The Mix Tape: Ep. 7 — Coaching To Reach Your Peak Performance

Unison:

Welcome to The Mix Tape.

Valerie McCandlish:

I’m Valerie.

Natalie Taylor:

And I’m Natalie. And today, our episode is all about coaching. So Val, I wanted to ask you to dig back into your memory and tell me who’s your favorite coach that you’ve had of all time.

Valerie McCandlish:

Ooh, my favorite coach of all time would probably be my high school golf coach.

Natalie Taylor:

Awesome.

Valerie McCandlish:

I golfed all four years, picked up a club having never played golf, never swung a golf club before when I was a freshman, and the team welcomed me. And Tom Steadman, who was also my history teacher-

Natalie Taylor:

Love that.

Valerie McCandlish:

He was just an amazing coach. He was a great developer of me, not only in the sport, but also just maturing in high school when you’ve got a lot going on. Kudos to him for coaching a full girls golf team, being the lone guy there often with a lot of emotions. But he was just a wonderful person to learn from and be around, and all around great person.

Natalie Taylor:

I love that. That’s great. And you maybe probably did well in history class too.

Valerie McCandlish:

Yeah, yeah. I was kind of a nerd.

Natalie Taylor:

Oh, my gosh. I love it. Well, I think that’s great. And I think those of us who have coaches like that in our youth, we’re so lucky to have people like that in our lives who kind of helped us to grow and learn. And in our adult lives, in our professional lives, sometimes we lose sight of that. We go to college, or maybe we play sports in college, but once you graduate, we dive into our careers, a lot of us do, and oftentimes lose sight of having that coach or mentor. Do you have a professional coach?

Valerie McCandlish:

I don’t have one, but I feel like after this episode, I’m going to want to-

Natalie Taylor:

Yeah.

Valerie McCandlish:

Work with our guest today.

Natalie Taylor:

I agree.

Valerie McCandlish:

But it is cool that here at Mix we put such an emphasis on that development, that continued development of ourselves. And I think we do a good job of trying to ensure that we’re going to be growing the best that we can professionally. And it’s been nice to see the work that we do both internally and then with our clients as well.

Natalie Taylor:

As we dive deeper into coaching today, we will be joined by Mix Talent sweetheart, Ali O’Malley, who is our director of people, insights, and transformation. She will be speaking with Stacè Middlebrooks, who is the chief empowerment officer at Purpose Powered Coaching and Consulting. She runs her own practice and focuses specifically on women of color in leadership. She helps them to rediscover their authenticity and confidence so they can live and lead with purpose and power.

Valerie McCandlish:

So with that, we welcome you to join us for today’s episode, Coaching to Reach your Peak Performance with Stacè and Ali.

Ali O’Malley:

Hello, hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Ali O’Malley. And I’m the director of people, insights, and transformation at Mix Talent. I’m joined today by a very, very dear person to me named Stacè Middlebrooks. Stacè has been instrumental in my own journey becoming a leadership coach. And Stacè, I think you have one of the most amazing titles that I’ve encountered as chief empowerment officer. So could you please tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be chief empowerment officer?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Yes. Oh, Ali, thank you so much for having me here. I appreciate the introduction. It warms my heart. You are very dear to me as well. Chief empowerment officer, good question, it’s a made up title, honestly. But I wanted to create something as I was starting to create my own business that really encapsulated what I was going after. And yeah, do I do all the regular CEO stuff, COO stuff? Sure. But what I think is most important in the work I do is empowering other people to have peak performance, to be at their optimal best, and so I wanted to really capture that. So there’s the title, chief empowerment officer.

Ali O’Malley:

Amazing, amazing. Thank you, Stacè. And you spoke this phrase of peak performance. I understand that this has been something you’ve thought about over the course of your career. And indeed, now you’re formally studying peak performance. And can you help us understand what is peak performance? And what the heck has coaching got to do with it?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Yes. Good question. So I would consider peak performance to be unique to every individual. So your peak performance is going to look really different than someone else’s peak performance. And what we have found with a lot of leadership training and development is that we’re trying to train people’s skills and skillsets to reach a particular level. And the reality is with coaching, you get to speak to the individual. You get to speak to that unique thing that they bring to the table and recognize what their peak is because it may be so much higher than what the bar has been set for, and that’s some we want to be able to open the door to, is really having it customized and unique to the individual. What does their peak performance look like? And then how do we help them see possibilities even beyond that peak? Because there’s always another peak, there’s always another thing that you can aspire to.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

