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Coaching – New Paradigm for Effective Leadership

Leadership is critical in today’s evolving business environment. Leadership affects the culture, people, and the organization’s overall ability to succeed. But the age-old question remains the same – what makes a good leader? We spoke with Susan Pahl, Founder & CEO Shift Coaching Inc., to get her perspective on leadership and the role coaching plays in leading a successful team.

Name: Susan Pahl

Occupation: Founder & CEO Shift Coaching Inc.

Susan Pahl is the CEO and Founder of Shift Coaching, a leadership development and corporate coaching company. Shift Coaching develops leaders, teams and organizations to adapt change and grow.

“To me, leadership is not a position, a title or a set of traits. It is the ability to get others to want to work together and even struggle to achieve a shared goal. The ultimate form of leadership is to enable each member of the group to bring their best self and best efforts to bear on the goal at hand,” says Susan.

Analyzing the Trends

Susan engaged in extensive research to understand the new trends in leadership development and get ahead of the curve. She was particularly struck by the data that showed the impact of coaching on productivity, culture and employee engagement in business across a variety of industries.

“According to a study by Bersin & Associates, now a part of Deloitte, leaders that coach are 130% more likely to realize stronger business results. In addition, organizations with a culture of coaching achieve 21% higher business results. These are astounding numbers. When your leaders use coaching as an integral tool of management, the business grows.”

“Research by Zenger Folkman found that “more than 60% of employees who report to managers who are not good coaches are thinking about quitting.” This is based on more than 500,000 360-degree assessments on 50,000 leaders. Coaching is a fundamental tool to not only bring out the best in people, but retain them too.”

Susan also identified what many modern leaders struggle with. She describes how “command and control leaders rely on their own skills and abilities to solve problems and be the experts. This new world requires multiple people and multiple brains to be able to navigate this fast-paced increasingly complex world we live in.” Instead of taking an authoritative approach, Susan suggests that leaders need to know how to create “a collaborative work environment where people can think for themselves, solve problems and be innovative.”

Finding the Niche

The reality today is this: “There is no playbook or training program to address the complexity that people are facing today,” Susan comments. Constant adaptation to change, competition for attracting and retaining top talent as well as employee development are just some of the ongoing tasks that managers need to think about.

“The role of HR is changing. How do we prepare people to work, lead and learn effectively in the complex constantly changing world? To start we need to support HR professionals and career educators to become coaches and equip them with the skills to support others.”

Identifying the gap between employees’ expectations and managers’ ability to meet them, Susan came up with the idea for Shift Coaching. “I wanted to provide a program that covered all the essential elements of coaching in the context of the business environment with practice, reflection and feedback that would fit in with a business person’s busy schedule,” says Susan. She adds that “every leader needs A coach and that every leader needs TO coach.” So really, Susan teaches others to learn by doing. Those who participate in the program not only learn how to coach others, but they also get coached themselves.

Coaching Leaders

So how does The Shift Corporate Coach Program work? It is built for business leaders and it stands apart from other coaching programs because it incorporates the business context, is efficient and is integrated into the leaders’ workday. Unlike other programs that only provide a generic overview of coaching or require a significant time investment, Shift Coaching equips participants with practice, reflection and feedback that fits within a business person’s busy schedule.

Participants learn core coaching concepts through an experiential hands-on process. As a result of completing the program, according to Susan, leaders can:

Generate improved productivity
Reduce conflict across the organization
Increase the response to managing and implementing change
Use industry-leading leadership tools to grow staff and develop people
Create a renewed vision and strength in their approach to developing the corporate culture
Create a greater focus on the art of relationship-building throughout the organization; with direct reports, peers, stakeholders and clients
Explore the benefits of using coaching conversations in everyday applications as well as in formal protocols

Shift Corporate Coach Program recently opened up for new grads in an effort to shape the leaders of tomorrow early on.

