what I do and how I work with people. Please take a look and leave a comment:

Every manager has a leadership style. Just ask the staff. Great bosses understand they need to adapt their style to fit the situation.

This video lesson will help you understand the variety of leadership styles a manager can use and how they can adapt those styles in response to specific situations.

Guest Blog Post By, Don Goodman

Networking is not about how many resumes or business cards you hand out, but how you establish rapport and build a relationship that can lead to opportunities.

Attending a networking event is only the beginning of the networking process. Effective networking takes time and builds lasting relationships where both parties can help one another.

Many job seekers I often speak with are intimidated by networking events. It’s not that they do not want to network; it’s that they don’t know how to approach people they don’t know.

As much as we all want to know how others can help us, when networking, it’s not recommended for you to go straight into pitching. It’s a turnoff to many people, especially when you don’t know the person.

So, how does a job seeker tackle breaking the ice at networking events and approach people in a way that later affords relationships where they can help one another?

1. Change your mindset: Think of networking as a chance to get to know others and as a place where you can seek advice from someone who may come with a different point of view. As you show interest in others and ask for advice, the conversation will naturally redirect itself in a manner where others will be more willing to help you or connect you to people who can help.

2. Mind your appearance: Walk in to a networking event with the appropriate attitude. Appear approachable and be willing to approach others. The simplest things you can do is offer a smile to people you come in eye contact with and avoid poor body language such as crossing your arms or keeping your head down.

3. Ask a mutual acquaintance for help: Asking a mutual friend or acquaintance to help with an introduction is one of the easiest ways to help get a conversation started between two people who don’t know one another. After the introduction, it’s up to you to build rapport and find out possible commonalities that will help both of you establish a relationship.

4. Directly introduce yourself: If there is a contact you know something about, you may want to approach them directly with an introduction. Introduce yourself by full name and appropriately ask a question or make a comment. For example, the person may have just given a presentation, so you may ask a question or comment related to what was discussed. As the conversation between the two of you becomes more comfortable, steer the conversation toward a direction where you may ask for advice.

5. Ask a general question or provide comment: You are not the only one who may be feeling awkward at the networking event. If you see someone simply standing there or sitting at a table by themselves, be willing to approach them and simply ask a question or provide a comment they could relate to. It can be a simple statement such as, “Wow, this event has a big attendance turnout!” This opens the door for conversation. After two or three more questions or comments, you can go in and say, “By the way, my name is… what’s yours?” From there, your conversation can change focus where you learn more about the other individual and share information about yourself.

A key to breaking the ice during networking is to establish a relationship where the other individual grows to feel comfortable speaking with you. Keep all questions open-ended and leave comments that allow others to probe. A question or comment that leaves one to simply have room to say “yes” or “no” will not help build a conversation.

To succeed at networking events, leave people you meet with a good impression. You want people to feel your positive energy and to see you are willing to help others, as well as have a special area of expertise they will potentially want your advice and counsel on in the future. This will help ensure the relationship and conversation you have continues to grow after you leave the event.

Don Goodman, president of Resume Writing Service – About Jobs is a nationally recognized career expert.
Source: http://www.careerealism.com/tips-networking-events/

Without a doubt, coaching is the hottest approach to enhancing the performance of the people in an enterprise—whether its teams of coaches working with managers in a Fortune 500 company, transition coaching for new C-level executive hires, or coaches working with the owners of small businesses or sole proprietorships. It is clear from the increasing acceptance and investment in coaching, among the broad spectrum of business in many countries, that we believe coaching works.

But how well does it work? And how hard is it to measure?

In recent years, there have been a couple of detailed, well-documented studies that put the ROI of major coaching engagements within Fortune 500 companies between 600% and 700%, depending upon how improved retention was calculated.

But studies of this precision—funded by the corporate clients—are generally too costly to be meaningful as a sustained way of assessing the business benefits of coaching even at the level of large corporations.

Moreover, the issue of the benefits of coaching is, if anything, even more relevant to small business. For many firms considering hiring a coach, the notion of funding a major study to assess the results is laughable, yet it is critical that they be able to associate the benefits they are deriving from their investment in coaching.