And so when I think about coaching versus things like leadership development or training, all of it can deal with the what. I am here to accelerate and strengthen my leadership skills. I’m here to do whatever it is you set out to do. That may be skills based, and that’s the what. We have a title, we have a job. We show up, we do it, and we know what is to be delivered. Where coaching comes in is opening the door for your unique peak performance to shine through, and being able to say, “Okay, Ali, here’s your job as director,” so you know the what. But honestly, nobody can do that job the way that you can because it’s unique to you, so it’s really about the how.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Coaching really gets to how you go about doing what you’re doing. How do I lead? How do I serve and support my team? How do I navigate sales? How do I do marketing? How do I go to market with new products and tools? We know the what of all of those job descriptions. You know what to do. Coaching really picks up at that point and says, “Okay, well, how will you do it? What will be your unique differentiator? And how do we get your peak performance to shine through?” Hopefully that answers your question.

Ali O’Malley:

It answered my question beautifully, Stacè.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Good, good, good.

Ali O’Malley:

Thank you so much. And I really was celebrating how you talked about there always being another peak. And I’m curious. What have you observed about what takes people to their peaks? What do they need to get there?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Yeah. Good question. Everyone needs something different, yet again, the reason why coaching is highly effective is because it’s customized and unique to everybody’s individual needs. But in common, what I would bring up are just a few things. One is the willingness to see that there are higher heights. You have to be able to see that that’s possible. The other thing is I think a lot of humility, and that’s not because you’re doing something bad, and so you need a coach. That’s a stigma and a negative stereotype that is out there about coaching. And that’s not what coaching is. But the humility comes in to be able to say, “I really want to take off the blinders and I want someone to be able to show me things that I can’t see about myself readily, and then help me devise ways to really be at my optimum with everything that I’m doing.”

Stacè Middlebrooks:

So it’s more around your total person being up leveled versus one skillset, or a couple of skillsets. I want to learn how to listen better. Great, I can teach you that. But with coaching, what you will need is the belief that you can be better at listening. You can see the possibilities of what could happen for your career, for your relationships, when you are a better listener. And then can you step into the humility of being able to be told almost like holding up a mirror, here are some blind spots? Here are some things you may wish to consider as we think about blockages to listening. And then we get to dive in, which also means you have to have a lot of self compassion to be a good coachee, because this is not about checking a box. It’s not about, hey, I want to get to level on listening. And so did it, check.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Level two, check. Right. This is really iterative. And so as good as you may become at listening, you want to be able to celebrate that and not look at the next peak and go, “Oh, I’m not there yet. Oh, how come I’m not there yet?” Well, that’s what we get taught in a lot of different training things. Get to this level, and that’s all that matters. In coaching, we get to celebrate your incremental growth, all of your levels from peak to peak. And we get to be able to help you bring in your own self compassion because in coaching, we will recognize you.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Sometimes you don’t even know how amazing you’re doing with something until someone reflects that back to you, and that’s something that happens in coaching, to be able to say, I’m just using you as an example, “Wow, Ali, and you sharing that story and how you responded to that employee, or how you responded to that vendor, I really saw you leaning into your empathy. I really saw you leaning into your emotional intelligence. Those are key factors with great listening. That’s a wonderful step you just took. Can we acknowledge that?” So it may sound something like that, which will be a little bit different from training or different types of development. But those are things I think everyone needs as you step into coaching, and that you’ll meet yourself in those places of humility and self compassion, and also having the belief that there are higher heights and different peaks to get to.

Ali O’Malley:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Stacè. Yes.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Oh, and can I add one thing to that?

Ali O’Malley:

Absolutely.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Probably the most important thing in coaching, what you need is a good coach. So everybody who steps into coaching needs to have a really good coach. And that coach needs to be matched well with the person to be able to bring out of them what needs to be brought out, so that they can hit their peak performance and then envision a new peak as they come along. But good coaches have solid training. They have lots of experience and expertise with coaching at different levels from individual contributor all the way to the C-suite and beyond. They have great experience in observing great coaching because we learn when we get to witness as well, so it’s not just great, I’ve been trained, I’ve got a certification, or I’ve got some letters behind my name, I just go do it and I’m done, and I never learn again. No, you keep learning and you stay in observation mode. You stay in learning mode.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

