Self Coaching to Maximize Commitment, Confidence, and Capability to Achieve Business and Career Goals – In Just 7 Minutes with Dr. Sarah E. Brown

Resources/Links:

• Wanting to Know the Benefits of Self Coaching and How You Can Apply It in Your Business and Workplace? Learn more about the Power of Self-Coaching: sarahebrown.com

Summary

Have you been feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or doubtful when it comes to your career or business?

Do you find yourself and others being limited physically or mentally from achieving your goals?

Do you want to know how self-coaching could help guarantee you to be a better business leader for you and others in your workplace?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown, after 30 years of corporate work and most recently as Managing Director of Accenture, retired to devote herself to teaching women in companies to self-coach– increasing their commitment, confidence, and capability to achieve big career goals.

In this episode, Sarah shares how you, as a business leader, can help your peers become at their maximum potential, commitment, and capability while at the same time becoming a better business leader. She also talks about the undeniable and powerful value of self-coaching for you and others.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:31 – Sarah‘s ideal client: “A senior female executive. She is often the highest-ranking woman in her business or division. And for that reason, she’s called, “an only or a lonely” because she has few female peers.”
• 01:56 – Problem Sarah helps solve: “She wants to get more females in her organization into leadership roles. But because she’s all by herself, she’s got limited bandwidth to really work on all of the issues of mentoring and coaching the women in her organization, much less addressing the cultural barriers.”
• 02:45 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Sarah: “My clients are feeling guilt, and a tremendous amount of overwhelm. They want desperately to help the women in their organization.”
• 03:46 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Sarah’s solution: “The number one mistake that I see them making is trying to do it all, all by themselves anyway. And they do it at the expense of performing their own job well or even tending to their own self-care.”
• 04:24 – Sarah’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “My tip is to go talk to your team. Talk to some of the women in maybe the second, third line of leadership in your organization, and start them down the path of coaching themselves. And you can do that by helping them to help each other to clarify goals.”
• 05:44 – Sarah’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Sarah’s FREE Book: sarahebrown.com
• 07:14 – Q: What is self-coaching? A: And by that, I mean teaching women at the first, second, maybe even third line of leadership, how they can get clarity on goals, take smart action, overcome barriers and build the support they need, and more importantly, how to make an efficient mentoring request so that when they do come to you, and they really do need help, they’re very clear, and it’s a very doable request.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“When women have clarity and confidence and the capability in their own goals, everybody starts working on making that happen. And nobody gets burned out in the process.” -Dr. Sarah E. Brown Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:09
Hello, everyone, and a very warm welcome. This is another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to you from Little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia, joined today by Dr. Sarah E. Brown. Sarah, very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 00:23
Thank you. I am in Wilmington, Delaware on Mid Atlantic of the US.

Tom Poland 00:28
Perfect. Thank you very much. Now, Sarah and I have known each other for a wee while now, but for those of you who don’t know her, after 30 years of corporate work, most recently as Managing Director for Accenture, pretty big deal, everyone. This is a massive organization. So highly qualified, very experienced in management, and executive positions, global management, and so on, she retired. So now she’s devoted herself to teaching women and companies to self-coach. Very interesting concept. And this concept, when it’s applied, increases commitment, confidence, and capability to help women achieve their career goals. I’m sure us men- they’re going to pick something up out of this as well. So, our title today, Sarah, is, “Self Coaching to Maximize Commitment, Confidence, and Capability to Achieve Business and Career Goals”. And you’re going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So, no pressure, but our time starts now. Question number one is who is your ideal client?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 01:31
A senior female executive. She is often the highest-ranking woman in her business or division. And for that reason, she’s called, “an only or a lonely” because she has few female peers.

Tom Poland 01:45
Right. That would be lonely, I’d imagine. Question number two and six and a half minutes, what’s the problem you solve for this only, lonely female executive?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 01:56
She wants to get more females in her organization into leadership roles. But because she’s all by herself, she’s got limited bandwidth to really work on all of the issues of mentoring and coaching the women in her organization, much less addressing the cultural barriers. So, she’s struggling to make an impact on what McKinsey and Sheryl Sandberg called, “the broken rung”, where women are starting to fall out of the leadership pipeline.

