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Coaching is a powerful
and collaborative process between you and the coach that helps you learn more about who you are, what you want to do, what's
gotten in the way of your progress, and how to move forward with a clear plan of action. Coaching accelerates your potential,
lightens up your load by providing clarity, and enhances your performance. Many people use coaching during periods of life
transition, change, or when they want to achieve a new level of skill and satisfaction in their business or personal life.
Because of my background, my specialty is supporting career success. We apply all the tools of coaching to help you attain
your goals.
In my training as a coach, consultant and manager I learned how to generate relevant information,
then synthesize it and find the patterns. In both executive and career coaching, we uncover and explore these patterns and
develop an action plan. We’ll use a process that follows three steps: Awareness, Understanding, and Action.
First we’ll actually inventory the skills and talents that you have along with understanding your communication style,
your values and what you have always loved and wanted to do (but may have forgotten about or put aside). Next we’ll
come to understand what has helped you or hindered you in reaching your goals. Ready to act, we’ll develop a set of
goals and work in partnership to achieve them.
Coaching is powerful, and it can also be fun. It's my job to ask
the right questions to help you discover what success means to you, and to hold you accountable for achieving the results
you want.
Coaching can leverage off the courses and development programs you’ve already invested in. The
one-to-one “laser” style makes progress faster. We’ll customize our coaching sessions to the specific issues
and needs that you have.
Many of my clients report that by working with me, they set higher goals, create momentum
that makes it easier to get results, take more effective and focused actions, and enjoy the discovery and planning process.
What a surprise that can be!
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Excerpt from Need a job? Get a coach
By Sonia Sharigian
/ Staff Writer Thursday, November 14, 2002
Chances are in today's shipwrecked economy, there's a chance you are a)
either clinging to a job or b) counting the days left before unemployment expires.
You don't have to sell your soul
to your boss, or resort to becoming a workaholic to survive. But you owe yourself the time it takes to shape your dreams and
become a career activist, and reclaim those things you care about, like family and friends.
Executive and Career Coach
Joanne Derr said people in high-powered roles are downsizing themselves, taking on jobs that are smaller in scope and more
manageable. "It allows more balance in life," she said. "Particularly since 9/11, they don't want to settle for less."
A
career coach is a partner who helps a client fine-tune his or her skills and presentation. A coach typically offers a free
consultation to see if there is a match before working together for three to six months.
For Derr, the first meeting
which can take place in person or over the phone, is a chance for a potential client to review goals, priorities, lifestyle
and family values.
Later, Derr gives various personal assessment tests which provide data for future conversations.
"It's a couple of hours of really thinking about themselves and making themselves a top priority," she said. "It's asking:
What do I really want to do? And, what's stopping me? Forget about all those voices. Tame your gremlins that keep you stuck."
Karen
Newsom, 53, of Northboro, found Derr a lifeline after her siblings gave the gift of coaching after learning of a friend's
success. Being unemployed for six months led to a severely shaken self-confidence. "I was just falling rapidly. It was terrifying
- I hadn't laughed in months," said Newsom.
She signed a three-month contract with Derr, and after two months and two
weeks landed the right job. Newsom is now the customer-service manager for Essential Salon Products, a New-England-based distribution
company that sells high-end salon products. "It's a small customer-service team. It's fun," said Newsom.
One of Derr's
assignments was for Newsom to ask a couple close friends to e-mail something that's positive about herself on a daily basis.
It's My Time - a phrase sent via email clicked. "It's My Time jumped out of the screen," she said. "If you were a stranger,
you would think I'm a wacko. It's in my car, at home on the bathroom wall, scrolling across my computer screen..."
Fishing
for compliments sounded weird at first, she admits. "Most people don't take compliments very well," she said, "no one ever
hesitated."
Assignments also tackled the blood and guts of job searching. "I made a spreadsheet for every company I
sent a resume to," she said. The sheet became a tracking device to keep tabs on the pros and cons and the status of her application.
In addition, she described everything she loved and hated about all of her past employers, also detailing the people she worked
for.
During an interview, "you hear what you want to hear," said Newsom, who may have thought twice about her previous
boss who described himself as a Type A personality who works six-and-a-half days a week. "It was fun being a workaholic in
my 30s and 40s," she said, "I want to enjoy different things now." Her new workday, which ends at 5:30 p.m., allows freedom
to baby-sit the young children in her family, and take on pet-sitting in the weekend."It gives me time to have happiness outside
of work," she said. "I'm auntie Karen."
The client and coach will be meeting in person for the first time on Saturday.
"She's bringing the bagels, it's going to be so much fun," said Newsom. "She, in my opinion, walks on water. She worked my
tail off." Newsom would get e-mails saying, "You go girl!" or pick up the phone to hear Derr, saying, "It's My Time, Incorporated."
Derr offers a powerful background that transcends many arenas. She worked as a vocational counselor in the 70s, assisting
employers and promoting the benefits of hiring people with disabilities. In 1987, she then set her heart on landing a job
as a HR consultant at Digital, which took about 27 informational interviews to get in the door.
At Digital, she broke
out of employee relations to chase down workplace satisfaction and to explore the dynamics of women engineers in a predominantly
male environment. Six years later, she switched over to the HR department at Bay Networks to take on mergers and acquisitions
for a company which had employees from two different cultures coming together as one.
Two years ago, she became an
independent consultant offering merger and acquisition integration. Derr added executive and career coaching to her bill in
January. This month she is offering a course on credible resumes for working moms at Roudenbush.
The idea came after
hearing her friends' frustrations after working out at the gym one day. Many friends felt like they had nothing to show for
themselves, she said. "Mothers are terrific organizers, coordinators, fund raisers, project managers and team leaders," she
said. Many women had a great career or dropped out of grad school in order to start a family. The course is geared to bridge
the gap between the time spent in and out of the workplace. Luckily, if you have kids, you have skills - from coaching girls
soccer, organizing car pools, leading school fundraisers, to helping your children select colleges or working on an IEP for
a child with special needs.
"They don't see that as transferable skills on a resume," she said. "You don't want the
resume to be a barrier for an informational interview."
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