Dani Tan: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Dani Tan, and if you are here, you are in the right place. Welcome to the pivot and promotion podcast, where we say, forget the rules because they weren't written for us. I'm Danny Tan. I'm your host as well as career and leadership coach and a proud advocate for redefining what success and leadership looks like. And here's what I know. You can lead at any level. You can pivot at any age and you can make moves that feel right for you. Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder, starting something completely new, or just figuring out your next step, I've got you covered with strategies, stories, and straight up inspiration. So let's make some moves. This is the next part of the coaching Q and a mini series, common questions and misconceptions that I get asked about coaching.

I'm sharing my take perspective and answers. And so for our next part of this segment is what if coaching doesn't work for me? So that is a question that will come up. What if I do all this coaching and it just doesn't work? What if I don't get what it is that I was looking to get, [00:01:00] or, you know, if I don't hit my goals, what if it's just not for me? And so Here are some things that I will help you kind of ideate and think on. If that ever pops up for you. So the first is making sure you have very clear idea of how you set up metrics for success. And I'm not just saying like, did I achieve the goal? Yes or no. because sometimes there are some things that are out of our control. Life can happen.

deadlines can change. Our responsibilities can change so many different things that may pop up. And so I think that there's important things to have for what your metrics. You would like to Sarah for success when it comes to coaching and knowing if it worked for you or not. So if you're somebody who's like, well, my metric for success is I pivoted my career or my metric for success is I got a new job or my metric for success is like got a promotion or my metric for success as I started a business and I replaced my corporate income. But yes, And, you know, those are all very clear goals of what is that we want to achieve, but not [00:02:00] everything is always fully in our control when it comes to timeline.

We may have had intentions of doing something and then maybe a family member gets sick and we have to take care of them, or we may have had intentions of doing something and maybe, you know, we are now having to get a new job in a hurry because The old job that we were at isn't working anymore. So now, you know, having an income coming in is more important than just solely focusing on building something new. so I think that's the thing that's really important is yes, that can be your overarching big goal, but what other metrics will you have that are within your control? that you can work towards. So that could be something that's more tangible. Like, how do you want to feel at the end of coaching?

You know, if you started and you were overwhelmed and stressed out, had no idea where to start, do you want to feel like you have more confidence, more clarity, a strategic plan, um, reducing overwhelm? Do you want to have better self belief and self trust in yourself? Do you want to be able to Have the better practice of having, difficult conversations, clear communication, creating boundaries, prioritizing yourself. Those are all metrics for success too. So if you were somebody [00:03:00] before who was not prioritizing themselves, prioritizing everybody else, wasn't taking care of yourself, um, wasn't sure how to show up in certain rooms and now you're able to do those things. Those are also different ways that you can show that you had success within coaching.

Outside of your big goal too, right? And I think those things are important. And the thing is to make sure you're measuring them and tracking them. So, at least with me, even when you're working with me, when you first join, you do an intake form, you talk about what your goals, aspirations are, what's coming up for you for resistance, or what have been blockers, and then we are checking in consistently. one of my clients said, she was like, Danny takes notes. She takes very detailed notes. And I do, I take super detailed notes on what has been working for you, what the challenges have been, and what are the different patterns that we're noticing. I track the patterns of resistance or challenges or frustration.

So I can help note them for you when they're coming up so we can start to support them. So I think it's important to know those pieces too, of. outside of the big goals, how else you can measure your success and that we track [00:04:00] them too. I also have a lot of my clients, once they either finished coaching, or they've achieved a goal, or I've seen that they've just made a breakthrough. I also track it with them and we do client interviews. So that way they can talk about their process. I think it's important to learn and do a hindsight and like, look back at, Where did you start? Who were you then? What did you start to implement and how did that have a lasting impact on you? And I think that's also really important too.

So that's how you'll know, you know, if coaching, does it work for you? Yes, we'll definitely track it and to make sure that too. The second piece is maximizing your coaching experience. This is very important. So at the end of the day, you are working with a coach and we are two people trying to help create guidance, a plan, a strategy for you to hit a goal. But the part that's really important in order for you to maximize your coaching experience, I have, um, you know, Tracks my client results. I've worked with 30 plus clients alone, not to mention all of my corporate organizations, speaking engagements and workshop consultations. I think that's like at 35, 40 plus. And so through doing all of that, I'm just not saying [00:05:00] numbers to state numbers, but I did an analysis on what was needed for what different attributes, skills, systems that, you know, the common group take that were successful at achieving their goals.

