When we start a new role – either at the same organization in a different team or in a different team altogether, we’ve typically done a lot of work to land this new role. Just because you have been selected doesn’t guarantee that everything will go smoothly. Coach Callan delves into why it is important to take stock of the knowledge, skills and will (KSW) in your backpack and be intentional about what thoughts, beliefs and behaviors you will take with you. She speaks about why it is also important to define what success looks like for you and how do you want to show up. Listen to understand how working with a coach to transition into a new role can help in assuring your fit in a new role.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Samhita Jayanti: [00:00:00] Welcome to IdeaMix Performance and Wellness, where world leading coaches and scientists explain how their research can help you achieve your personal and professional goals faster. Hi, it’s Sandra Ianti, co founder and CEO of IdeaMix Coaching. Coaching’s played an important role in my life. It’s helped me through my journey to become a powerful leader, mother, and wife.
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Jamie Kosmar: Welcome to Coaches to Know, a podcast short designed to demystify coaching and help you, our audience, understand what coaching is and how it can help you. I’m your host, Jamie, and today I’m very excited to be here with Coach Callan to discuss coaching for transitioning to a new role.
Jamie Kosmar: And Coach Callan is I have been coaching for seven years. She has a diverse career portfolio that spans education, private banking, and nonprofit fundraising before launching her own coaching company. Her experience, as you all heard as a professional pivoter makes her an ideal partner. For those seeking new adventures or their next big role.
Jamie Kosmar: Her clients are typically senior level women, VP to C suite and midsize fortune 500, [00:02:00] midsize companies, fortune 500 companies, professional services firms, and she’s coached people at companies such as Google, Meta and Accenture. Welcome, Coach Callen, and thank you for joining us here today. I’m very excited to be talking about what I think is a interesting niche and expertise that you have on, um, on new roles and tackling new roles, how to do that.
Jamie Kosmar: So why don’t we just start, um, by sort of laying out the framework. Um, and talking about what do we mean by a new role, and is that a new role in the same organization? Is that a new role in a different organization, and why somebody should consider this type of coaching?
Coach Callan: Totally. Well, it’s great to be here, and thanks so much for inviting me to have this conversation.
Coach Callan: I have to say, early in my career, I didn’t own the Professional Pivoter brand as much as I do now, but I definitely think, um, it is a great opportunity. Somewhat of a superpower. So coaching at the point of [00:03:00] transition and going into a new role is really a paradigm shift for a lot of people to be completely honest.
Coach Callan: I think we think about coaching when we feel like something’s wrong, or we think about coaching when we feel like we need to get a promotion or there’s a transition that’s a little bit more of a challenge, right? And yet, when we’re going into a new role, whether we are stepping into a new organization or we’re stepping onto a new team, we have such an opportunity to redefine for ourselves what we want our leadership vision to look like, what we want success to look like, uh, what we want ourselves to bring to the table and what we want to continue to develop in ourselves.
Coach Callan: And It’s a real opportunity for either the company who wants to invest in this or the individual themselves to ask themselves, like, what’s next for me in this next, like, 2 to 5 year season? And how can I be really intentional about it? So, clearly speaking, it’s for the person who is starting a new role, but it could also be someone who [00:04:00] is moving into a new role within the same organization.
Jamie Kosmar: And is there a situation that you find that people maybe, for lack of a better word, say need it more? Does it tend to be more helpful when you’re switching organizations, or actually does it tend to be helpful when you’re staying in the same organization? Because sometimes I think when your broader context tends to be the same, sometimes it’s harder to shift, right?
Jamie Kosmar: Absolutely.
Coach Callan: 100%. I would say that most people engage in this and it can be most transformational when you are walking into a new role in a new organization. And there’s a few reasons for that. I completely agree with you that, uh, as we are moving into, let’s say you’re on the same, in the same organization, but on a new team, you can definitely feel like you’re kind of carrying more with you from your previous experience and the previous perception of you, which tends to actually be what a lot of my clients want to focus on in that situation is like, how do I shake Some old perception and build some new perception.
