Streamlining executive coaching and professional development

Streamlining executive coaching and professional development with Alexandra Connell from Pluma

Bringing goal-oriented coaching to a new generation of leaders

I'm excited to be joined by Alexandra Connell, who is the CEO and Cofounder of Pluma, a mobile executive coaching and professional development platform for a new generation of leaders. Prior to starting Pluma, Alexandra held corporate roles across several industries including technology, biotech, and investment management in New York and London. Alexandra holds an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Public Policy from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Alexandra, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

I'm excited to have you on. We both are passionate about the talent development space and coaching. I love everything about that especially getting coaching access to more people beyond the C-Suite, which is what your organization is about. Before we get into some of those questions, maybe we can start with a little bit about who you are and how you got to where you are.

You did a great job with my bios. I won't reinvent the wheel on that one but in terms of how my Cofounder, Samuel Cabral, and I arrived at the concept for Pluma and identifying the need for Pluma, it was through a role that I had out here in the Bay Area with a biotech company that had IPOed. We were facing a challenge. We have these more junior people who had been with the company since it started in a garage. They were the culture. They were the success. They had taken it from the garage to the NASDAQ, but this was their first job. Though they've been there 5, 6 years, it’s still résumé-wise would look like they were quite junior. After IPO, the executive team started hiring in VP, senior director level people from other organizations. Most of whom were more hierarchical, more institutional than the organization that we were at. My boss, at the time, was the COO. I was chief of staff to the COO. He said, “Can we find a way to bring our people up, rather than bring these people in?” We're negatively affecting our culture. We're not failing as fast and as innovative. We're not jumping into new things. There's a lot more expectation of infrastructure and niceties than we have time to provide.

Our junior people are getting demotivated because before they were 1 or 2 layers from the CEO and now, they're ten layers from the CEO. Behind a bunch of people who are asking them questions, who are saying to them, “How does this work? Is this a real cultural necessity?” When I was tasked with that, I went out into the market to look at what was available. There were some great online content platforms but nobody would make time for it. I was told, “No, thanks. Great in theory.” I did some workshops and seminars. People resented those a little bit, being taken out of their workflow and doing this one-day thing, not understanding the point of it, not having the longevity behind it. What I was constantly being asked for was, “Can I get an executive coach?” The reality was that when you had hundreds of people who wanted an executive coach, it wasn't feasible. Here, at least in the Bay Area, it's $20,000 to $30,000 for one executive coaching engagement. That was not something that we could do for those hundreds of people. Certainly, not when you're a public company, newly public, and reporting your financials for the first time.

It became clear to me in that process of finding coaches for some people that the reason the pricing was as such was that there were a lot of inefficiencies in the market. I had always been a little skeptical of the Silicon Valley attitude, “Any problem, even if it's not a problem, throw technology at it and see if it's a solution.” I did feel like this was an opportunity for technology to make something more accessible and scalable. If you could give coaches more business and take away all of the efforts they're putting into their own business development and marketing, they can charge much lower prices. You can create a much bigger opportunity for the reach of coaching. Take it out of that executive space and bring it into a much more accessible arena with first time managers, high potential ICs all the way up to senior people, but most of whom would not have had access before.

It's about making coaching available to 90%-plus of the population of these organizations that couldn't get it before. You mentioned that one of the reasons was that there were a lot of inefficiencies in the system. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that looked like? What are those inefficiencies?

Executive Coaching: If you could give coaches more business and take away from the effort put into business development and marketing, they can charge much lower prices and extend their reach.

The vast majority of executive coaches in the United States are sole proprietors. They're a self-represented small business, essentially. They're doing all of their business development and marketing. They may be part of various networks and those networks may be representing them but because of all of the costs. “I have my own costs as an individual coach. I have these network costs.” The end price ended up being high. That was also because even with these networks that focus on the executive level, you're only able to drive your utilization to 30% in most cases.

In that 30% utilization, I have to make up for the 70% of my time that's not spent on coaching, that's spent on all of the other components of being a small business. It’s the marketing, business development, doing LinkedIn, blog posts, and these things. The people who make the best coaches oftentimes are the people who often tend to get the thrill of their work from helping people, from interacting with people, from having those coaching relationships. It takes a little bit of that away, the more sales and biz dev that they're doing. We hear from a lot of coaches that Pluma and the opportunity to work with clients directly without that piece is a real boon to their economics, but also their passion, why they got into it in the first place. That doing a lot of their small business stuff can sometimes be a little alienating in that regard.

