Tag Archive for: Executive Coach

Your Leadership Development Partner in 2026: How Executive Coaching Transforms Your Career Journey

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leadership development partner - executive coachingThe workplace in 2026 demands more from leaders than ever before. Hybrid teams still require some new management approaches to engage those in the room and on the screen. An understatement is that AI is reshaping how work gets done and will get done in the future. The result is a leadership landscape defined by ambiguity, fast-shifting expectations, and relentless productivity pressure.

Against this backdrop, choosing to engage an executive coach gives leaders the opportunity to think more deliberately about how they lead and how they grow. Research suggests that executive coaching supports improvements in leadership effectiveness, self-awareness, goal clarity, and resilience. Behaviorial flexing to learning, thinking styles and task styles are capabilities and can be learned as skills and have become increasingly important as roles expand and complexity increases.

To offer a comprehensive view of executive coaching, this three-part series explores not only its potential benefits, but also what executive coaching is, how it works, and how leaders can make the most of the investment. Whether you are an executive paying for your own development or an HR professional looking for leadership development coaches and team coaching in an offsite format, we want to hear from you.

Part 1 focuses on why executive coaching matters. It reviews the evolving demands on leaders, and the concrete outcomes associated with a high-quality coaching engagement.

Part 2 looks behind the curtain at how executive coaching actually works — what happens inside a coaching relationship, how the process unfolds, and how to evaluate and select the right coach for your goals, style, and context.

Part 3 turns to how to make the most of your investment, exploring how to actively engage in coaching to accelerate growth and practical next steps to move forward.

Why Executive Coaching Matters

Corporate training budgets today remain heavily weighted toward technical skills, systems training, and compliance requirements. Leadership development, when it exists, is often episodic rather than sustained. Traditional mentorship programs have largely disappeared in remote and hybrid environments. The informal learning that once happened through hallway conversations and after-work gatherings has changed in quantity and also was never a completely consistent practice by or for all.

Meanwhile, leadership complexity has intensified. Leaders are managing teams across time zones, navigating constant technological change, making decisions with incomplete information, and doing it all while maintaining work-life integration that often feels elusive.

Engaging with an executive coach helps leaders chart a path through the complexity. It provides personalized development when organizations cannot, strategic guidance when you are facing novel challenges, and accountability when it is easy to deprioritize your own growth.

This personalized approach matters because leadership is not one-size-fits-all. The skills that make you effective are deeply connected to who you are: your values, your strengths, your communication style, your life circumstances. Coaching helps you develop leadership that is both effective and authentic.

What Executive Coaching Actually Delivers

Let’s move beyond abstractions to concrete outcomes you can expect from a quality coaching engagement:

1. Clarity That Drives Action

Given the many demands on leaders today, it is no wonder that many feel like they are operating in perpetual reaction mode: responding to emails, attending meetings, and putting out fires. Coaching creates space for leaders to step back and ask fundamental questions: What am I actually trying to achieve? What matters most? Where should I focus my limited time and energy? What does success look like for me personally, not just professionally?

This clarity becomes a decision-making filter so that when opportunities arise, you can evaluate them against your actual priorities rather than defaulting to yes or getting swept along by others’ agendas. Research shows that working with an executive coach increases goal clarity and goal attainment, helping leaders move from urgency-driven behavior to intentional, strategic action.

2. Self-Awareness That Transforms Effectiveness

You cannot see yourself the way others see you. You can’t observe your own patterns, blind spots, or the gap between your intentions and your impact. This is where coaching becomes invaluable.

Through powerful questions, reflection exercises, and sometimes formal assessments, coaching builds the self-awareness that distinguishes good leaders from great ones. You discover how your communication style lands with different people, which strengths you’re overusing or undervaluing, what triggers cause you to react rather than respond, and where your assumptions limit your possibilities. Of note, leadership research consistently links emotional intelligence, of which self-awareness is a key component, to leadership effectiveness, team cohesion, and motivation, which executive coaching helps leaders develop over time.

