Grow Naked
“Her smile was like armor & everyday she went to war.” – r.h. Sin
Best single line poem. Ever.
And deeply humbling for me as a mentor, because it reminds me of how I’ve failed every person I’ve ever coached.
–
Hard Truth #1 - When you’re coached by someone who works at or for your current company, you never lose your smile. And it’s worse when they’re your senior because you never stop treating them as a potential future boss. They get a carefully curated version of you, so their feedback is for that persona that you want them to see. Not useful at all. To either of you.
And that is at the core of why coaching in the corporate world is fundamentally broken.
–
Hard Truth #2 - Unless you change your personal timeframes for professional growth at your current company, your best career option is to find your next step up at another company. This is especially true if you’re exceeding management expectations.
When companies encourage leaders to have hard conversations during performance reviews, they make an exception for that one.
–
Hard Truth #3 - Most external coaches don’t have your organizational context. They have to rely on your reading of internal politics and interpersonal dynamics. Which is hilarious because if your read was right, you probably wouldn’t need the coach.
It also doesn’t help that coaching as an industry draws its fair share of well-intentioned “certified professionals” who need to be coached out of the industry.
–
Hard Truth #4 - Once you finally tap a decent external coach, you’ll quickly realize that they’re planning mirrors. They reflect back the goals that they hear you articulate. They work with you to build a concrete plan around those goals. And then, if they’re not too busy, they help you hold yourself accountable to executing on that plan. They might even help.
The value of that?
Meh.
Before You Get Depressed
I think there is a 2-step path to better coaching — for you and the billion dollar coaching market. And it starts with recasting the whole process so it intentionally ignores your current context and instead focuses on how to land you somewhere completely different.
Step 1: You need an angel. And I’m being literal.
Getting into coaching to make money in the short term is like opening another liquor store in a food desert. If anything, coaching as a profession needs to be like angel investing. And their money should be the least of their commitments.
Think early stage VC: willing to invest their time, expertise and network in helping you.
To what end? [And this is where you smell what I must be smoking.]
Step 2: Build a meaningful side-hustle.
Not because you need passive income. You don’t. Passive income is the lesser known cousin of “if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.” If someone is selling you on passive income, you are their passive income.
Anywho… build a business! Your business! Unconventional, yes. But it’s the most practical path to either land you in your next step-up in the corporate world or– more humanely– a lottery ticket to never needing a corporate gig ever again.
I’m not kidding. As a senior hiring manager, there are a ton of reasons that I’d hire the side-hustler:
* They’re embracing life actively, not passively– living expressions of their own agency.
* They’ve exercised their “what’s missing” muscle so they don’t need to be told what to build.
* They know how to assemble and motivate a team.
* They understand that execution and service are what differentiates them from the also ran.
And,
* If they still have a day-job, they know how to balance responsibilities as their world grows.
In Summary
Today’s coaches tell you what you already know. So their value isn’t their sage advice.
It’s that (in theory) you don’t need to pretend with them. You don’t need to be armored up.
Easier said than done.
Until you get that right, you need to find a mentor at a different company but in the same industry or profession. If you don’t know how, try @zara over at equicratic.org. She can make some introductions.
You’ll know you’ve landed a great coach when you feel safe without your work armor.
To be fair, that’s one part them, 99 parts you.
–
Oh and if you want to take the road even less traveled (at least by corporate lifers), keep reminding yourself that the best possible use of your nights and weekends is *not* to recover from your career but to prepare for your next one.
Postscript
There will always be a war for talent. And whether or not you’re ready for your next step up, you’re going to need something different than today’s coaches to really flourish.
Find an investor in your longer arc; a thoughtful side-hustle that teaches you what your day job can’t; a resilient team that shares in your special kind of crazy; and someone more impatient than you — who isn’t interested in having you wait your turn in the corporate promotion line.
Keep at it until you’re not smiling alone.
At that point, you’ll be smiling for a very different reason: you’ll have a wholly different kind of armor.
LinkedIn Tease:
Coaching in the corporate world is fundamentally broken. Same goes for mentoring and sponsorship.
The problem is one part developmental challenge (career gamesmanship getting in the way of cognitive growth) and one part structural (i.e., having to coach within the best interests of the Firm, not necessarily the employee).
We need to rethink the purpose and approach of internal coaching and how it plays with what is already a burgeoning corporate coaching industry.
This piece suggests some terrible ideas (after laying out some hard truths).