There’s also the piece about coaching that is required that you’re highly inclusive because coaches are human too. So what happens when you’re in a session and someone says something that may be personally triggering for you? Maybe you’ve got your own stuff you’re working out. A coach will know how to handle themselves in that process. A coach will know how to be highly inclusive of that person’s different experience and their different perspective, and be able to coach them for where they are and where they want to go, versus turning the focus inward to themselves and stopping the coaching, and then beginning to teach, or train, or educate, or whatever they need to do. You can do that in coaching, but only with permission, so it’s a co-created relationship, where you have autonomy and sovereignty as the coachee.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

And I need to ask your permission to step into certain places with you. I cannot just assume, as a teacher or an instructor would, that I can just go there with you and teach what I want to teach. Coaching is all about your agenda as the coachee, and what you want to get out of coaching, not the coach’s agenda. So that also makes up some of the criteria for a good coach. But everybody needs to have a good coach.

Ali O’Malley:

That’s an incredible insight, Stacè. Thank you so much for helping our listeners who, those who are really accustomed to thinking about coaching and having coaching interventions in their organizations, and those who are new to it as well. You called out some really important distinctions, so thank you for doing that. And I’d love to acknowledge that we may encounter in the course of our work as coaches, individuals who see coaching as a warm and fuzzy experience, and having a nice chat with someone. And yet, we both know that there is deep value, intrinsic and extrinsic value that comes from the coaching intervention. And I’d love for our listeners to hear more about what that value is and how it comes to be through the work that coaches do.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

These are wonderful questions. Thank you for asking these. So I hear that a lot when I tell people I’m a coach, and especially when it wasn’t as popular, long, long, long, long time ago. People would always go, “What in the world is that? So you’re a therapist? So you just listen to people’s problems, or you just make them feel better. It’s lots of woo woo, soft, warm kinds of things.” Can those kinds of things happen in a coaching conversation or in a coaching engagement? Sure. And that is not what coaching is about.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Coaching is really about personal transformation, and so that takes a lot of inner work to be able to transform what’s happening inside so that gets reflected in the external world. And all of that really starts with belief systems and mindsets, and then really encoding that into yourself so that you shift your behaviors. And when you shift your behaviors, you then get to see how you’re influencing different outcomes in your life. So it follows what we call this ladder of inference, coming from the depths of who we are. So I think that’s where we get the reputation for having all of the, oh, it’s soft and all these kinds of conversations are all about your feelings and all of that.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

The reality is we’re inviting people to go inward to be able to change what’s outward, and differently than in other disciplines like therapy or counseling, which I fully support. And I have people I coach who are in therapy. Two totally different things. As a coach, I’m not here to heal anything. As a coach, I’m not here to dig into someone’s past and understand why something happened. Lots of counseling and therapy really picks up from present and goes backward. Where did this come from? What is it about? How do you make meaning of what happened? Coaching really starts now, and we’re looking forward. We’re looking to the future. So will we talk about some things that happened in the past? Sure. Might I feel the need to encourage and support someone in their storytelling of what happened? Sure. But the story is not what I’m there to really address.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

What I’m there to address as a coach more is: How does this story you’re telling yourself about what happened affect how you’re living and leading right now? And how would you like to be living and leading right now? What do we need to shift to close that gap? And so it’s really powerful to have those kinds of conversations with people, and meeting them where they are, wherever they are, and not having them walk away saying, “Oh, that was really just kind of soft, fluffy conversation.” We’re really getting into some things in coaching with permission and the co-creation of the relationship. But we’re really getting into some things that I consider more, I don’t know, let’s say psychosocial emotional development. And so things are changing and shifting within you. And what we know in coaching is you may not see it right away, but how you’re showing up with be really different. And other people may say to you, “Wow, Ali, something’s different about you. You responded really different to that trigger from that person. What’s going on with you?”

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Those are some of our signs that we’re really taking in all of our coaching strategies and tools and using them, and they’re becoming part of our habit, part of our DNA, part of who we now are. That’s really different than many times how we walk out of training or therapy. Can you have similar success? Similar, similar, yes, but coaching is not here to heal past wounds. It’s not here to get you through a tough time. It’s here to help you tap into what you already have so you can help yourself get through certain things because the reality is, magic happens in coaching, but the real magic is outside of the coaching session. And so when you can help someone self coach using tools and strategies, that’s the biggest win for a coach. When people come back and say, “Wow, I get it. I get it. I knew what to do in a lot of situations because I’ve been trained. But how I did it, what I had to overcome in order to do it, my unique stamp on it, yeah, that’s what I got from coaching.”

