The Benefits of Partnering with a Career & Leadership Coach

Some women are born to lead. Most, however, grow and evolve into a leadership role. Hiring a leadership coach is a smart choice for helping you explore your current goals and ambitions, leverage and mobilize your strengths, gain more self-awareness, and achieve new or higher objectives.

For many of my clients, hiring a career or leadership coach happens most frequently in times of career transition. For some of my clients, having the support, accountability, and growth potential that occurs with coaching when thrust into a new, more visible position has been vital. For many women, the increased visibility of a leadership role often brings with it greater feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure, and imposter syndrome, which is why I’ve written much about these topics.

The larger platform, impact, or influence of leadership can be overwhelming, so having a champion, encourager, and co-visionary in a coach can be just what a new leader needs to adopt a more positive outlook and mindset as she acclimatizes into her new position.  It can also help identify and address issues, challenges, and blind spots before they become insurmountable.

For other purpose-driven women, career or leadership coaching is indispensable when considering a career pivot. When seasoned professionals reach a certain echelon of their career and start to truly recognize the expertise and unique value proposition they bring, exploring new career options is not just prudent but wise. In these instances, coaching can help widen a client’s perspective, generate new awareness, hold them accountable to the best version of themselves, and help them articulate more clearly what type of role they are vying for in this mature stage of their career. For some, a career change may be forced upon them by a move, which may open up new options for them to explore objectively with a coach.

Transition can also look like deciding to leave a corporate career behind to pursue a long-held dream of entrepreneurship. Hiring a business/career coach to help an aspiring leader craft a personal brand, define her target market, refine her offer, and make a seamless transition into entrepreneurship is an excellent investment to ensure she sets herself up for success.

At its core, coaching is about perspective-shifting, seeing possibilities, expanded awareness, creating a game plan, and taking consistent action to realize change once key objectives are identified. The coach facilitates a dialogue grounded in curiosity, non-judgment, and possibility, so that the client has space to process, internalize, and execute against the agreed-upon actions.

Here are a few specific benefits purpose-driven women can expect from career and leadership coaching.

1      Identify, leverage, and mobilize strengths. Women, especially purposeful ones, often downplay or underestimate their strengths, because they tend to take them for granted. One of my program manager clients is especially gifted in seeing the flaws or weaknesses in ideas, concepts, or systems. But because this came so easily to her, she didn’t value this talent or even see it as one of her differentiating strengths. From our work together she started to see how much this “superpower” (as I like to call giftedness), had buoyed her in her career and been instrumental to her success. Now she can fully own and embrace her strength of Restorative (the CliftonStrengths definition of this talent), and use it more effectively and strategically to benefit her team.

2      Improve your relational skills. For many leaders, their technical or business expertise is what got them where they are but as they rise to greater levels of leadership, they need more relational and interpersonal skills to be successful. Leadership is about empowering people to execute against a vision so developing better people skills is critical. This is where a coach’s support is beneficial in expanding your awareness and encouraging you to see things from different perspectives.  

3      See yourself more clearly.  Gaining honest self-awareness is a significant benefit to partnering with a good leadership coach.  Throughout your coaching engagement, your coach will share their perceptions of you, and challenge your mindset. Because of the new insights you will get from coaching, your ability to examine yourself objectively will be enhanced.  Your coach can also help you discover strengths and talents you may not have known existed, which builds your confidence as you grow in your position as a leader.

4      Achieve what you want. At the end of the day, a good leader cares about their impact. A career or leadership coach plays an integral role in bringing you clarity on your desired impact, the goals you desire to achieve,  and the actions and changes you need to make to achieve them. Your coach is your ally, a key player in your support system as a leader: someone who gets to know you very well and is your champion. A great coach keeps your vision for yourself as a leader alive, especially in those moments when doubt, insecurity, or fear creep in.  This is a role I particularly get much fulfillment from—reminding my clients of their brilliance, their wins and success, what they’ve overcome, and how they’ve grown in the time we’ve worked together. These are the times when big paradigm shifts can occur with a client—when they can finally grasp why they took on a leadership role to begin with, so they can redirect their focus to one of success rather than keep obsessing over what they may have done wrong or where they fall short.

5      Become a more confident, effective leader. This, in a nutshell, is why you hired a coach in the first place. Confidence comes with a more balanced, objective view of your strengths and special gifts,  greater clarity on your “why’ in leadership, and knowing that you have a champion along the way. Your growth as a leader is exponentially greater with a coach because you have a safe space to process your feelings, behavior and thoughts; an accountability partner to ensure you take required action; a challenger who will help you see and course correct for your blind spots; and, a partner to help you ideate, envision, plan, and strategize so you can be assured your vision for leadership is realized. For a small investment, these are huge gains. Honestly, there is no downside to hiring a leadership coach once you’re prepared to do the work required to grow and change.

If you have any more questions or would like to explore career and leadership coaching, please feel free to reach out to me. My 45-minute discovery calls are complimentary.

 To your success!

Natalie Jobity is a leadership and career coach, consultant, brand strategist, bestselling author, mentor, speaker, and facilitator who has earned a reputation as "The Brilliance Unveiler." She empowers female leaders to live in the fullness of their purpose and unveil their brilliance by leveraging the power of their strengths, expertise, and distinctiveness, so they make transformative impact in their sphere of influence.

 Visit Natalie’s website to learn more about how she partners with leaders with her signature “Unveil Your Brilliance” program and her "Brand Your Biz Like a Boss" consulting service.  While you’re there, join her Unveiled community and pick up your complimentary copy of her "Empowered to Lead: Seven Strategies to Help You Become a More Impactful Leader" guide.