Case Study : IT Engineering Manager
IT Engineering Manager (Retail Industry)
Coaching period: September 2022 – March 2023
This case study is designed to give YOU a flavour of coaching with Georgie and showcase what is possible and how it can help transform you.
My Client
My client is working in an IT leadership role where she is currently managing a team of 20 and had recently stepped up into this role from her previous position in another FTSE 250 company. She is a busy mum of two school age children and leads an active lifestyle. She’s ambitious but unsure of her next steps and has struggled to see similar female role models in more senior IT positions. What is next career wise? How can I get there? Does it have to impact time with my family? What legacy can I leave? These were some of the questions she wanted to answer through our coaching sessions.
Can YOU relate to this scenario? Or maybe you are an independent single woman questioning the impact of your IT career on your personal life?
How is YOUR life flowing? What direction are YOU heading?
The Scoping Session / The Logistics
The Scoping Session
My client signed up for the Machu executive coaching package in September 2022. Prior to signing up we discussed what the overall objectives were of the coaching which was documented below.
We discussed your initial thoughts around what you wanted to work on which included finding and refining your vision around your career and how that relates to your values and life outside of work. The timing of this coaching is also key due to your upcoming milestone birthday in January 2024. You also expressed your fear of drifting and that life is short. You have settled into your new job over the last three months and although doing very well and enjoying it you have also realised that you have capability to do more. So the question is ‘what next?’. I’m sure over the four months we can work together to support your journey of painting your vision and work on the steps and actions.
The Logistics
The logistics of our coaching relationship are documented below to give you an idea how the process may work. Each client is different and I will work with you to support you in a manner that works for you.The dates for the 8 sessions were agreed up front and diarised every two weeks for an hour via Zoom. Due to some challenging personal circumstances we rearranged the final few sessions.
My coaching packages always offer some degree of flexibility in timings if required. Sessions were invoiced at the end of each month. Each session would result in actions for the client to work towards their goal and is recorded (with permission) to enable myself as a coach to listen to again and prepare ahead of the next session. We agreed written updates from my client on the weekend before the following session allowing the session itself to be focussed on moving forward and taking any learnings from the two weeks before.
The Coaching Sessions / Mentoring Session
The Coaching Sessions (from my clients perspective)
The coaching sessions all followed a similar structure in which we’d first briefly review any ‘homework’ I’d taken on following the previous session and discuss any specific findings or reflections that had arisen from that work. The focus for each session was dictated by me, in that Georgie gave me freedom to concentrate on whatever I felt was most important at the time. She did, however, keep us focused on the overall goal discussed at the start of the 8 sessions and if I dived down a rabbit-hole she would skilfully bring us back to topic. Once we’d agreed what the goal for that hour was, she would ask me questions around the goal that would always lead to an action plan by the end of the session. I was amazed at her skill in coaching me to a meaningful action plan in what started out as an abstract idea or important reflection I had brought to the session.
The Mentoring Session
During our coaching sessions my client decided she needed some mentoring specifically around IT Senior Leadership Roles and what skills are required and what potential employers would be looking for. As I have experience in senior leadership roles we agreed a separate mentoring session would be appropriate. This enabled the focus to be on sharing my experience in order to help her to learn and grow in the context of her overall goal. The mentoring session complimented the overall experience and helped her drive specific actions to move her forward in her thinking and grow her own skills where she had identified some gaps.
Case Study Continued
The Review Session
Following the successful completion of the four-month package I ran a review session to gain feedback on our coaching journey which helped the client reflect on her experience as well as helped me to develop and grow as a coach.
Review feedback
Q: What’s the biggest impact our coaching sessions have had on you?
A: The discussion in our sessions (including the probing questions you challenged me with), and the actions we generated allowed me to take a step back from my busy day-to-day life, pause and look at the bigger picture of my life direction and motivations. I did not possess the skills to do that on my own – the guidance of an experienced, objective human being was invaluable. I also do not believe I would ever have successfully made the time to do that on my own – paying for coaching sessions was a useful way to force both the time and the focus.
Q: Do you feel coaching has transformed your life?
A: Absolutely. The process of first establishing my values, then gradually being challenged on my own thoughts and beliefs has opened my eyes to how limiting some of my life-long beliefs were. Breaking free of those self-limiting beliefs has opened new doors for me from a career perspective; and given me a sense of inner peace that I had not experienced before. Also, actively evaluating my values not only gave me some direction but is a skill I shall take way with me and repeat from time to time to help me make decisions.
Q: What will you do differently going forward as a result of the coaching you have experienced?
A: The coaching taught me how to approach challenges: scenario planning; action planning; engaging help from others. The latter was something I did very little of pre-coaching.
Q: Do you feel I challenged you enough in our sessions?