Ali O’Malley:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for really giving depth to the manner in which that inner work of transformation is necessary to show up differently, to beget the outer work that then drives those ripple effects that we see, whether it’s a frontline leader or a more senior leader in organizations, them just unleashing their full selves, and the impact that has on the business. And I think about this in life sciences in particular. We know that many of our clients, their organizations are undergoing a lot of very high risk, high reward scenarios typically. I’d love, Stacè, if you could speak to how you see coaching being particularly impactful in life sciences contexts.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Yeah. So what I have found with coaching and life sciences are a couple of commonalities, not that everybody experiences them. But to your point, it can be high stakes, high impact, high visibility, high stress could potentially be attached with that because you work so hard, let’s say to develop a particular drug. You want to get it passed through the FDA. You do all the things the right way. What if they say no? That’s 10 or 20 years of your research, of your work, being in labs, selling to different people to try this drug. That could take a lot of resilience, no matter what your role is in life sciences. It might be important to have strong resilience in life sciences. This is how coaching can I think be really transformative.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

I think about life sciences and I think about occupations like sales. Sales is high visibility, high impact, high risk, high reward, all of those things are attached. But with sales, let’s say you have a quota and it’s quarterly or monthly, when that’s done, it’s over and you’re starting over. I’ve got a new quota that I have to meet. You remember the challenges you encountered. You remember the struggles you went through. And it can be sometimes disheartening to go, “Oh, gosh, I’ve got to do it all over again. I’ve got a new quota.” How do I go about doing this without burning myself out, without beating myself up? Well, with coaching, we get to work on things like your own self confidence, your own self compassion. We get to work on your resilience. And I think they’re all tied together because when we’re in our strength of resilience, that means that we were strong enough, confident enough, to be able to reach out for support and help.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

That meant that we had enough self compassion to go, “Wow, I don’t want to put myself through this anymore. I don’t want to burn myself out. I don’t want to really be overwhelmed by the environment I’m in. It’s high pressure, high stakes. I don’t want to really struggle with stress management. I get to go get a coach who can support me with that and help me with that.” That’s the kind of transformative work you can do in coaching that I think is the game changer, especially in an industry like life sciences. This is critical work. It really is. You’re saving people’s lives. You’re enhancing the quality of people’s lives. You’re changing people’s lives. That’s a lot on the line. And so why wouldn’t we want to show up as our very best selves to all of the work we’re doing, whether it’s designing, whether it’s developing software, whether it’s creating new chemical molecules that can change the world with a drug that could save people?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Whatever it is, whatever your role is, you get to benefit from the value of coaching, your own personal transformation. And when each individual, just imagine a workplace where each individual is transforming to go from peak to peak, peak to peak, peak to peak, all the time, how much better can you serve the industry, the community, your vendors, your suppliers, your employees, your patients, everyone you touch? How much better can you serve them? And if you can serve them even better, wouldn’t they choose you, your company over some other company? Wouldn’t they choose your hospital, your drug? Wouldn’t they choose you? Why wouldn’t they? Of course, they’re getting the best. They’re getting exactly what they need, how they need it, because the doctor, the attorneys for the drugs, the chemical lab directors, everybody was at their peak. Everybody was at their best, striving for that. You can’t help but win with that.

Ali O’Malley:

I love that, Stacè. I think you beautifully articulated the role that interventions like coaching, that personalized support and the resilience that it instills, that is a key mechanism in moving individuals from peak to peak, instilling in them the capacity to weather the inevitable storms that come from striving in these very intense, high risk spaces. And yet, they will carry through, they will persevere. But we cannot do it alone.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

You said that beautifully, really, really well said. And I think some of this, we can access when we start to think of coaching differently. So when we think of it as, oh, I have some kind of bad performance, or I’m on some sort of performance improvement plan, and now they gave me a coach to help me, then yeah, it feels not so great to be in the coaching space. However, when we look at coaching as not happening because of a deficit, but we’re really looking at, no, this is strength space. I really want to tap into where you are strong already and see how we can help you leverage those strengths to strengthen other areas.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