“Becoming a coach early in a new grad’s career will prepare them to have healthy approaches to the people issues and have the ability to coach others, preparing them for positions of leadership. We have heard so many of our [more mature] participants say that they wished they had these skills 20-30 years ago and how their careers may have been very different. So we said: “Why wait?” – let’s bring this to new grads and help them get coaching skills early on.”

Constantly Evolving

It’s evident: the change is here. The massive challenge of adapting and evolving together with the industry is something that every business manager (current or aspiring) needs to embrace.

“Robert Keagan calls it “Constructive Destabilization” in his book “An Everyone Culture”. He says that, if you can perform your role to a high level, you are actually no longer in the right job. As soon as something is working perfectly, it is time to blow it up and move up to the next level. He suggests running into useful trouble and using this trouble to learn and grow. This is the opposite of “business as usual”. Pain + Reflection = Progress.”

Susan comments that HR professionals will only be able to grow by introducing desirable and purposeful challenges in their work lives. Learning and development programs are a safe way of practicing to combat these difficulties.

“Ongoing development must be woven into the daily fabric of working life and people’s limitations will be seen as their growing edge. Organizations need to aggressively seek opportunities for their leaders to practice, experiment and learn in this new changing environment. They also need to change how they evaluate and develop leaders,” says Susan. Her passion for better leaders of tomorrow is evident in everything she does.

If you’re ready for the next step in your leadership development, explore what Shift Coaching has to offer. Do you know a soon to be or a recent grad that might benefit from the Shift Corporate Coach Program™️?

TalentEgg is proud to partner with Shift Coaching to offer young professionals an exceptional leadership development opportunity give-away valued at $5,000! Find out more here!

How Are You Helping to Build the Workplace Critical Skills Pipeline?

February 6, 2020 / Trevor Buttrum / 0 Comments

When describing what differentiates top talent amongst students and new graduate candidates, we often find ourselves referencing their ‘soft’ or workplace critical skills. Things like creativity, teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving, and leadership.

As employers, we seemingly all want these skills to be a part of the candidate profile for our new graduate programs, summer internships, or open positions on campus. And, if the expectation is that students come prepared with these skills when they arrive in the workplace, I wonder how can we as career educators and campus recruiters help students to identify, acquire, and nurture them before they land their first job?

For me, the approach is two-fold:

I think it starts with helping students to become fluent in the art of articulation, reflection, and offering up evidence.

Let’s work an example – communication skills. We know that having a student simply state they are a good communicator is not enough. Rather, it’s how they demonstrate they are a good communicator through examples or description that sets them apart.

Fellow campus recruiters, I am offering up a challenge to you here. Let’s commit to trying to better articulate our needs. Continuing with the ‘good communication skills’ example, what if we said something like this in our postings:

‘Persuasive business writing, active listening, comfort delivering critical or difficult messages, and strong presentation skills are essential for successful communication in our organization’.

The more specific or articulate we are, the more a student has got to work with and reflect on. They can start to assess whether they have demonstrated these skills and attributes in their studies or work to date, come up with evidence to support it, and if a gap exists, have a clearer goal to work towards. If Year 1 students knew what you were truly looking for in terms of workplace critical skills when they embarked on their program, think about where they might be by the time they graduate. Perhaps ‘top talent’ would be more plentiful?

While these notions are by no means new, it stands to reason that by providing students with ample opportunity to reflect on and to talk about their skills in meaningful ways (whether it is a part of their experiential learning, course work, co-op, or even workshops) the more comfortable and confident they will become in talking about their workplace critical skills as potential candidates.

The second piece is all about providing additional opportunities to develop and nurture workplace critical skills while in school. Case competitions, challenges, portfolios or workplace critical skills passports, skills badging, and experiential learning are all great ways to achieve this. Think about how you can get more involved in these types of initiatives. While yes, the time investment does need to be there to make it most effective, you will be doing wonders for your credibility, brand, and building up of the pipeline of the skills you’re ultimately wanting students to have in their toolkit.

Challenge yourself. In your next round of engaging students – how will you help them to get really good at articulating, reflecting, and evidencing their workplace critical skills? What opportunities will you provide to develop and nurture them? Happy skill building!