A: Yes! I was impressed with your patience and skill in challenging me. Once or twice, you gently stopped me mid-sentence to point out how what I had just said conflicted with something we had established earlier. These are things I would not have noticed without the ears of an objective coach listening to my thoughts. It kept me focused and honest in the process and I didn’t feel threatened by it.
Q: Do you believe you got value for your investment in yourself?
A: Very much so: the money I invested has taught me some valuable information about myself and the skill to reframe my thinking around certain topics. That has led to new career opportunities and confidence that I did not have prior to the coaching.
Q: What are the top 3 things you found the most useful during our coaching sessions in terms of the coaching process itself/format of the sessions?
A: 1 – Homework: having actions to take between sessions kept my mind focused; the results of those actions meant that I continuously built on my new findings and allowed me to come to each session with new information / thoughts.
A: 2 – Action planning: the way in which you taught me to plan my actions (e.g. break the action plan right down…what do you need to do, who can help you with this, etc.)
A: 3 – Your notes: you took meticulous notes in each session and sometimes you played back thoughts or ideas that I had raised (and forgotten!) in previous sessions. It made the exploration process more thorough, but it also made me feel like you were really listening to me which made me feel even more engaged.
The Review Session
Q: How useful was the values coaching session we did?
A: 10/10 useful! I couldn’t have started the journey without that. It provided a point to return to every so often and check how I was tracking against my values.
Q: Please explain the value of the mentoring session?
A: Coaching is all about asking the right questions, and letting the client figure out the answers so that it means something to them. Mentoring is about providing guidance on a specific situation or topic, based on your own experience in that field. When we reached a point in my coaching where I realised that I needed to lean on your experience as a senior leader in IT, a one-off mentoring session was very valuable for me. I was the one who brought the questions and you gave me your thoughts based on experience. This allowed me two helpful lessons: the first, hearing how a senior IT leader thinks; the second, identifying some gaps in my knowledge and making a plan to address those.
Q: How would you describe my coaching style?
A: Relaxed. Professional. Friendly. Helpful. Focused.
Q: How would you describe coaching with me to a prospective client?
A: Imagine getting a hugely experienced, successful senior business leader to listen to you speak your mind for 8 one-hour sessions and then help you achieve whatever goal you have in mind by teaching you how to think differently. It’s like having a personal trainer for the mind.
Q: Would you recommend coaching to others?
A: I would absolutely recommend coaching to anyone who is self-aware enough to know that they need help beyond their own resources in achieving a goal or finding their direction. The value gained from having someone objectively listen to you and question your values, motivations and goals without judgement is both liberating and revealing. Actively investing in coaching sessions is a highly effective way to pause, assess, reflect, be challenged and then make decisions accordingly. It has substantially enriched my life, career and way of thinking.
Q: Do you have any further feedback?
A: This was the most valuable 8 hours I spent on myself in 15 years. I am a hard worker and was relatively self-aware to being with – I went in with a goal to further my career and thought I was smart enough to know more or less what path the coaching would take.
I could not have been more off the mark: the session on values alone got me thinking differently and every session after that (including the homework) brought something entirely unexpected to light: unhelpful beliefs about myself that I had held for most of my life suddenly looked different when you questioned them and helped me break them down. Assumptions that I had held about what makes a good senior leader were revised based on our mentoring session and my own research off the back of the coaching sessions.
My own capabilities (which I thought I knew inside out) turned out to be more prolific than I had realised, a realisation which gave me confidence. Importantly, I learned to be unashamedly myself instead of trying to be what I thought others expected of me.
Thank you for your patience, active listening skills, wisdom, experience, empathy, meticulous note-taking and ability to challenge me in a gentle, but firm way. You have certainly left your mark.
Post Executive Coaching Experience
Follow-on Quarterly Coaching Package Agreed
We have since agreed a quarterly package of coaching to continue to allow my client the ‘space and time’ to reflect on her world as she moves forward with her career and life guided by her values and the actions she continues to take as a result of her executive coaching experience.
This is totally up to YOU the client. Some may want to plan in some regular coaching sessions going forward. Some may wish to make use of my Chile Power hour package which is for adhoc needs. Or others may come back six months or a year(s) later if they have another goal they want to invest in for some further executive coaching. My goal is to build a a trusted relationship with you and be your coach of choice should you want to invest again in the future.
The Power of Coaching
Two months later, my client sent me this email:
“Hi Georgie, just wanted to let you know that I have applied for a senior engineering role with a London-based company. Whether I am successful in my application is less relevant than the fact that prior to my coaching sessions with you, I would never have had the confidence to even search for a role like this, let alone apply for it. Thank you. “
Connection is key
Not all coaches will be right for you so its important to see if we have a connection where we can build a strong and trusting relationship. Being comfortable to share and be your authentic self in our sessions is key to unlocking your potential.
Curious to experience coaching with Georgie? – take action now – book your free 30 min taster session via Zoom and see if I can help transform you. You will find the online bookings under the CONTACT section.
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