Coach Callan: [00:05:00] How do I like develop new relationships, but also maintain others that, that tends to be more of the like. A transition on the edge, if you will. Um, but most people engage in it when they’re like, okay, gosh, I have like, what feels like a blank Google doc in front of me. I have this cursor blinking at me and I’m really excited about this role.
Coach Callan: And I’m really excited about going into this organization. I just want to be sure I’m doing it with intention. I want to be sure that I’m doing it. With the fullest amount of self awareness, like, do I really know who I am right now? Do I really know what I bring to the table and where I can continue to grow here?
Jamie Kosmar: Excellent. Um, I mean, I love that analogy of the sort of the blank Google document. Um, because I think it’s something that we can all relate to. Um, and I think sometimes, you know, when you do have that blank Google document, it can be, it’s, you know, it’s always, it’s always easier to edit than it is to start from scratch, I think, in a lot of ways, right?
Jamie Kosmar: [00:06:00] Um, you know, we’re, we’re much better at, we’re sort of maybe a revising language or revising thoughts than we are from like, what are the thoughts I have? Who is it that I want to be? You know, these big, big questions. Um, so there’s a lot. I think that when you’re coaching into a new role, and I mean, obviously these are big questions.
Jamie Kosmar: Um, so can we focus on like, what are the top three topics that you normally address or issues that you address, um, or that you look at when you’re coaching somebody through this process? Uh, and how do you decide which What to work on.
Coach Callan: So the analogy that I like to use when thinking about starting a new role is like we’re climbing a mountain.
Coach Callan: And every one of us has a backpack that we’ve been carrying with us since basically the beginning of our time filled with our strengths and our skills and our mindsets and our past experiences. [00:07:00] Um, those managers we had that defined what management looks like to us, the relationships that we built, the expectations we put on ourself, all those performance reviews that we may or may not have agreed with, we have this backpack, we’re going up this, this mountain, and we really need to take a moment to take the backpack and like, unpack it and look at like, okay, what does this mountain climb require?
Coach Callan: And when I sit down with my clients who are like, I know I’ve got this backpack and I know I need to unpack it. The first question that I ask them is, well, what’s this mountain that we’re climbing anyway? Like, what is the role? What is your vision for success in this role? And the honest answer for most people is, I know about 80 percent of the vision, but I’m not 100 percent sure because I haven’t started yet.
Coach Callan: I just, I just don’t know. Like, I think I’m going to this point, but we’ll figure it out. But in having the first initial picture of that vision, we then take their backpack and say, okay, what’s going to work for you? What’s not, and I love to use a framework that helps me as their coach to organize my brain and [00:08:00] helps my client to organize their brain called KSW.
Coach Callan: K stands for knowledge. That’s the stuff you need to know, right? That’s, that’s the, um, who makes this decision? How do I file expenses? Where is this in the filing base? Like all the knowledge. S is skills. So what are the skills that I have or that I don’t have? What do I need to polish? What do I need to refine?
Coach Callan: And then W is will or mindset or belief. And what we first do is we kind of say, okay, we know what the vision is for where you’re going to go and we know where you are now, what do you think you need to look at and interrogate in the knowledge, skill and will department in order to be successful? And that helps us to define the actual key topics.
Coach Callan: That said, every person is unique, of course, but there are some trends on what we ended up talking about. Yeah. Yeah. The first and foremost, this is a huge one for folks I’m talking, talking with right now is how do I want to show up like kind of on the first day, but just in general, [00:09:00] like what is both authentic to me, but also necessary in this particular organization?
Coach Callan: Because every organization is different. You know, how do I, how do I want to present myself? Because I think we’re all aware to some degree that we teach people how to treat us, but By how we act, right? So how do I kind of show up in that space to engender credibility and confidence and, um, openness to learning and all of those great things that, that I want to be the second really popular topic is about setting boundaries.
Coach Callan: So you read my bio before. I work with some pretty high achieving people. They have really high standards for themselves. And a lot of them have a habit of going into a new role and just letting it consume them, you know, doing the 16, 17 hour days. Um, and that’s completely understandable. I’ve done it myself too, because there’s so much coming at you, but it is also such a hard habit to break once you kind of feel like you’re on boarded and [00:10:00] you know what’s happening.