Trevor Buttrum is an award-winning career education and campus recruitment leader with 15+ years of experience in the space. He is currently the manager of a national program focused on building the talent pipeline for the next generation of the property and casualty insurance workforce.

6 Tips For Creating a Winning TalentEgg Awards Application

January 15, 2020 / Marlaina Lanese / 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again! The applications for the 2020 TalentEgg National Recruitment Excellence Awards & Conference open on January 20th!

The #TEAwards are an egg-cellent opportunity for top employers, career centres and educational institutions to be recognized for their egg-ceptional work, as well as gather valuable feedback from students and recent graduates on their recruitment initiatives.

We know you’re ready to get cracking on those submissions, but before you do, we wanted to share a few of our top tips and tricks for crafting an award-winning application.

1. Get organized

The first thing you should do is decide which award categories best fit your initiatives – and with 18 awards, you have plenty to choose from. To get started, make a shortlist of the ones you want to apply to and carefully read through the descriptions to ensure your team’s efforts meet the outlined criteria.

Here are the categories for this year’s TalentEgg awards:

EMPLOYER AWARDS

BEST GRAD PROGRAM
BEST CAREER WEBSITE
BEST INTERNSHIP/CO-OP PROGRAM
CAMPUS RECRUITING PROGRAM OF THE YEAR
RECRUITING PROGRAM OF THE YEAR FOR A NONPROFIT NEW!
CAMPUS RECRUITER OF THE YEAR (INDIVIDUAL)
RECRUITER OF THE YEAR FOR A NONPROFIT (INDIVIDUAL) NEW!
BEST EMPLOYER BRANDING AND OUTREACH
BEST SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
SPECIAL AWARD FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN RECRUITING NEW!
SPECIAL AWARD FOR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN RECRUITING
BEST CONTRIBUTION TO STUDENT CAREER DEVELOPMENT
BEST USE OF STUDENT COMPETITIONS FOR RECRUITMENT NEW!
BEST RECRUITMENT BRANDING STRATEGY BY A PROFESSIONAL OR INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION NEW!

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

SPECIAL AWARD FOR INNOVATION BY A CAREER CENTRE
BEST DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN BY AN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
CAREER COACH OF THE YEAR (INDIVIDUAL)
BEST CONTRIBUTION TO STUDENT CAREER DEVELOPMENT

For more details, head to our website!

2. Gather your materials

Each awards submission is composed of two parts. The first is the mandatory online application. We ask all applicants to fill out a short form and provide a brief overview of the initiative being submitted for review.

Note: The Campus Recruiter of the Year and Career Coach of the Year (Individual) awards application are slightly different. For these awards, we ask for a short description of the nominee’s achievements.

The second component is the supporting documentation. We request all documentation to be presented in PDF format and attached with the application form. Please compile all documentation into ONE file to allow for a seamless judging process. You can embed links to online presentations, websites, or other types of media to support the application and demonstrate the impact of your efforts.

Over the years, we’ve noticed that our judging panel tends to favour applicants who are able to support their achievements with solid evidence. Speaking of which…

3. Know your audience

Your work will be judged by an egg-clusive panel of top students, new grads and early career professionals. In other words, your target audience for your career and recruitment initiatives. Therefore, to help ensure your application is well-received, you need to tailor it for a younger demographic.

Here’s what we recommend:

- - Use terminology that everyone can understand. Avoid industry jargon words and phrases.
  - Communicate in a Gen Z and Y-friendly voice. Aim for casual and conversational, but still professional.
  - Speak directly to the wants and needs of students and grads (if that’s who your application is targeting). Check out our 2021 Guide to Campus Recruitment to get key insights from students & grads.

4. Show your work

So you think your organization had the best recruiting program of the year? Great – we want proof! Quantitative data like statistics or percentages can help strengthen your claims and create a comprehensive application.

