Posted by Sundi Hayes in The following is about someone very near and dear to my heart. Join me. I think you’ll like it and be able to relate!
She feels like she could take on the world today or any day for that matter. A fluff of her hair, a good suit and a single coat of lipstick can take her very far. She has worked hard to arrive at where she is professionally and you better take her seriously because she knows her stuff. The executive coaching/organizational development world to a hot blond female in it is no joking matter. The PhD, late nights, fights to prove she is smarter than her hair color would lead anyone to believe, years of OJT and unsolicited advances from clients or co-workers have brought her to where she is now. Struggling to make a name for herself – just slightly short of ,and much more serious than, a very well known Dr. Phil! (It doesn’t hurt to dream, right?)
She is a talented seller-got that from her dad. It isn’t what she considers selling. It simply comes naturally and she doesn’t even think about it or consider it a skill. She sees herself as a problem solver and her clients appreciate that. They don’t feel like they’ve been sold to or even pitched. She is simply the solution to their problem and they simply thank her for it-sometimes handsomely!
Her client list is extensive and recognizable: Clif Bar, Microsoft, Kaiser Permanente, Colgate Palmolive, Fuji Hunt, Loves Travel Stops, Oklahoma State University, Aggreko, Eisai, Interwoven, Wrigley, just to name a few. Problems from long-term executive coaching assignments to succession planning fall under her expertise. She was never one to shy away from the usual team building or life coaching, and can even list a staff position at a nationally recognized nursing college to her list of “at a girls.”
Her days are filled with the meat of her operations: coaching calls, content development, research, meetings with clients, and local events. But then there are the other things. The messy ones. Not that she isn’t good at them, if she applies herself. The travel plans, email interactions for numerous things (participant lists, reminders, booking confirmations, assessment instructions, and the like), organizing the research, editing materials for workshops, rescheduling appointments for no-show client phone calls-none of which she minds doing.
Then there is the list of things she does in the wee hours of the morning at the absolutely last possible second she can get it done: compiling materials, boxing for shipping, updating her social networks, typing a blog post, sending thank you notes to clients, organizing expense reports from workshop trips, RFP research and submissions, proofing quotes and getting them to clients and, basically, ordering more pens for God’s sake!
It isn’t unusual for her clients to get emails from her at 3 in the morning, a most likely time for her to be up and working, and the least likely time for her phone to be ringing. If she could only figure out how to download and print assessment results, while she packed boxes and her suite case and slept at the same time life would be so much easier! Just last week she found herself sitting in a taxi in New York traffic headed for her next keynote speaker event while doing a coaching call she inadvertently forgot to move the following week’s call because of her trip to Dallas. Details, details, details. The client never knew she wasn’t at her desk but she had yet to realize she wouldn’t have time to type her notes up for the clients boss before their debrief the following week.
This week, today, right now, she is standing in line for an overbooked flight from Chicago with limited cell reception and her flight confirmation no where to be found-if she even remembered to pack the darn thing. The last time she checked the big picture wasn’t the problem! It was the crease in the napkin on the linen tablecloth of the buffet in the dinning room of the big picture that was driving her crazy. The details of her consulting career hadn’t cost her a client yet and hopefully they wouldn’t, but she did know the details were costing her new ones. She just didn’t have the time or energy to return half the phone calls she was receiving or follow up on any of the referrals piling up in her inbox.
Can you identify with this?
Did any of that mirror yourself?
If you answered yes to either question please click and fill out the swank form at the bottom of my About page. That is all you need to do!
Nibbling away -
Sundi
PS – oh my goodness! If you need more encouragement then read this.