3. Strategies for Your Specific Challenges

Leadership challenges are often maddeningly context-specific. How do you give difficult feedback to a high performer who has behaviors that negatively effect team culture? How do you influence senior stakeholders when you lack formal authority? How do you manage your energy when your role demands constant availability? How do you make the case for promotion without seeming entitled?

Books and training programs offer general principles. Your coach helps you develop strategies tailored to your specific situation, taking into account your organizational culture, your relationships, your constraints, and your goals. Generic advice rarely moves the needle; specific strategies do.

4. Accountability That Drives Change

Knowing what to do and actually doing it are entirely different challenges. We’ve all set goals only to abandon them when the daily grind takes over. Coaching provides structure and accountability that transforms intentions into actions.

Your coach holds you accountable not through judgment but through partnership. Between sessions, you implement agreed-upon actions, experiment with new approaches, gather feedback, and track progress. They then return to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what to adjust next. This cycle of action and reflection is where lasting change occurs.

5. Resilience to Navigate Setbacks

Every career includes setbacks: projects that fail, promotions you don’t get, relationships that sour, or reorganizations that derail your plans. How you respond to these moments often matters more than the setbacks themselves.

Coaching builds resilience by helping you process challenges productively, maintain perspective, develop coping strategies for high-stress situations, learn from failure without internalizing it as identity, and sustain motivation over time. Leadership coaching has been shown to increase leaders’ confidence in navigating their roles and improve trust in their direct reports, both critical factors in bouncing back from challenges.

6. Skills That Compound Over Time

Some professional development delivers immediate returns but little lasting value. Coaching is different. The skills you develop, like emotional intelligence or communication effectiveness, compound throughout your career.

A feedback framework learned today remains useful for decades. Increased self-awareness carries across roles and organizations. Communication shifts ripple through every future relationship. This compounding effect explains why coaching continues to deliver value long after the formal engagement ends.

7. Permission to Lead Authentically

Many professionals feel pressure to conform to leadership stereotypes that do not fit who they are. The charismatic extrovert. The tough boss. The relentless competitor.

Coaching offers a third option: developing a leadership style that is both effective and authentically you. This means honoring your values while building influence, leading in ways that energize rather than drain you, using your natural strengths rather than trying to eliminate weaknesses, and building teams that complement your style rather than compensate for it. Coaching helps you lead from a place of integrity and self-knowledge rather than imitation.

8. A Thinking Partner for Complex Decisions

Senior leadership can be isolating. The higher you rise, the fewer people you can speak with candidly. Your direct reports need confidence. Your boss evaluates judgment. Your peers may compete.

An executive coach becomes a confidential thinking partner, someone without agenda or judgment, providing a confidential space to think out loud, test ideas, and consider implications before acting. Having this thinking partner is not a sign of weakness; it is a strategic advantage that many effective leaders leverage intentionally.

A Deliberate Investment in How You Lead

Executive coaching is about supporting leaders at moments when complexity increases, stakes rise, and familiar strategies no longer suffice. In a workplace defined by constant change, coaching offers something increasingly rare: time, perspective, and partnership focused entirely on how you lead and how you grow. If you are ready to be matched with one of our coaches, please book a free exploratory conversation with our Founder and Head Coach, Nicki Gilmour here: BOOK SESSION

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO, theglasshammer and Evolved People Coaching

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Six Forms of Cultural Wealth You Can Leverage As a Leader

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cultural wealthIn her model of community cultural wealth, Dr. Tara J. Yosso identified six forms of cultural wealth (aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital) possessed and earned by socially marginalized groups, and countered the lens of cultural deficit.

Cultural wealth is defined as: “an array of knowledge, skills, strengths and experiences that are learned and shared by people of color and marginalized groups; the values and behaviors that are nurtured through culture work together to create a way of knowing and being.”

Affirming the cultural capital you’ve acquired as part of your road-tested skillset can be a compelling collective and personal narrative-flipper: factors that may have inhibited opportunities become empowering qualifications of your leadership ability. To walk into the room with a sense of cultural wealth integrated into your personal narrative could arguably reduce and reframe a sense of imposter syndrome.