I've seen it firsthand. I got certified as a coach many years ago. I have a lot of coaches in my network. I know a lot of coaches. I know that most of them got into coaching because they love coaching people. They didn't think about the fact that they would have to spend so much time on marketing, business development, sales, trying to go out and find clients. A lot of them, frankly, they're not good at it. That's not their skill. Their skills are in coaching and helping people, they don't know how to go out and build a brand or market. I'm lucky that I developed some passion around that stuff but a lot of people just don't.

Even if you're great at both of those sides of things, one of them has to dominate. If you're awesome at sales and marketing, that's great, but you won't be able to do as much coaching as you'd like. Having that trade-off is always a downside when people go out on their own. They're excited for the chance to focus more on the coaching piece of the puzzle when they work with us.

A lot of people get this already, but there are a lot of people that haven't experienced coaching, especially maybe in smaller, mid-sized companies that didn't think they could ever afford it. Why should organizations be thinking about providing coaching for their people?

Executive Coaching As An Impactful Tool For Professional Development

When we have conversations with organizations, we try and think about what coaching is in a broader sense. In the sense of, what are you trying to drive with your overall talent development program? We're not here to talk about, “You do 30 traditional coaching engagements a year. We'll replace those.” That's not at all what we want to do. Instead, we want to say, “What is everything else you're doing in your talent development? What is your India office doing? What is your UK office doing? What is your New York office doing? Are they doing things in person? Are they doing things digitally? Are they having people follow through on online curriculums? What's the engagement?” Understanding the holistic vision for talent development that an organization has, and then saying, “Okay, cool.” A lot of those things can be driven through coaching and become much more impactful. Don't think of us as this slotted coaching solution, but instead think, “What are we trying to drive? Are we trying to drive better communication, greater innovation, change management, and transformation? What are all the tools that we have available to do that? How can coaching be one of those tools?”

That's the conversation that we tend to have within organizations. Think of coaching as an impactful way to achieve the professional development, talent development, and business development goals that your organization has. There's never going to be a learning modality that is more impactful than a one-on-one bespoke experience that has accountability that takes place over time with the teacher and a coach who has that expertise, who has this foundation that they can work with you from. There's no better alternative out there. We try and get organizations to think broadly about the problems they're looking to solve and then how coaching can help them implement those various things.

[bctt tweet="It’s better to be at the bottom of the ladder that’s right for you than to be at the top of one you don’t want to be on." via="no"]

Organizations have many different objectives. If you come at it from like, “Do you want coaching? I can provide coaching,” you're focused more on, what are the objectives? What's the strategy? How can I support that? See how you can slot this in to help them. Do you look at connecting that to those business results that they're trying to achieve? I would imagine you're going to have a lot more success when you do that.

One of the trends that we see is organizations trying to narrow down some of the product offerings they have. Not wanting to necessarily have 45 different vendors offering talent development options in each of their offices but wanting to say, “We're putting a bunch of chips on these key pieces of the puzzle. We're running at them in a big way.” We want to be able to provide the data that shows that putting the pile of chips that you've put on the Pluma piece has driven results in the participant’s perspective. We're going to report on engagement and satisfaction during the engagement as well as impact in a few key areas for the participant and in the 360 perspectives. One of the other things we recognize the importance of coaching is that it is a cultural mover. While a given individual may be receiving coaching, they're going to be taking that and affecting everyone around them with what they're taking away from the experience. It needs to be that way in order for the investment to make sense.

We work with organizations to be able to measure the impact for the individual, for the people around them, and then for the business as a whole. If we drive improvements in the delegation, improvements in managing upwards communication, or whatever these behaviors that you've customized to have the coaching engagement focus on, how do we monetize that? How do we think about measuring that? One of the things that I have been hesitant of is I don't put the dollar amount on the value before we talk to the client. You always come with some absurd number and they're like, “Right, whatever.” Instead, it's about saying, “What is it worth to you all? What's the difference between this and this?” We'll do the math for you but we want the inputs in terms of that dollar value from our partners so that it's a much more credible data piece that they can bring to their CFOs or CHROs.

I've been doing this show for a couple of years. I work with a lot of organizations, a lot of talent development professionals. We have this conversation all the time that if you want to be able to invest in certain strategic programs, you want to have a seat at the table and be part of the business, you've got to be able to prove business value for the programs you're running. You've got to be able to connect it to company strategy and be able to say, “Here's what I expect in terms of ROI. Here's what the investment looks like, here's what I expect in terms of results. Here's why I think it's well worth it to invest in this,” versus just saying, “Coaching would be cool.”