To a certain extent, the challenge of measuring the benefits of coaching depends upon why the coach has been engaged in the first place. In some cases, the goal of a coaching engagement can be fairly easy to quantify—improving meeting management skills, for example. You can measure how many meetings start on time, how many end on time and survey meeting attendees for their evaluation of the effectiveness of the meeting. With a little imagination, such measures could be converted to hard dollar savings or productivity increases and an actual ROI developed.

Often, however, the connection between the behavior and the result isn’t so clear.

“One of the biggest challenges in measuring coaching is that tangible, behavioral change is usually linked to intangible mindsets and beliefs,” explains researcher Terry Bacon, of Lore International Institute. “Effective measurement strategies require that we make those intangibles measurable.”

Is it possible to capture all of those intangibles in some concrete, meaningful metric? The answer is generally “no, not precisely.” However, there are techniques that can be employed to evaluate the effectiveness of coaching and often to achieve a realistic estimate of the ROI. More importantly, setting up an evaluation process up front not only helps set performance expectations, but it can also make the coaching more effective. For example, coaching can be refocused to deal with issues or to ensure that business priorities will be met. In this way, the evaluation of coaching becomes more than just a measuring stick—it becomes a key approach to deepen the business value of coaching.

For large firms, coaching consultancy Marshall Brown & Associates suggests seven critical steps for measuring ROI from a coaching engagement:

1. Set objectives for the coaching session that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. Establish a benchmark for performance from existing appraisals and reviews.

2. Ensure that coaching objectives flow from overall project objectives and/or business objectives.

3. Communicate the methodology for measuring the monetary value of the coaching program before the program begins.

4. Identify the opportunity costs of the client’s time for participating in coaching.

5. Capture the monetary value of the coaching in tandem with the intangible value.

6. Validate the calculation with the managers being coached.

7. Communicate the results of the coaching program to key stakeholders in the organization.

Smaller firms, on the other hand, often cannot spend the time and effort to achieve the same level of measurement precision. In that case, there are several steps they can take to come up with quantifiable measures, if not quite ROI metrics. Among them are:

•  360-degree surveys
• Climate surveys within the organization
• Employee performance metrics
• Customer surveys

However, such broad measures can be disconnected from the effect of specific behavior changes that the coach and the executive are addressing. The challenge is to figure out the connections between the executive’s behavior and the behavior of the organization. Lore International Institute’s Bacon suggests these possibilities:

•  Improvements in productivity
• Reductions in absenteeism and employee turnover
• Reductions in cycle time
• Improvements in quality and/or reduction in waste
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased value of the opportunity pipeline

Several of these measures can even be translated into dollar values if the goal is to determine an ROI number. In every case, however, they provide a benchmark against which to measure the effectiveness of coaching.

Thus, though challenging, the business effectiveness of coaching can be measured, or at least closely approximated. And if coaching is to prove its worth, it ultimately must stand up to the same test as any other investment in the business.

If you would like to schedule an introductory consultation to see if business coaching might work for you, contact me today and let’s talk.

The tagline of the largest career app on Facebook is, “Unleash the Power of Your Network.” With Branch Out you can leverage the power of your personal relationships to form professional connections. Branch Out is designed to reveal the connections that you have within your personal network of friend and family to the companies that you are interested in working with.

When you are looking through the over 3 million job listings on Branch Out you will see all of the connections that the people in your network have to the companies posting job opportunities.

If you are an active Facebook user you will want to go in and adjust your privacy settings to protect your personal information. Then you should make sure that your profile picture looks professional enough to display to prospective employers.

There is a series of ‘how-to’ videos on Branch Out that will walk you through creating a profile, finding jobs and growing your network. Go in and create your profile and start giving endorsements to your friends, who will more than likely return the favor. If you want an endorsement from someone, you might consider writing one up yourself and sending it to them and invite them to revise is as they see fit.

Recruiters who are searching for certain demographics utilize Branch Out, so making sure that your profile is complete and that you have a few key endorsements can make you more visible.

If you are in the midst of a job search and you are looking to make the most of all of your connections you should go ahead and set up your Branch Out profile. If you are spending time on Facebook you might as well make it count towards helping you to land a great job.