In fact, Yosso’s model was initially designed to “capture the talents, strengths and experiences that students of color bring with them to their college environment”— but professional context, and even executive context, are even more compelling given you are further on the journey.

Here are the six forms of cultural capital and why they make you valuable as a leader.

Aspirational Capital

Aspirational capital is the ability to sustain hopes and dreams for the future amidst both real and perceived barriers.

As states the University of Portland UP Career Center, “It is the ability to envision a future beyond your current circumstances and work towards pursuing your dreams and aspirations.”

As Sheri Crosby Wheeler, VP of D&I at Fossil Group, told theglasshammer earlier this year when speaking to her own economically disadvantaged background: “I feel like it has given me the grit, the resilience, the fight, the get-up-and-go that I have to this day. I won’t see myself as ever being down and out, and I won’t stay in a ‘woe is me’ place, not for very long.”

The impact and success of Black and Latina female entrepreneurs, despite opportunity gaps, bias and barriers in the hallways of corporate America, bears testament to a mentality of sticking to a vision of realizing the dream beyond obstacles.

The ability to conceive of and hold to a vision beyond the current reality is not only essential to becoming a leader, but also what enables leaders to inspire entirely new visions and influence new realities.

Navigational Capital

Navigational capital is the ability to maneuver through systems and institutions that historically were not designed for you. Yosso notes that this capital empowers individuals to move within environments that can feel both unsupportive or hostile.

“I think you can approach a situation like that and feel like you’re the only one,” Gia Morón told us, on inviting herself into the NYC networking circle for the emerging legal cannabis industry, “or you can say, ‘I can invite other people and not be the only one.’”

As pointed out in Harvard Business Review by Marlette Jackson, PhD and Paria Rajai, the dedication many “first generation corporates” have to paying-it-forward and bringing others up through sharing the unspoken rules of navigating an organization is one way navigational capital comes into power. And for those who trail-blazed themselves, they bring that earned strategic and maverick gumption to what they offer.

“The most rewarding piece of my work is to create an opportunity and open a door, where traditionally that door may not have existed,” said Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, DE&I at PGIM, about alternative recruiting channels, “to be able to put that spotlight on someone who might not have been seen and say, ‘I see you and there’s space for you here.’”

Social Capital

Social capital is leveraging existing community resources and connections in building a network in support of your goals.

The roles of social and cultural capital have been found to be key components in supporting academic achievement among Latinas. In one qualitative study of Latina women, the pursuit of higher education was truly conceived as a “family goal” in which sacrifices were made to realize the goal, and in turn the Latina women “considered their own educational advancements as advancements for the whole family.”

Recently, Monica Marquez, Co-Founder of Beyond Barriers, shared with us that years ago when pioneering a Returnship® program at Goldman Sachs that facilitated mothers back to work after their maternity leave, her team found Latina women were less likely to have opted out of work for home responsibilities than their white peers, because they had the strong family structure and childcare support within the family.

“The cultural nuance or norm of the tight-knit family, where it takes a village to raise a family, helped some women stay employed opposed to having to opt out,” said Marquez.

Linguistic Capital

Linguistic capital is the sum intellectual, social and communication skills attained through a particular language, history and experiences.

Linguistic research indicates that those who are bilingual or multilingual generally have more connectivity and integration in their neural networks, a sharper working memory, more cognitive reserve, better task-switching, more divergent thinking and are more adept at solving mathematical problems than monolinguals, for starters. Analyzing in a second language also reduces decision bias.

“I have the benefit of growing up in a different country and being exposed to different cultures, so that helps me to understand and work with cross-cultural teams,” Anna Thomas, VP at BBH, told us. “For example, in Asian culture, unless you actually reach out and ask, someone will often think it’s disrespectful to provide their view of things. I grew up in that culture, so I know and I can actually coax and ask someone to speak up. I can come from that angle.”

Yosso emphasized that cultures where oral storytelling is part of the daily cultural fabric bring “skills [that] may include memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme”, such as to narrative crafting and public speaking.