Coach Callan: So they really, we really talk about like, what are boundaries? Um, and what are you, how are you going to Kind of have this career and this ambition work within the biggest picture of your life and your priorities and, you know, be sure that you can show up in the way you want to in those early months, showing you’re committed and you care, um, while also being measured.
Coach Callan: And then the 3rd, 1 that comes up a lot is just like. Letting go of what’s not going to serve you in this role from your past experience. And this can be as, you know, will based if you will, as, um, perhaps you relate to managers in a specific way, because of managers you used to have, or perhaps you expect there to be a culture that there isn’t in this organization.
Coach Callan: I can give you a really quick story when I went from working on, um. The desk at the bank at JPMorgan to working in a nonprofit environment, I had some habits in place that were pretty simple to me. Like we kind of always [00:11:00] at JPMorgan, we kind of always let each other know where we were at all times during the trading day, because that was important information.
Coach Callan: Like, are you at lunch? Are you just grabbing coffee? Can you be here to execute a trade? Can you not? And so I had this habit when I went in to teach for America of being like, Hey team, I’m going to get lunch. Hey team, I’m going to pick up copies. And finally, my manager sat me down and was like, Callan’s really need you to stop, just, you don’t need to do that.
Coach Callan: We don’t need to know. Like, and it was just a small and completely harm harmless example of you can bring one culture of an organization into another without even knowing it. So I have a lot of conversations with clients who are like, okay, let me just get clear that like, what got me here is not necessarily going to get me there.
Coach Callan: And I need to just figure out what this experience is.
Jamie Kosmar: It’s a very that last point is very interesting. I think it’s really hard for people to imagine. That they need, uh, maybe to develop new habits in [00:12:00] order to be successful and to, or to achieve their vision of success, we’ll say, and, and whatever that looks like for their company, for them, um, you know, and we often talk about it in terms of promotions, right?
Jamie Kosmar: Once you get a promotion to a manager, for example, you really, you know, You have the hard skills, but maybe not the soft skills to succeed as a manager, for example. Um, but we don’t actually think about that a lot in terms of just doing a new role, right? Um, and, and I think it probably comes from the legacy of thinking about a career as a linear, um, pathway, uh, a little bit, um, but also our sort of, uh, how humans are just resistant to, or we just like habitual creatures, right?
Jamie Kosmar: Absolutely. Well, it’s really hard to change.
Coach Callan: Well, it’s also a paradigm of, um, you go through an extensive interview process and you get the job and there’s this [00:13:00] understandable belief among across the whole team that this is like a perfect fit. And so, you know, you’re like, okay, so I’ll move in here and like, I’m great and they’re great and we’re this great jigsaw puzzle match.
Coach Callan: And all of that can be true. But again, you still got your backpack, you got your backpack. Yeah. Um, we spend so much time and energy. And companies spend so much money on the interview process. And we get so excited that this is, um, that we maybe feel like everything should be okay. And that’s something I really want to emphasize here too, is I think some people feel insecure or maybe a little bit awkward about engaging in coaching at this point in their career.
Coach Callan: Cause they’re like, gosh, shouldn’t, shouldn’t this, them hiring me have been the key indicator that everything is going to be fine and it’s really like, yeah, sure it is. And also, um, this is a massive transition. Like it’s just, it just is what it is. It’s the new people. It’s new ways of working. And what I’m [00:14:00] hoping that most people find is that they’ve taken a role that follows the rule of thirds.
Coach Callan: I don’t know if you follow like Olympic, Olympic athletes, but they have this idea of the rule of thirds, like a third of your training should be really comfortable. So, And should Excel at. And the third should be terrifying. It should just be. Tough, right? Like, I hope that’s true for people who’ve taken new roles.
Coach Callan: So like, you know, Being, um, having coaching in this transition, but also like talking about what you’re going to do when there is that stretch moment. Is really helpful.
Jamie Kosmar: Mm-Hmm. . And how, and how you can manage that stress moment again by Yeah. For example, setting, setting those boundaries. . Mm-Hmm. . Um, that’s, that’s beautiful.