Want to make a Radical Career Change? Coaching can keep your career healthy, improve the quality of your life and make you more effective at work through a heightened sense of self-awareness and greater clarity about your purpose and goals. Contact me today for a complimentary consultation.

The loss of a job can trigger a cascade of all kinds of emotions, but if you learn to focus your energy and attention and use the law of attraction you can turn this temporary misfortune around into the opportunity to manifest your dream job.

The law of attraction states that like attracts like. We attract to ourselves energy, situations and circumstance that are consistent with the kind of energy, thoughts and actions that we have been focusing on. So, if you want to change what you see, you’ve got to change what you are thinking, feeling and focusing on. This is fairly elementary stuff. In this article we’re going to focus in on using the law of attraction to land your dream job. Follow these tips consistently and you will begin to see things shifting in your experience:

1. Focus on feeling good

Everything is energy, and we attract things to us at the level of vibration. When you feel good you are vibrating at a higher level, which will attract those favorable experiences into your experience. Don’t let the disappointment that often occurs when you are job hunting keep you down. Schedule in some fun activities and spend time with people who build you up.

2. Express gratitude for the good that is already in your life

Gratitude creates a space for even more good things to appear in your life. Express your gratitude for everything—even the things that come disguised as misfortune because it’s all good.

3. Describe your ideal job

Create a vision board that visually depicts your dream job. Write a detailed description about the kind of job that you want. Describe the kinds of people that you will be working with, the kind of environment, the nature of the work from the point of view of it being in your life already. Read this description or look at your vision board every day to inspire your job search.

4. Don’t stop believing

Believe in yourself. Believe in your talent, skills and experience. Do not focus on the apparently negative things going on around you such as a less-than-favorable economic climate. Believe that what you are seeking is also seeking you.

5. Don’t take rejection personally

When you get rejected, take it as a gift because that job was not meant for you. Express your gratitude for the learning opportunity and keep your focus on your goal of landing your dream job.

A bonus tip is to surround yourself with positive people. A job search is a potentially demoralizing experience, but if you have a group of positive people to encourage you, give you advice and support, then you can stay positive and continue your job search with the knowledge that the universe has only your best interests at heart. Consider working with a career coach to help you explore some options that you might not have considered.

Follow these tips, network with positive people and remain focused on your goal and you will attract your dream job to you.

If you’d like to explore how a career coach can help you in your job search, you are welcome to contact me and schedule an initial consultation.

Coaching as a profession has not been around that long, but in the short time of its formal existence it has had an undeniable impact both on business performance and the quality of individual people’s lives. But what kind of ROI can a person expect to achieve when they hire a career coach or an executive coach?

Because coaching is extremely personalized for each specific situation, in order to really measure ROI the coach and the client must take a look at the current state of affairs, establish a benchmark and then set specific goals that they would like to achieve. As the coach and the client work together towards achieving those goals the gains will be clearly measurable.

By taking advantage of the knowledge and expertise of a coach, the client gains several advantages that will save them time, help them to improve their career, give them guidance as they transition from one job or career to another, or even support them during a job search. Coaches help their clients improve their performance, which is a tangible result in exchange for the investment of buying access to their time and expertise.

The ROI for coaching has been studied extensively and studies have reported a return on investment of anywhere from 5 to 7 times the initial investment.

“The results tell us that corporations commonly identify their best and brightest and use coaching to turn them into more effective leaders. Coaches improve executive behaviors by pinpointing blind spots, altering management styles, and keeping careers on track.” Source: carolrossandassociates.com

Some of the benefits of coaching can include:

Individual benefits from career coaching

• Set and achieve goals
• Work through challenges more effectively
• Increased confidence
• Achieve better work/ life balance
• Improved decision making skills

Organizational benefits from executive coaching

• Increased productivity
• Better conflict resolution
• Higher employee morale
• Formalized grooming of new leadership
• Increased stakeholder loyalty

Coaching can help both individuals and companies stretch themselves and achieve much more than they ever thought possible. Having the guidance of an experienced coach can give you the confidence to attempt challenges that you might otherwise never take on. The return on investment when you hire a career coach to help you move to the next level, or when you hire an executive coach to help your company work through a challenging time can be both tangible in the measurable results you will achieve, but you will also gain many intangible results such as increased confidence and belief in your own ability.