Familial Capital

Familial capital is the cultural knowledge and nuance obtained from family and community experiences, for example how the communal-orientation of many Latin cultures may predispose networking skills.

While crediting her parents for raising her in faith from a long line of ministers and pastors, Marie Carr, a Global Growth Strategist at PwC US, said: “I have confidence in and the ability to appeal to a force higher than myself. That’s helped me to be more patient, to put myself in other’s shoes, to not be so hard on myself. You have to be able to center yourself, because you’re often going to find yourself in an environment that’s not going to affirm you. So, the ability to affirm yourself is really useful.”

Familial legacy of challenge and strife can also compel compassionate leadership.

Megan Hogan, Chief Diversity Officer of Goldman Sachs, recently shared that her family’s journey from the Dominican Republic to find opportunity influenced her own pro bono passion of working with immigrants seeking asylum: “It’s always been important to me to advocate for people seeking refuge from persecution as a way to pay it forward and allow others to find those same opportunities.”

Resistant Capital

Resistant capital is the inherited foundation and historical legacy of communities of colors and marginalized groups in resisting inequality and pursuing equal rights. This includes embracing a resistance to stereotypes that are not authentic to your sense of self.

Overcoming barriers and challenging the status quo enables a leader-oriented lens of questioning conventional models and methods that aren’t working or may be problematic for long-term growth, according to the findings of HBR authors Jackson and Rajai.

“The narrative is often ‘I come from a low-income neighborhood, I was raised by a single parent, my father is in jail, my brother was killed, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. I’ve got no credentials to lead…Who am I to run?” said May Nazareno, NE Director of Gifts at Ignite, to us, speaking of encouraging the inherent young female leaders from highly marginalized neighborhoods. “And we flip the script and say: who are you not to? We’re here to convince each young woman that her whole life is what makes her qualified to lead.”

By: Aimee Hansen

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How to Make Your Next Career Move During COVID-19

Next Career MoveNavigating change at work is applicable to everyone in their career right now. Working with an executive coach can help with adapting to the new environment of work from home and adjusting your mindset to deal with the changes that, due to a pandemic, seem to be here to stay for a while.

Executive-level jobs in the financial services and Fortune 500 are not exempt to disruption as the economic damage starts to take effect and it is very possible that companies will start slashing budgets and downsizing later this year.  So now, not later, is the time to prepare to make your next career move.

It won’t be the old-fashioned tap on the shoulder informing you that your team is being consolidated and there is no place for you.  The digital version of getting marched out of the building can provoke the same feelings of rejection, shame, anxiety and fear of what job to do next. If you are fired or made redundant, furloughed or re-org’ed out, then all is not lost. Instead, start with your own inner voice and control your psychology around what just happened, as self-talk and old fears and feelings can easily surface at this point. Your unconscious mind will enjoy slapping you with paradigms developed over a lifetime. These can take many forms; for those with imposter syndrome it could be “told you so, you didn’t belong there.” In the case of general self-worth concepts it could be the shame of “letting them down,” even though when I push my clients to further consider this internal message the “them” is mystical, general and undefined.

The best investigation you can do into your own constructs can be done using concepts from Lahey and Kegan’s work in Immunity to Change. This is a book I write about often and pursue with coaching clients to help them understand how to break out of implicit notions that your brain is quietly telling you.  These notions are working as the operating system beneath all the human apps or hacks that you think you are running for things like productivity and mastery in your life.

In times of potential trauma, such as job loss, you are faced with a choice of how to recover, as there are many emotions and thoughts involved with this type of situation. The best thing you can do is let go of any negative emotions such as anger or bitterness or shame. This is often easier said than done. Get perspective, as most likely this is not about you personally in these COVID-19 times. Use this event instead as reframe the change as an opportunity to understand what you enjoyed most, and least, about both the job itself and the company culture. This will help you figure out what is next for you professionally. If you have any kind of decent financial cushion, make a promise to yourself that you will not make rash decisions and instead take the time to reflect on what you really want to do.  That could come quickly if clarity happens, which is why a good coach can help you by supercharging you and your process. What do you need more of? Less of? How do you get what you want? This can be more satisfaction, more time, more flexibility, more money, a different title or even a complete pivot into a different career.