And so I use that information for. Any new clients on what they may need in order to track to their success. So I think that's important on one, my end to continually notice the patterns and attributes and systems and skills that are needed for my clients to be successful and sharing that with all my clients. Hey, is it time walking? Hey, is it, starting to break down these big. to do list into something smaller, like what may be coming up, are there patterns of anxiety popping up or, you know, perfectionism and how we can start to, deal with those. And so I study those different patterns and themes, but the other thing is for you, right? On your part, it's important. Coaching will be a good practice for anybody who goes into it to practice.

Communicating in general, communicating what is working for you and what's not working for you. If somebody gives you a strategy or they give you an [00:06:00] assignment or they, are trying to work with you and you don't agree with it, communicating that and having that conversation, because that doesn't just go for coaching that goes for your personal relationships that goes for your professional relationships and being able to communicate what is working for you and what's not working for you. So we can create a plan and readjust it to make it make sense. And I think that's a great way for you to maximize your coaching experiences for you to be an advocate for yourself in this space. Also allows you to be an advocate in other spaces too.

And also the thing, another part that's really important that I ask my clients is how do you learn? Like, what is the best way for you to learn? Do you prefer to have like video recordings that you can reference back? back to you. Are you somebody who likes a to do list? Are you somebody who wants to have conversations with other people so you can learn from their experiences? Do you want trainings? Do you want workshops? Those are important too, is for you to be able to maximize your coaching experience is communicating. How do you best learn? How do you best implement? How much time do you need in order to implement things to, you know, absorb things and being able to communicate those things to?

Is going to be super [00:07:00] crucial for you to make sure that coaching does work for you. So that's how you can make sure it works for you is making sure you're an advocate for yourself and maximizing your coaching experience for their part is, I always say is like, what do you want to get out of coaching bare minimum? So I always think of it as like best, what do they say? Good, better, best. So like good, better, best. Bare minimum. What do you want to make sure you get out of this coaching experience? You know, what, and then what is like your overall ideal? Like, what do you want to make sure is like your overall ideal, what you want to get out of it. And I think it's important for you to set those goals for yourself too.

So outside of, you know, I want to get a new job or I want to start a business bare minimum. I want to know that I have three clear, clear paths of what I want to do max or bare minimum. I want to be able to get a splendid speaking gig and be able to speak in front of an audience of people or bare minimum. I want to be able to start to. build a team that can start to take on some more tasks. So I'm not in the weeds of everything anymore. And I can really truly be the CEO of my business. So I think understanding what you want your bare minimum to be also is helpful so that you can figure out at the end of the day, if I walk away from this experience, [00:08:00] what did I gain? And then the last thing I would say is that, you know, I have, my clients have ranged all different things that have worked for them when it comes to joining, coaching.

Let's say they were like coming in and they decided, Hey, you know, I know that I am just not being valued for what it is that I do. I'm not being valued for the work, overall, and I just don't know. And so for me, the work and the coaching plan has always been, okay, so how can we identify what does being valued mean? how can you show up in your organization to feel like you're being valued? Is this organization with the right organization to show you that you're valued and being able to just see that. So I think this client was like, this is such an abstract goal for me. How will I know that it really worked? But the reality is, is, you know, it did, it did at the end of the day, because the work that we had to do was, it wasn't just about the big thing of like, well, I want to be valued.

The bigger thing that we ended up uncovering was, is the organization truly in alignment with your values and who it is that you want to be? Is it not? And outside of [00:09:00] that, what do you need to do? And I think the real work was that it wasn't about her not being valued. It was just about her not being in the, in the space that truly. Truly align with her. Like the space was male, white dominated space. She didn't want to be in that space. She wanted to be in a space that prioritize women of color that cared about career development and that's not the space that she was in. So would they ever value her? And so that's something again of like, is coaching working for me? It's also understanding that sometimes there are deeper additional levels to what it is that we want.

Um, but I think that's always really important. And so I will share like a personal antidote to you as someone who has done coaching. I have done business coaching. I have done marketing coaching. I have done, somatic coaching. which is if you don't know what semantics are, just tuning into your nervous system, and noticing different emotional patterns that pop up. And for all of those different things, you know, I always said for myself, how will I know this was successful? And the success wasn't always, you know, the end result of Having a, an extended audience or having the most regulated nervous system and not having anything ever trigger me. That's not [00:10:00] what it was. It was also sometimes just planting a seed to get started for what it could become.