If you are ready to consider working with a career or executive coach to help you overcome some of the challenges you are facing, contact me for an initial consultation to discuss how I can support you as you pursue your goals.

(Originally published in, Branding: There’s More Than Meets the Eye, by Marshall Brown)

Large companies understand the power of “branding” a product. They spend a lot of time, money and energy to create a “brand” that is eye catching and appealing enough to sell their product through to market. They want to make sure that the buyer has a strong connection with that brand. Now think of yourself as a company with one employee – you.

How much time, money and energy have you spent in developing a “personal brand” that is unique enough to sell to your market? An individual who has a well-defined personal brand has more status and a tremendous advantage over the competition in the market place. With a great personal brand, you are already half sold and thus far above the competition.

Personal branding identifies packages and sells the person with a view to grow, influence and generate income. Here are three key ingredients you need to develop a strong personal brand:

1. The personal branding process is about having self-awareness of your strengths and talents, and then letting everyone know about your gifts, talents, and experience. It’s about giving a clear impression of who you are, what you value, what you’re committed to, and how you can be counted upon to act. Your branding statement must provide a clear, concise view of your unique set of strengths and tell why you can do it better than anyone else. You need to be able to state clearly and unequivocally why you are different than everyone else, and what services you offer that make you unique and set you ahead of your competition.

2. Understand how you connect best with people. Consider what your target audience needs and wants, and then identify the value and the experience that you can deliver to meet those needs and wants. Communicate in ways that reach into the hearts and minds of your target audience and connect with their core values and deepest desires.

3. Consistency is one of the keys to building a strong personal brand. Be aware of being consistent in every interaction you have, both in what you say and how you respond. Establishing a professional brand is absolutely critical to long term, sustainable business growth. In an overcrowded marketplace, if you’re not standing out, then you’re invisible. Branding your products and services will give you an edge over your competition and enhance your value to your target market.

Personal branding is an essential element in a successful job search strategy. If you are looking to land a great job, be sure to register today for a free call where you can learn how to write a resume that gets results even in today’s challenging economy.

Now is not the time to put your job search on hold. Not only are there a lot of extra job openings, but also new budgets take effect in January. Human resources receives the job requisitions for the budgeted new jobs in November and these are filled before January 1. Not only that, you have less competition because people think it’s a bad time to look for a job. This is one of the best times of the year to find a job!

Announcing The Career Success Mastery Program

You will no longer be frustrated and anxious in your efforts to succeed. We will work together to:

•  Create a Powerful Resume that Opens Doors
•  Create a A Strategic Cover Letter
•  Develop a Great 30-Second Pitch
•  Launch a job search campaign that will actually work
•  Maximize your networking efforts
•  Increase your energy and confidence level so you can feel great about presenting yourself in a knock-’em-dead interview
•  Negotiate effectively for the salary you desire and deserve
•  Receive professional feedback on how to improve your job search and career improvement skill
•  And so much more!

If meeting with other Greater Washington DC area job seekers in a confidential, face to face manner, facilitated by a Professional Career Coach, appeals to you then this is the program for you.

“Marshall has an uncanny ability to guide his clients to maintain a motivated job search. His networking coaching is incredible, and he is exceptionally accessible. In today’s competitive marketplace, it is critical that executive talent have exceptional guidance to secure your employment goals. I recommend Marshall, without reservation.”

—Bill Williams

We will meet in person or via telephone, once a month for 2 hours PLUS emails in between. The first meeting, by phone, is Friday December 12th at 12:00pm Eastern. Then the group, once formed, will determine day, time and location of subsequent meetings

Ahead-Of-The-Curve Discount: $275 if registered by November 15th 11:59pm Eastern

Full $350 per month payment registration Deadline:
November 29th

Consider this…

When you are unemployed your loss of salary can cost you thousands of dollars per month. This program will pay for itself many times over by helping to accelerate your successes PLUS save 1-on-1 coaching $$ by being a part of this group. Isn’t it time to invest in yourself?!

Click here to learn more!