Not Furloughed or Fired but Ready for a Change

Even if things are steady at work it is okay to think about making a change, especially if your industry doesn’t look robust in terms of future sustainability or growth. See the writing on the wall regarding how your company is dealing with employees during COVID-19. Look for actions and behaviors. Are they laying off staff in other departments or teams? How are they doing it? Is there a voluntary severance program in place where the deal is lucrative? If so, perhaps it is worth talking to your manager about the future, specifically your future. This can be a courageous conversation to have so make sure you are in good standing with your boss as of course there is risk attached. If everything looks steady, find ways to ensure you make your value visible at all times. Working smarter not harder is the key here.

Take this time to think about what you want long term. In these exhausting times, it is easy to just survive the day and pour a cocktail on a Friday to celebrate getting through another week at work. Do an exercise of “flash forward” and picture yourself three years from now; what are you doing work-wise? Which firm are you in, if any, and what does your day-to-day look like? Start with the end in mind and start to think about the steps that could be taken to get there as Rome (or anything) was not built in a day. What skills do you need to develop? What connections do you need to make? What does starting the transition or pivot to a new job, career or industry look like? Herminia Ibarra’s fabulous book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader very much argues that we are all in transition, and we just might not know it yet. From this perspective, looking at networks and skills is a worthy action at all times. I highly endorse her work, and this is a consistent recommendation from me to my coaching clients across senior levels on Wall Street, tech, fintech, healthcare and pharma.

As gloomy as things might seem right now with the outlook for the economy and personal risks in going to work, it is ultimately an ideal time to figure out what you want and what works for you. Things will return to a normal of sorts, but who knows when? Think about the last time you interviewed for a job. You might have been in a different place in your life and it’s okay to acknowledge that everything has changed. Not least, you have a chance to think about your enhanced skillset. And surely all of our resilience muscles have increased, as we have been resourceful though quarantine, kids crawling in to zoom meetings and productivity despite lack of connectivity. You are better placed than ever to be the best executive version of yourself!

If you wish to have a complimentary, exploratory conversation to see if executive coaching with Nicki Gilmour or one of our associate coaches could help you navigate your career this year and beyond, then please select the time that works best for you from the link below.

Event: Exploratory Coaching chat – see full list of times

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Getting What You Want in 2018

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Nicki-Gilmour-bioBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Happy New Year!

Most of us have new resolutions and all of them will rely on a behaviorial change in their essence, as they require action. If you have figured out what you want (and what you don’t want) and have named this as a future state, then congratulations, the first part is done. But, now the goals are on paper, will you behaviorally do what you need to do to really achieve them?

The good news is that you are in charge of your choices.

The bad news is that your unconscious mind can totally hijack best laid plans by creating competing agendas. How does this show up? What saboteurs are lurking? What fears do you harbor that stop you from achieving your goals? Well, subtle behavioral conflict often happens and what you don’t do to meet your goals is worth deeper examination.

Changing or leaving your job is a common example of where you may espouse that you want to change jobs but here you are two years later still in the same spot. Maybe you have been looking, maybe you have even sent out a few resumes, but my bet is that there is truly something within yourself stopping you from doing what you need to do to get what you want. This might look like logic on the surface, like you tell yourself you don’t have time to network or you need more experience to apply. But, the interesting part of all of this is that in reality you are probably holding assumptions and beliefs that are stopping you from actioning your goals. Continuing with the “logic”, the “no time” reason is usually about a fear, and this can be anything from fear of not getting the job, to fear of not performing in the job, to even just a baseline rejection issue as well as many things including fear of what the next workplace culture might be. Sticking with “the devil you know” comes up more than you can imagine for people. Many of my clients are amazing, talented, experienced executives – women and men from different industries and they are also very human. We are all a product of our past experiences and our cultural benchmarks that often scar us from the cradle to the grave with “the way it is.”