Tom Poland 02:26
Interesting. And this is the voice of experience you’re listening to, folks. So, question three, just under six minutes left, what are the symptoms that your ideal clients, your future ideal clients are going to be experiencing right now that will kind of give them a heads up and go, “Oh, I think I need to find out more about what Dr. Sarah E. Brown does”?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 02:45
My clients are feeling guilt, and a tremendous amount of overwhelm. They want desperately to help the women in their organization. And they often vowed, “When I get into a position of influence, I’m going to make a difference”. But they’re now looking at this, and they’re feeling completely overwhelmed at the magnitude of the task, and the fact that they’ve got limited bandwidth already to do anything about it.

Tom Poland 03:14
Side question, I can only imagine that there are so many things that us, men, take for granted in the culture of an organization that those only lonely, successful executive women see, instantly and immediately, and they must be hitting their head against a brick wall sometimes feeling like, “Am I the only one that sees this?” So, let’s talk about common mistakes that some of these senior executives, female leaders are making when they’re trying to solve this problem.

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 03:46
The number one mistake that I see them making is trying to do it all, all by themselves anyway. And they do it at the expense of performing their own job well or even tending to their own self-care.

Tom Poland 04:04
Ouch, ouch, ouch! So, let’s go to question five, thank you. There’s four minutes left. What I’m after with question five is one valuable free action. Kind of like a top tip from someone who’s been there, someone who’s done that, you, that’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might start them to take a step in the right direction?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 04:24
My tip is to go talk to your team. Talk to some of the women in maybe the second, third line of leadership in your organization, and start them down the path of coaching themselves. And you can do that by helping them to help each other to clarify goals. And when you do that, at least when they come to you with a mentoring request, you’re not starting from scratch trying to figure out what they want. They’re coming in with clarity about what they want, and specifically how you can help.

Tom Poland 04:57
Can you repeat that? So, talk to the second and third-tier women, and ask them to discuss and get clear about their goals. Is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 05:08
I’m saying, teach them how to help- to get that group to help themselves get clear about their goals so that when they come to you, they know what it is they want. And you don’t have to start from scratch.

Tom Poland 05:22
What’s important to them. Fantastic. And I imagine that would be a great mechanism for which to start the discussion about the possibility of management. So, let’s give folks something more that they can dive into to have a look at this, a valuable free resource. That’s question number six, with two and a half minutes left. Where can they go to find out more about this and get something for?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 05:44
Well, because getting clear about goals is the first step. And one of my books called, Let Your Personality Be Your Career Guide, I have a whole chapter that has exercises on how to do that. And it starts with a woman getting- or a man, but any individual getting clear about his or her own interests, strengths, and needs, and then how to translate that into specific career goals that are right for her. And by taking that, those exercises, you have a mechanism that you can then work with the women to work with each other to get that clarity.

Tom Poland 06:22
Right. You’re giving people, our listeners, the tools to enact the answer the question number five, how are you going to do this? I love the fact that you’re aligning the natural interests and curiosities, I imagined, and what they want to be doing with their career goal. So, it makes so much sense.

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 06:39
And you can get this book, I forgot to say, on sarahebrown.com! Yeah.

Tom Poland 06:45
All right. We’ll have that under the video interview. But if you’re listening to this on iTunes, or somewhere else, folks, Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, ebrown.com. Go get it. Get the tools. It’s completely free, and it’s going to help you take that next step towards embedding a culture of self-coaching in your organization for those female executives you want to have their career progress. One minute left. Question number seven, what’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t?

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 07:14
What is self-coaching? Because it’s obviously what I think is the answer to my clients’ dilemma.

Tom Poland 07:20
Right.

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 07:21
And by that, I mean teaching women at the first, second, maybe even third line of leadership, how they can get clarity on goals, take smart action, overcome barriers and build the support they need, and more importantly, how to make an efficient mentoring request, so that when they do come to you, and they really do need help, they’re very clear, and it’s a very doable request. When women have clarity and confidence and the capability in their own goals, everybody starts working on making that happen. And nobody gets burned out in the process.

Tom Poland 08:02
Perfect. Dr. Sarah E. Brown, thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Sarah E. Brown 08:05
It’s a pleasure.

Tom Poland 08:07
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.