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Do you need a career coach or
a shrink? Or both?
I had a career coach. I got the coach the day after
a meeting where I was the only woman and the only person under 30.
My boss said, "You need more polish. You need
a career coach."
I thought, "Great, my boss is going to pay to
help me fit in with the 50-year-old men at the top of my corporate
ladder."
The coach asked me a slew of seemingly innocuous questions
about myself, and then she trailed me at the office for a few days.
Her conclusion: I needed to act more professionally.
I was surprised. I had read every book I could find
on managing one's image at work. I wore earrings because all the
women in Fortune magazine's 50-most-powerful-women list wear earrings.
I kept my hands folded on the table in the same way that experts
on news television do. I was surprised that I had missed something.
The coach gave me a list of things to change. When
I walked, for example, I walked "high" with a bounce and
didn't give off a sense of being grounded. She told me to look at
the CEO: "He has a deliberate, grounded walk -- no bounce.
It instills confidence."
She told me I smiled too much. "It's a common
problem for women," she told me. "Women want to establish
rapport by smiling, but men interpret a lot of smiles as either
nervous or giddy."
Lest she say that I also needed to work on accepting
criticism, I thanked her for her help. After weeks of practice --
and her trailing me the whole way -- I made the changes. The coach
collected her thousands of dollars in fees and left with a feeling
of accomplishment.
But she left me feeling like a fake. I wanted to go
back to regular me, but my boss kept telling me how much more professional
I was, and I didn't want to disappoint the guy who was responsible
for my next raise.
I started losing sleep, falling victim to my overactive
imagination where the people I manage go out to lunch and talk about
how fake I am. Then they stop listening to me and my office becomes
"Mutiny on the Bounty" with an ending where I walk the
plank to unemployment.
So I did what most people do when they can't sleep
for months: I went to a psychologist. And it took the psychologist
about 20 minutes to help me realize that I was uncomfortable with
the level of authority I held. I had moved up the ladder very fast.
I was managing a team of people much older than I was. My smiles
and my bounce belied my discomfort.
I worked with the psychologist to feel more comfortable
with my own authority, and after a few months, the solid gait and
serious face came naturally to me. I didn't have to project a fake
image because the image I was supposed to project -- authority --
felt right to me.
My psychologist helped a lot, but a psychologist is
likely to miss the quirks of corporate life (after all, mine built
a career by avoiding the corporate ladder). And the career coach
is likely to miss the psychology driving you to do what you do.
So if you find that a career coach makes recommendations
that are hard to handle, hire a psychologist. After all, the more
people who are helping you to get what you want in your career,
the more likely you are to get it. And your money spent will come
back to you in the form of a promotion when you gain more self-control
in the workplace.
-- Posted: Oct. 28, 2002
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