Now, that is not to say that systemic factors are not at play, from biased hiring processes to saturation in your marketplace and turbulent external conditions. But, people get hired in up and down markets and it is the internal dialogue that you have with yourself that matters. Mindset work is key, as by understanding your own paradigms and mental models you can truly formulate practical strategies. I say this because I spent significant time in the past several years studying and researching why people fail to execute on their espoused plans from organization diversity plans to individuals who want things to change. The psychology of saying one thing and doing another is fascinating but we all do it to some extent and it happens because of cognitive dissonance or competing agendas propped up by deep implicit beliefs.

So, if you want to get to a different, better, future place than where you are now, please call me for an exploratory chat as we now have a full service sister coaching firm – Evolved People Coaching and we would be happy to find the right coach for you.

Here is to a great 2018!

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Laid Off? Do Not Get Derailed

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By Nicki Gilmour Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

At some point in your career, you will probably get laid off due to many factors that are usually beyond your control like downsizing, mergers and acquisitions and cyclical market turns in financial services. Do not take it personally! Hard advice if you have given the job 110% of your time and energy and have shown a loyalty that you perceive has not been returned.

Often people come to coaching at this point threatening to leave their industry and wanting to transfer their skills and make a pivot. My job as a coach is to help my client really have an honest look at what is going on- beyond the hurt and the emotion to see if they are truly done with their sector and not just their firm.

Sometimes, after testing the reasoning around why you might want to leave, the answer is then yes and we set about working out a plan on how to transition into the right job in the right firm in the right industry.

Sometimes however, doing the deep work results in you realizing that you love doing the tasks that you were doing, in the industry that you know and love and it was just the shock of being laid off or being somehow displaced in a shuffle that has made you feel resentful, done or stuck. In some cases, people have even taken another job only to find that they want back in. All scenarios are valid and none are really that bad when you have a little perspective. My job is to get you to where you truly want to be. We work out the destination and then figure out the journey together in a way that will get you there. The worst that can happen is that you took a small detour, or maybe you will find that a new destination is what you wanted all along.

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Fear of Change and Other Mental Models That Hold Us Back

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Nicki-Gilmour-bioBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Last week, we spoke about how expanding your mindset can truly take perspective mentally and not be beholden to your home-grown beliefs, paradigms and basically anything that your granny and society told you that you had to think, act and feel. We talked about the more we can move things from purely subjective to being an object then we can be more open to working with new ideas. I describe this to my clients using the glass half full/glass half empty adage, if you reframe it to an object, let’s face it, it is just a glass with some liquid in it and you don’t have to have any feelings around that at all.

Nearly all of us show courage at work and life. Nearly all of us have fears. Those fears are often deeply rooted in paradigms and mental models that we hold that play out in our “inner theater” telling us we could fail, we could lose something, we could look silly (amongst many other things.)

How do you take these anxiety ridden based on nothing assumptions and recognize them as the Gremlins that they are? They are present to sabotage your ability to take the next step and embrace whatever comes with that change?

Kegan and Lahey in their brilliant book “Immunity to Change” offer actual exercises on how to understand what your worries are and how they are often competing commitments to your main objective. For example, you might be keen on delegating more but find that you ultimately want things done your way; making your goal harder to reach.

It is the assumptions (those built in paradigms) that create these competing unconscious and conscious thoughts and behaviors. By surfacing and testing your assumptions – such as what it is that makes you assume that your way is best, you can make real progress towards growing, succeeding and leading!

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Developing Mental Complexity Will Help You at Work (and Life)

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woman thinking - pipelineBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The world is increasingly complex and can be quite confusing these days.

How do you ensure you have the guts, glory, stamina and agility to survive all this change?

Mental complexity is the answer according Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey in their book “Immunity to change”. This is my personal favorite book right now for two reasons; I am writing a paper on behavioral change and also am grateful for the change I have personally experienced from committing to examining paradigms that no longer serve me.

This work can take the guise of coaching but touches on all aspects of your existence and is a vehicle for a happy sustainable life in my opinion.

Kegan and Lahey talk about how we tend to be in one of 3 “minds” or mindsets when it comes to our mental complexity levels and this has nothing to do with IQ.