And so I think that's something that's really important too, is just understanding like, what can this help start to. Create that path for you and for you to take the accountability also of what do I want to gain? Take away from this? How can I communicate what's working? What's not working for me? And how can I identify what is the best way for me to learn and start to track that success? And then there's no way it won't work for you because coaching, you. Is always gonna be about actions and goals and progress. So if it's not working for you, then there's some kind of breakdown in the system of either you're not tracking your metrics or it's not being communicated, the learning, uh, style or just what's working, what's not working, or overall it's just the partnership isn't there.

And so I think. It's at the day. There's no way it will work as long as you're able to do the work to communicate all these pieces. So when someone asked me, what if it doesn't work for me, I always feel like there is no way it won't work for you. It just depends on how you want to measure what that [00:11:00] success looks like. It also just depends on how involved you want to be in it. And I think those are the parts that's really important. And so I had done, a mini series of, you know, studying results of my clients. And the things that I noticed the most of the ones that the most successful was that they were actively engaged. They were committed. They carved at the time that needed to do the assignments to communicate was working.

They also were engaged in the sense of, you know, If something was getting blocked and getting stuck, they would say, this isn't easy for me, or I'm trying to approach it this way. It's not working. And then we were able to either clarify or adjust the plan as needed. We were constantly tracking their progress. It was not just like, you know, large statements of, Oh, it's just not working. Okay. Let's look at the numbers of what you've tried to yield and what's not working. I think the thing is too, like they just were okay to. It's very telling if you are not able to sit down and reflect on what you've worked on and really sit down and be like, okay, what part is getting me stuck? If you're constantly like looking for a [00:12:00] new answer and you can't sit and reflect.

That is usually a sign of, okay, then nothing may ever work because you're always looking for a new answer and you're not really ready to sit down and see what has worked and what hasn't worked and what is the why. And I think that part's really important too. And then knowing that there's always going to be discomfort because when you're doing this work, There is going to be, it's going to be uncomfortable. It's why it's growth. It won't be easy. And so being able to know that you're going to be faced with these challenges and have to step out of your comfort zone and be a little bit bold and be a little bit uncomfortable, to start to expand and to grow, to make this coaching experience worthwhile.

It's not free to just show up and for it to be easy or else, you know, you'd be doing the same thing that you were doing before. And I think being able to have that persistence is super important. So let me know if you have any questions on this. But if not, you will catch me on the next episode. Thank you again for tuning in to today's podcast. I hope this episode gave you some strategies and insights to shake up on how you lead in life and [00:13:00] business. If this inspired you to take action and you're wondering, what is it like to work together? There are three different ways we can work together. The first one is private coaching. If you're looking to build something from the ground up, whether it is breaking into a new industry, really own your leadership on a deeper level and lead teams.

Or if you're looking to build your business, then private coaching is definitely for you. It's that one, one hands on support, that custom personalization of being able to make that happen. And so typically within private coaching, we are developing and having you own your expertise. We're really growing your ability to do strategic decision making, build that confidence within yourself and make sure that you're going after what you really want and not fiddling for what you think you deserve, which I love. The 2nd, 1 is my group coaching program, which is the pivot and promotion community. This is a 12 month program. So, for a full year, it is for career development for growth for accountability for shared learning.

So, if you're someone who likes the community space, a group setting for that extra support to make sure that you're achieving your goals, [00:14:00] then this is definitely for you. This is for the person who is the aspiring leader. Who is either just stepping into leadership or is moving from individual contributor to leader, and you want to be able to practice being able to have direct or difficult conversations, speak up, be visible, network, and be seen as a leader you already are, then this is the space for you. So go ahead and do that. Click and take a look at that program and last but not least is speaking engagement. So if you are somebody who wants somebody to come in for your organization, for your team, for your conference and deliver a talk or a workshop that's really going to challenge the status quo and help motivate and inspire, then I'm for you.

So the next step after all of this to go to my website at Danny tan. com, that's D a N I T a N. com. And you can book a call for any of these three options. We'll get on the call. We'll talk about what it's like to work together and then we'll take it from there. So hopefully this was more than enough to get you started, to take bold and badass action. And I will see you [00:15:00] next week.