That feels a whole lot better. That feels really different. And I don’t like to get caught up in sports analogies, but the Olympics have my mind on it. But you think about it and going, “Could I be the best ski jumper in the world?” Yeah. Could I be better with a coach? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The coach provides me with accountability. That coach is probably pinging me at 5:00 AM, “Hey, get your patootie up. Get out there. Go practice. What have you done? Did you honor your commitments to yourself? How can I support you? What do you need?” Ooh, you know what, you’re going around this bend in whatever ski path you have, what you don’t see that I see is that there is a whole forest of trees over there you need to avoid. So let’s come up with ways to help you navigate that because I see it. You may not see it because you’re in the middle of it. But I get the different view as your coach to be able to see some things that maybe you can’t see right away.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

But that’s how we can really lean into coaching as an additive approach versus, hey, time out, you’re doing something wrong, you need a coach. Many times we see that people in the C-suite, or who are considered executives, they get coaching as a reward, as something to strengthen them and bolster them. Right? But if you get it at individual contributor level, it’s like, “Oh, wow. What did I do wrong? Why did I get a coach?” But the reality is, coaching is for everybody. We don’t need to wait until someone gets to the C-suite to then give them this gift of personal transformation through coaching.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

I’m not going to say we’re too late. I coach people in the C-suite. It’s never too late to really reach your highest heights. Right? But what would happen if right out of college, someone came into the organization, and they had a mentor, they had a coach, they had an advocate, they had a career sponsor? This is just like your personal board of directors that a coach gets to be a part of. It’s an accompaniment to what you already have in place, not a Band-Aid to fix something because you are not broken. Nothing is broken that we need to fix. We need to just be able to step into the possibilities of what those other peaks could look like for us, and that’s what a coach can help us do.

Ali O’Malley:

Yeah. Stacè, thank you so much for helping us name the importance of those possibilities, for helping us understand how coaching is a way to move from peak to peak. It has been such a pleasure to speak with you today. And on behalf of Mix Talent, thank you so much for joining us to celebrate the powerful intervention that is coaching. It’s been such a pleasure to have you. Thank you, thank you.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Thank you so much. And likewise, I’m really impressed with how you are approaching coaching in your organization. I consult a lot of companies, and there is an opportunity for them to be this thoughtful with how they want to introduce coaching to their organization. So I applaud you, Ali. I applaud Mix. I applaud everyone involved for even thinking about what coaching could potentially look like at your company and in your industry, and how to get the best out of it when you first launch it, versus years later, and then going, “Oh, what else could we have done?” So I really want to applaud you and the whole team for being so thoughtful around just the concept and idea of coaching, and of course, for thinking of me and inviting me in to just share a little perspective about it as well.

Ali O’Malley:

Before we wrap up, Stacè, I would be remiss if I did not ask you two oh so critical questions that we ask all of our guests on our podcast. And the first has to do with music, and I would love to know, Stacè. What’s your favorite song in this season of your life?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

That’s so hard. It’s really hard to narrow down to one song. I love music and I listen to music all day. I have five minute dance parties between calls. I’m all into music. You know what, I can share what’s been on repeat for me today. And so all of my songs are like my babies and they’re all my favorites. But today on my playlist on repeat are two, actually two of them. One is from an artist called Aiyana-Lee, and it’s called Table for Three. And I love that the three she’s talking about is just self love. I want to just pause for a moment and just spend some time with myself. We all give so much. Our world is so fast paced. There’s all this infobesity happening around us.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

But when we can just take that pause and just be with ourselves, spend some time with ourselves, whatever you like to do, journaling, cooking, baking, running, whatever it is. But yeah, in the song, she just talks about just taking that pause and saying, “Yeah, I thought I needed all of these things, all the titles and all the money, all the things. I need me, myself and I to be good. That’s what I need.” And so yeah, I just want my table for three to just spend some inward time, so that’s one.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

The other one is called Breathe, and I do not want to slaughter this artist’s name, but it’s a real triumphant song. Yeah, it’s a song I think that … I think it touches on something we do in coaching as well. It’s just giving people that space to just breathe. There’s so much going on all the time. But we’re in our strongest places when we can just breathe and recalibrate and take a moment to really consider what’s happening, and doing it in a way that just calms us, just calms the nervous system and gives us a pause, kind of time to be with me, myself and I. But the artist for that song is Seinabo Sey. Yeah, it’s just been on repeat all day, really triumphant music. And I’m so in love with that right now.