So, level one is a “socialized mind” and is where the majority of people operate. Certainly, junior and middle managers can be successful here as part of being here requires following, caring what people think of you and generally towing the line be it within a corporation, culture or even a religion. People here are good team players. But, what does one lose by seeing life though this lens? If you do not fit with what the norm is, you might find yourself feeling inadequate and uncomfortable or undeserving in some way.

At work, you may be at the mercy of the effects of politics and feeling not aligned (and in society too). You will fight yourself to get aligned and reduce your cognitive dissonance. At what cost?

The next “mind” is the “Self-authoring” mind which with this increased mental complexity, you can relegate others opinions (and even your own opinions) to an appropriate place where they can be referenced within a bigger system than your own direct value set. Therefore, outliers from yourself and others will not consume you, and instead give you the power to bed the author of our own reality. You get to direct the movie in your head.

I can personally attest when I stared to think with this self-authoring mindset it was growth. It changed my life and I see it work well for my coaching clients and when (if) they get there then I can honestly say the ball is in their court which usually results in happier choices and happiness with choices made as well as robust future decision making ability.

This is particularly good for people who have set high standards for themselves or seek approval from others. This level of processing information will move you from having subjective feelings and suffering the emotional fallout from them to seeing things more objectively and in perspective.

By learning to look at as well as through certain lenses, you can evolve and as Kegan and Lahey put it “not be forever captive of one’s own theory, system, script, framework or ideology”. Then, you can start to be in the zone of the “Self-transforming mind” where expansiveness around what you see and hear at work is not uniquely filtered to meet your informational needs. In plain English, you can make meaning on a big picture level and not feel the anxiety around how it effects you which if you are in the socialized mind, will trigger you and make you take it personally. You can care and not be consumed by caring. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

So, how do you build mental complexity to thrive at work and in a crazy world? Tune in next week to find out more….

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Responsibility – Tick, But Resource Control is Zero

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Slowing downBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

A bad work day can consist of a scenario when you do not manage the team but are on the hook for delivery of the product. Sound familiar? Literally, this happens everyday to many people and it is a problem that creates issues and looks like a lack of skill and efficiency because team A promised the client something but they had no control over team B actually building the product.

Would you take the responsibility of protecting the free world, if you were not allowed the nuclear codes? Most of you will say no to this yet I see so many people taking on outrageous projects and knowingly being on the hook for things that they literally have zero control over the delivery of. How can you avoid this seemingly inevitable situation?

A good case in point is diversity work.

I see a lot of great women heading up women’s networks and being tasked with creating a bigger pipeline of women in the firm. Unless you have serious formal hiring capabilities as your new day job or the ability and full power to rework all the talent processes in the firm plus all the time in the world and renumeration to do it, then why would you say yes to this? From a transformative outcome frame, you should say no since this has no resource or execution control attached to it.

Unless, the goal is advocacy in which case that is fair enough as advocacy is important but rarely formally transformative. Advocacy is what men do every single day for each other so getting them to do it for you is a strong step in the right direction as is getting women to stop burying each other to protect the patriarchy (which runs deep as we know in recent times).

Also, really good development that understands the nuances of being different to the blueprint is never wasted- train and educate as you go in these networks if formally this is not an option (arguably it should de organized and paid for elsewhere but it is often not the case). A network can be a good container to supply unique content to certain audiences who potentially face shared challenges that are systemic in nature.

Remember, only you know what you want to spend time and energy on and how to create goals that are reachable. It is worth thinking about activity versus productivity and outcomes since you all have lives and goals inside and outside of work. Reduce stress by aligning your responsibility and authority on tasks that become the sum of your job!

If you are interested in hiring an Executive Coach to help you navigate your career then email Nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com for further informatiom

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Career Fantasy – A Future Job or a Serious Distraction to Your Success Right Now?

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woman thinking - pipelineBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Pyschologist

Most people have a career fantasy. What do I mean? Well, think about it right now; do you want to start a business that involves a cozy bed and breakfast in your favorite holiday spot? Or a cupcake business or a dog groomers? You get the picture and feel free to insert your own fantasy here as most of us have them.

