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Professional Coaching - Professional Coach - Sharon Teitelbaum, Massachusetts
Sharon Teitelbaum provides professional coaching to help clients achieve the business and professional success they desire, in Boston MA and worldwide.
Get Help With Work Challenges
As you evolve in your business or profession, you will inevitably (alas!) run into challenges you are not prepared for. Working with a Professional Coach can help you fill in gaps in your skill set and background. With me as your ally and sounding board, you can determine what action, if any, you need to take, and you can start taking that action.
Address the Core Issue
Here are a few of the patterns I hear about all the time. While your particular work challenge may be completely different, I think you’ll see in these examples that my focus is on real-time results.
- Are You Consistently Feeling Drained, Resentful, Stressed, or Guilty?
A fee-for-service financial advisor felt taken advantage of by clients who cancelled appointments at the last minute, came late and expected her to extend the length of the meeting, or presented her with urgent needs and expected her to provide intensive service on demand. She felt drained and resentful. My work with her targeted boundary-setting. She learned to set clear and strong boundaries with her clients about keeping appointments, being on time, about her availability, and so on. She made it clear what she expected of them and what they could and could not expect from her. I helped her find the right language to do all this: clear, neutral, business-like language that didn’t make anyone wrong. I helped her understand that feeling guilty here was not a sign of wrongdoing, and that she should “feel the guilt and do it anyway.” Her clients responded well, the ‘bad behavior’ largely disappeared, and she was now prepared to set boundaries in other parts of her life as well.
- Do You Have an “Impossible Job”?
A high-level technical person in her third year at a fast-growing startup had consistently taken on more and more responsibility without getting help, a promotion, or substantial raises. By the time she came to me for professional coaching, she was overwhelmed, exhausted, unable to manage her now-impossible job, and her self-esteem had tanked as a result. Part of the reality check she got from me was that her once-manageable job had grown into a job that was unmanageable for any one person: it was not that she had become ineffective. I helped her document her responsibilities, make a business case for hiring more help in her area, and present it to her manager. Two people were hired to take over some of her work, she got a raise, a promotion, a more livable job, and her self- confidence back. She came to see that she was a natural problem solver who could see the big picture and the immediate picture at the same time, a valuable corporate resource, and a potential CTO down the road.
- Do You Need a Sounding Board?
A new assistant vice president at a marketing firm that had doubled in size in the last year was shocked. It appeared that the company had no HR handbook or written policies – policies and practices were marginally maintained by institutional memory. She sought me out for support: was she seeing things clearly? Could it be true that there were no established, published policies, was she right to be concerned about this, and did I think she could get support for putting these in place? Yes, I concurred, and yes and maybe. Using me as a sounding board, she talked through several options, and decided to hire a consultant to come into the company and do an overall evaluation (there were other issues as well). The consultant’s report confirmed the gaps and brought other senior people onto the same page. She was able to launch initiatives to address these needs. All of this helped her navigate the terrain with more confidence.
Other Challenges
Here are some other situations where working with a Professional Coach can make a difference. Even if your particular challenge is not listed here, I think you’ll get a sense of the kinds of challenges you can address by working with me.
- You’re isolated, either because you’re the boss, you’re the only woman engineer on your team, you work from a remote office, or some other reason.
- You need to delegate more of your work, but you don’t know how to delegate or to whom, you don’t want to lose control of the work, you feel guilty having other people do it, or you doubt they’ll do it to your standards. Delegations skills are learnable, powerful, and important if you want to move into higher level work.
- You don’t know your strengths. You’ve reached a point where you need to understand what you’re really good at and what you’re not so good at. You need this so you can play from your strengths and delegate work you are not strong in (or don’t like). And to do all of this in a way that’s self-respectful and firmly grounded in reality.
- You’re stumped. You have to do something for the first time that you have no idea how to do, such as:
- You are going out on your own as a consultant and need to network with all the people you’ve worked with over the years
- You are launching a new branch of your business and have to figure out how to publicize it.
- You’re stranded in analysis paralysis. You have been thinking about becoming a coach for a long time now but can’t seem to get off the dime to DO anything about it. The truth is, you don’t know exactly what to do. I have worked with many new or would-be coaches over the years and helped them get over that startup inertia. There are many first steps one can take, and the most important one is the one you will take. Time to stop thinking and start doing.
“Taking Ground” Coaching
From time to time everyone needs a “self-review.” This is a time to acknowledge your personal and professional strengths and skills, observe where you have grown and evolved over the last year (or 5 years), where you have endured and hung in, where you have shown strength and courage, where you have become more honest with yourself and others, where you have recovered from a fall, and so forth. I have a very wonderful 2-session process for Taking Ground Coaching. You can do this as a stand-alone coaching experience.
What Kinds of Results Does Professional Coaching Produce?
Listen to what my clients say. Here is a sample:
 Thank you so much, again for yesterday…it was really good inspiration to "walk through" the presentation with you, and to say things out-loud, pre-meeting…sometimes I work in such a vacuum here in my studio, and really don't have anyone to bounce things off with. And as you said, my mind, and folders, and drafts, of captured visuals and research is BULGING…also good to have you understand more what I do, more efficient for my next assignments!”
B.T.
Designer
Massachusetts
I stumbled on the world of coaching over the radio while on my way home on one of those miserable days and it changed my life. I’m glad that I made that first move of contacting you and I’m glad it was you that I contacted.”
T.T.
Senior Scientist
Asia
I have been promoted and my new position has been announced. Yippee! Now the hard work begins! But I'm very excited. Thank you SO much for the help that you gave me this past winter. It was much easier to know (or at least think) that this job is good fit, based on the work that we did together.”
S.K.
Non-Profit Administrator
MN
Next Steps
If you think professional coaching could help you move forward in your work, don’t hesitate to contact me for a free initial phone consultation (or in person in the Boston area). You’ll know by the end of the conversation whether you want to work with me or not. If I’m not the right coach for you, I may be able to refer you.
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© 2003-2008 Sharon Teitelbaum, MA, MCC