Jamie Kosmar: I love the, the analogy and the way that, you know, you can frame it when you compare it to, for example, how an Olympian who you know is at the top of their game is gonna train. Mm-Hmm. . And by the way, all Olympians have coaches. . Right. They all do. They all need them. [00:15:00] Yeah, I think it’s a great segue though into our next question, which is, you know, if, if I’m an individual thinking, um, you know, shopping around for a new role, at what point do you think it’s best to engage a coach to help me with this transition?
Jamie Kosmar: Do you know, is it before I start? Is it After I start, you know, get my sea legs. When, when do you think is the best time?
Coach Callan: I think this is one of those coaching engagements that has a bit of a, um, sliding scale of cadence, uh, before, like as you engage with it. So I have seen probably the most successful engagements start with a few weeks before the person walks into their new role.
Coach Callan: Uh, because that way we can have some of those level setting conversations about how do I authentically represent myself, but also meet meet the organization where it is. Um, how do I kind of interrogate a little bit of what’s in that backpack? Uh, but that’s much more of a kind of [00:16:00] exploratory conversation.
Coach Callan: It’s a little bit like, we think we know what we know, but we don’t really know. My firm, firm belief is that all onboarding periods are actually one year. They are not four weeks. They’re not three months. They’re not even six months. It’s one year because in most jobs, one year is a full cycle of, of work.
Coach Callan: Right. Um, I wouldn’t suggest necessarily working with a coach for a year. I think you can get a lot done in phasing over a six month period. And like I said, maybe the first couple of meetings are, you know, one or two before you get started. And then you meet every two to three weeks for a six month period.
Coach Callan: is that early 90 days is going to be more about just understanding everything around you and kind of having getting that 20 percent more of the vision that I talked about before, like really seeing the, the summit of the mountain for what it is, and then the next phase, it’s going to be like, okay, well, how do I act in that, how do I show up in that and as, by the way, I’m not operating in a vacuum as I interact with other people, as I try to get things [00:17:00] done, as I try to influence change, what knowledge, skill and will challenges are coming up that we can address.
Coach Callan: So it could be, you know, one hour long sessions for a six to seven month period and, and really help move the needle fairly quickly at a time where I think a lot of us feel excited and slightly overwhelmed by everything going on and also a little bit vulnerable. Um, yeah, sometimes companies are like, why should we hire a coach if we have really good managers?
Coach Callan: Um, you know, there’s there’s a lot of people out there who are managers who will work really hard to build rapport and psychological safety and all those things. And my answer in this particular moment of a new role is because trust takes time to build and people are coming. You could have all the best practices in place and your managers could be absolutely phenomenal and still that manager and that person need to get used to each other.
Coach Callan: And so having a coach who kind of there on the sidelines with the person really helps to move them forward fast. [00:18:00]
Jamie Kosmar: But yeah, that’s a very good, good sort of idea to wrap up on. I mean, I would say that one of the things that we hear often, um, at IDMX is that, People really appreciate having the outside perspective, right?
Jamie Kosmar: Because, you know, no matter how good your managers are, no matter how sort of they’re good, their people skills, there’s always this perception that there’s a level of bias that enters into whatever they’re doing and how they’re behaving because they’re motivated. For a certain, you know, they’ve got skin in the game, right?
Jamie Kosmar: Um, you know, and I, it coaches skin in the game is to help you with whatever that goal or focus is. Um, so coming in as an outsider is, is helpful for perspective. Um, and I think it’s just helpful, you know, a lot of times with big transitions to have somebody to talk to.
Coach Callan: Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. Who, by the way, is not like mom.
Coach Callan: Or partner or sister, because if you talk about skin in the game,
Jamie Kosmar: yes, they have their biases too, [00:19:00] you know, exactly, exactly. It really is about that, that level of independence. Um, well, Kellen, I want to thank you today, uh, for this conversation. This has been very insightful. I’m to our audience. Um, If you would like to work with Coach Callen or one of our other qualified coaches, please visit us at the theidmx.
Jamie Kosmar: com. And thank you to everybody for listening.
Narrator: Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www. theidmx. com. Special thanks to our producer, Martin Milewski, and singer songwriter Doug Allen.