You are not on your own as many folks day dream their way through their current job with a future fantasy of how the future might be.

It is real? Is it a fantasy? Does it matter? I think it matters for two reasons.

Firstly, if it is real, then what is stopping you from doing it on the sooner side? When pushed, my clients often realize that they have gotten no further than the headline and a surefire way to test your own assumptions is to start researching the feasibility and competition of the future industry you are considering entering. if you get this far, then maybe it is not a fantasy, maybe you are on the way to being an entrepreneur? Next step then is to perhaps apply SMART goals? Deep dive into real possibilities as it might be the ride of your life.

However, if you really do not want to own a B&B to the north, south, east or west of where you are now, you might find that out by truly not wanting to do any research or upon investigation find it not to be a viable job. If that is the case, then what role does it serve in terms of your mental involvement at work- is it keeping you engaged at work or distracted and disengaged?

Arguably, having a little dream can be a lovely way to keep you working so that you can save up for it, at least in your mind’s eye and this is a motivator (retirement is a different thing to being a business owner unless you can afford a working hobby).

But, what you do not want to do is to mistake this future perfect state as a “grass is greener” option instead of actually understanding why you do not like your job today. Examine with a coach what is really going on to see how to work out how to stay successfully or leave successfully but not to live in a dream your life away state so that you cannot engage in the present. Talk to a professional coach about real options for your future career and take a vacation to recharge if you feel like a rut is forming so that you can enjoy the present.

If you are interested in hiring an Executive Coach then email nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com for a no obligation chat

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Finding Your Own Answers to Navigate 2017

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the-art-of-asking-questionsBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Pyschologist

I publish theglasshammer to help you excel at work. In 2017 theglasshammer will turn ten. We provide career advice and you can see how other women have climbed to the top, you can catch up on the research and academic studies in a digestible way to know the trends of what is happening for professional women at work, for diversity and inclusion patterns and to consider leadership strategies. However, career advice is just that; advice on how you can do things. Useful for some and not a fit for others and it is important to know what works for you -both personally and in context of where you are working and living.

Coaching on the other hand is about you finding answers to your own questions. We became coaches here, legitimately studied and got qualified as we saw that you can lean in, we saw that systemic work takes time and we now know that there is no method more effective than changing one person to change the world.

One more inclusive male leader changes lives, just as one more woman advancing is a piece of puzzle and if we can help you then you can help others. Criteria mass theory – does it work? We do not know as we are not there yet. I guess what we saw in this election is that by virtue of being a woman, that does not by default make you not sexist. I have discussed this at length in other posts and tune in on Friday December 16, 2016 for a fuller exploration.

Sometimes we just do not know what is going on until we have a coach to help us explore it safely. It is useful to understand the context, to explore the content of the challenge and to then find out a way to safely explore options before taking an action that will help in solving an issue or perhaps it will provide a step in achieving a longer term plan. Your plan, your agenda.

That is why, a coach can play such a unique role in your career trajectory. A mentor gives advice, a sponsor advocates for you but a coach can help you look at what you really want and help you get it.

I have three questions for you to ponder as we wrap up the year:

What do you want in 2017? How can you get it? What does success look like for you in 2017?

These are some questions to think about. Are they your questions? What are your questions? Marilee Adams wrote a clever book which I recommend you ask Santa or your gift bearer of choice to give you this holiday season called “Change your questions, change your life“. Often we just are not asking ourselves the right questions and are busy judging ourselves and others. In your life, in your career and managing your team, are you telling yourself and others the way it is more than questioning what you and others need and want?

We do not know what new macro-level obstacles will appear due to the changes in government in the US and with Brexit in the UK, but we do know that we can examine how we feel, think about what we want, assess risk and talk actions accordingly- at work and in life. You might find it gives you peace of mind in these volatile times.

Theglasshammer is offering a post-election special on coaching- 2 sessions for $399 to be used before Jan 20th.

Nicki Gilmour is a qualified individual/organizational psychologist and founder of glasshammer2.wpengine.com

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