Another factor all winning applications have in common? Visual appeal. To stand out to the judging panel, try:

- - Using a style and branding that is similar to your other career and recruitment material.
  - Incorporating visual evidence, such as screenshots, logos, videos, etc., to illustrate your application.
  - Including pictures of your student, new grad or early career employees and/or recruiters to help the judges better connect with your organization.

5. Keep it concise

With so many submissions to evaluate, most of the judges will likely only spend a short time evaluating each application. A text-heavy application will not appeal to a Gen Z and Y audience. The key is to provide as much detail as possible, but also keep it concise.

To do this, include only the most relevant and impressive information and use bulleted lists or graphs to convey your points wherever possible. Also remember that you can provide links to any social networking accounts, online media, and additional information you want to include – but please, keep everything organized in a single PDF document.

6. Be creative

Don’t be afraid to flex those creative muscles when crafting your application! The goal is to create a submission that stands out from the competition in a memorable way and the best way to do that is to be innovative.

Think outside the box by leveraging new technology as much as possible. For example, you could create a video for your application instead of a traditional text document. You could also use infographics to represent your data in a modern and visually appealing way.

Just make sure that the end result is accessible and easy-to-navigate. It doesn’t matter how flashy your application is – if the judges can’t understand it, they can’t engage with it.

Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to creating a top-notch #TEAwards application. Good luck!

Interested in sponsoring the event? See the sponsorship opportunities here!

TalentEgg launches Canada’s first candidate showcase featuring video profiles allowing students and grads to communicate strengths beyond the resume, improve visibility and directly connect to employers

August 1, 2019 / Stephanie Davis / 0 Comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Aug. 1, 2019 (Toronto, Canada). TalentEgg is pleased to announce Canada’s first talent marketplace featuring video-based features allowing candidates to introduce themselves beyond the resume and get noticed by employers. The platform helps Gen Y & Z candidates to tell their story in their own words by providing convenient, easy to use functionality that allows them to record their video introduction, upload their resume, and respond to interview requests from employers, from any device, on their schedule. With the TalentEgg Candidate Video Showcase, recruiters and employers now have the ability to search the job seekers’ video profiles with resumes and invite them to a video interview directly from the profile.

Video interviewing is now a mainstream assessment method in recruitment and student and grad job seekers are practicing and developing their digital interviewing skills while at University and College. Now they have an opportunity to put those skills to work in the real world and on their own terms on a platform where they can control their own message. The TalentEgg Candidate Video Showcase offers the candidate the ability to upload their resume and record a video introduction directly into their personal candidate profile. They can include a descriptive paragraph about themselves and credentials which are displayed to the employer and is searchable based on location, school, year of graduation, program of study and preferred industries, or by relevant keywords.

“Employers are looking for more efficient methods to recruit and interview graduates and improve campus recruiting efficiency. Students and grads are looking for new ways to get noticed by employers outside of traditional methods. Schools are looking for more ways to help their students and grads make the transition from school to work effectively by showcasing great candidates to employers of choice,” says Mary Barroll, President of TalentEgg. “TalentEgg’s Candidate Video Showcase brings all of these features and capabilities together at one digital job marketplace destination. We believe it’s a real win-win-win and an exceptional opportunity for schools, employers and job seekers alike, and a gamechanger in the campus recruitment space.”

“The resume is no longer an adequate tool for representing the potential that candidates can bring to the workplace. Job seekers are increasingly frustrated with their inability to differentiate themselves in their job search. They are eager to share more about themselves by answering questions and sharing other aspects of their character that, in the case of students and graduates, can supplement their sometimes limited work history,” says Catharine Fennell, CEO, videoBIO. “We are pleased to provide the video technology to support TalentEgg’s job marketplace to advance connections between employers and job seekers.”

To learn more and add a profile visit https://talentegg.ca/register

For more information please contact:

Mary Barroll
President, TalentEgg Inc.
Mary@talentegg.ca

Rachel Evans
VP of Operations, TalentEgg Inc.
Rachel@talentegg.ca

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