Ali O’Malley:

Beautiful. I can’t wait to listen to those two songs. Thank you for explaining why they have that impact on you. I can understand why you’ve wanted to return to them throughout today.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Yeah, thank you.

Ali O’Malley:

And then final question, Stacè. What is your favorite interview question?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

Aside from the ones you have asked me today, that’s a good one. I don’t remember the exact wording, but in one of my coach trainings a long time ago, the coach was asking us to envision we are at our next peak, so to speak, so envision my higher self, that Stacè who’s already VP, or senior director, or whatever title I wanted to have at the time. And then I was supposed to do two interviews, interview my current present day self as that peak self. So what questions would I be asking? And then my current self, to interview that peak self. How’d you get there? What’d you do? What do I need to know? Right?

Stacè Middlebrooks:

I don’t recall the specific questions for both of those, but I thought just the prompt for the interview itself was pretty powerful and really insightful. And I didn’t know I was going to walk away from a coach training with some real coaching that happened. But yeah, that was pretty powerful just to be in that space and ask future state self anything I wanted. And for future state self, higher peak self, to reflect backward. I know one of the questions my higher self asked my current self at the time was: Girl, what are you doing? Why are you wasting your life? You’re better than this. You can do so much more. Don’t limit yourself. You want that big job that’s two levels ahead of you, go for it. The worst they can do is say no. But at least you get to find out what you need to get there. You want to move into this place, go for it. You want to try these hobbies, go for it.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

But that was really something that I’ve carried with me. That was at least 15 years ago, but that’s something I’ve carried forward and even have implemented in my coaching is having people interview themselves from those different perspectives and seeing what questions they come up for themselves. And I know that’s not an answer.

Ali O’Malley:

I love that, Stacè. I’m going to put that in my coach toolbox straight away, straight away. Thank you.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

I know it’s not a real answer though, but that’s the best I could come up with in terms of best interview question.

Ali O’Malley:

It felt super real to me. I loved it.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

So yeah, question form would be: What would future you say to current you? And hey current you, what would you say to future you? Maybe that’s the question that goes down the path.

Ali O’Malley:

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you for being willing to entertain those two questions for me.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

I love it. I love it.

Ali O’Malley:

Much appreciated.

Stacè Middlebrooks:

I think that’s now my favorite interview question. What is your favorite interview question? So thank you.

Natalie Taylor:

Thank you so much to Ali and Stacè for joining us on The Mix Tape. I really loved what they were talking about, that the real magic happens outside of the coaching session. I think it’s easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself in today’s world, no matter what field that you’re working in. And like she mentioned, it’s important to have that self compassion when you’re going through coaching because these traits are within you. It’s just a matter of pulling them out and strengthening them, and reaching that full potential. And so if you have a good coach that can support you through that, I think that’s fantastic. And then you can get that consultation from them, but then take it into your real life and make it happen.

Valerie McCandlish:

Agreed. I think what’s really cool is that Stacè and Ali kind of defined that by nature, coaching is really just a forward thinking, positive type of practice because you’re not going to be dwelling on the past. You’re not dwelling on the things that might be what’s dragging you down, or what you might be struggling with. Instead, you’re looking at the future, what’s to come, how you can better prepare yourself for a situation that might’ve been difficult for you before, a new way to handle them so that you can continue to progress.

Valerie McCandlish:

I think it kind of aligns well to what we were hearing with our episode last week as well, where sometimes these hiring managers are really looking for some specific traits, primarily that resilience that they were mentioning, something that can’t be taught. And that might sound like only some people have resilience, or some people have that persistence as well. But instead, I really liked that shift in thinking that Stacè was saying that instead with coaching, you can leverage your other strengths to work on areas that are already there for you. You’ve got the ability to be resilient within you. You just might need some help pulling that out.

Natalie Taylor:

Yeah. I love that. That’s very well said. We’re so grateful that Stacè and Ali joined us on today’s episode. And I think we all have something really positive to take away from it.

Valerie McCandlish:

Definitely. And we also have two new songs to add to our playlist. I’m so excited to add these. And also, every week a new episode comes out for The Mix Tape Podcast. Although, we only have a couple left.

Natalie Taylor:

I know.

Valerie McCandlish:

We’re getting down to the end of season two. So keep an eye out for what’s to come. And as always, thanks for being in the mix. We’ll see you next week.