“I picked this because it was a random thing that showed up.” No. You have to align with some strategic objectives to be scalable. If you're doing something for one day with one office, it doesn't have to tell a bigger story, but when you're trying to sell a software that's scalable, that touches multiple offices, thousands of people, you're going to get the attention of senior people. You're going to need to be able to demonstrate from day one that it's a good use of not just money but also time. You're taking these leaders for an hour a week or whatever it might be you're taking up their time. If you're not giving them back more than that, you're not only drawing financial resources but you're drawing time resources as well.

Everybody's busy, you’ve got to make it worth it for them. When you think about organizations investing in their people, lots of large companies like you and I both work with, invest in talent development programs, leadership development programs. There are a lot of benefits to those. I run a lot of those as well, but oftentimes, coaching is not necessarily a part of that. I’m wondering, how does that fit into some of the programs that people are running? What have you seen are some of the gaps in some of those programs out there?

Integrating Coaching With Talent Development Programs

Talent development teams, especially at enterprises, are always working off of some organizing principles, and it makes sense to do so. The talent development pathways are based on your level, your title within the organization. They're based on your location or your function. How do they go out from there? There tend to be a lot of options and pathways, but it's the same thing over and over again. It's some online content. Maybe it's done as lessons or chapters. Maybe it's micro or macro, an executive MBA course, or 30-second videos. There's going to be some in-person component, maybe they fly everyone into the home office or you do it at the local location, but the audience is probably 15 to 30 people, a one to many models. They'll do their best to make it interactive, but it's tough. People are in and out and on their phones the whole time. Oftentimes, we see talent development teams jumping through a lot of hoops to create and name these programs, to create curriculums and survey people about these programs in ways that I'm not necessarily sure they're getting the results that they're hoping to get out of. Are we doing this because it was what we did and the year before that and not so much because it helped us achieve our goals or because people think this is a good use of their time?

Executive Coaching: The best coaches are those who get the thrill of their work from helping people, interacting with them and building coaching relationships.

When we talk about our coaching solution, we look to say, “Let’s leverage the best pieces that you already have in your talent development programs.” If you want to kick things off for a coaching engagement for a group with an in-person day where the CEO, CPO, CMO, or CFO speak with the various people who are going to be doing coaching, that's awesome. Feel free to do that day. Usually, there might be a six-month gap before you fly everyone back into the next day. How about in that gap we do one-on-one coaching? When we do that one-on-one coaching, how about we customize the experience to focus on whatever the core values and behaviors are for your organization or even for your organization at this particular level that will drive successful leadership and management? That way, we're meshing into not just the talent development program, but the organization as a whole. That's something that's differentiated about Pluma and incredibly important.

A lot of these organizations have already developed behavior frameworks, competency models, documentation, and all of this stuff. We integrate all of that into the coaching experience even down to frankly our platform colors can be customized. This platform can look like it's from your organization. That makes it feel much more like this is a piece of the puzzle of what my organization is offering to me. Not, “I'm going through a series of disjointed things, and I'm not sure how they all connect. Each vendor is coming at me with its own framework, which may be good or bad. It doesn't matter if it doesn't have anything to do with what my day-to-day looks like.” That's where we try and take the conversation with our HR partners is, how can we fit this into what you're already offering? How can we help you cut down on what you're offering that's not giving you the results that you want?

You don't want things to be disjointed. When I work with clients to create learning journeys, we want to always have that red thread. Something that’s bringing and joining everything together. I've got clients that are great and big on the colors. The imagery has to match everything, their brand as well. It's cool that you can provide that and we do something similar. You want it to all seem coherent and cohesive, something like it's all part of this organization and their development. That's important. This is in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of things have been changing in the working world. I'm curious, first of all, to know, have things changed regarding coaching as coaching become more popular or less popular during this time? What have you seen?

Executive Coaching During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Our offering is well-positioned for what the reality is. The vast majority of people are working from home, whether this was a practice that was common in their organization previously or not. Us being a digital solution where everything is done via mobile and web. You're doing your video sessions with your coach or messaging with your coach, we were able to make the product transition incredibly easy. In fact, for us, it wasn't even a transition. It was how things were done anyway. What we've honed in a little bit on more are some of the resources that can be helpful. One of the things that we created, our coaches had access to a database of resources through a learning partnership we have with Harvard Business Publishing. In that database of resources, we had not yet customized a series of articles about COVID-19. We were quite sensitive to it because stuff in San Francisco was moving a lot faster than elsewhere in terms of the shelter in place and things, so we had this out the door quickly.

We began a resource list for coaches to use, to lean on for working with, and sharing with their clients. At this point, it's been something we've shared. We have over 300 coaches on our network. We have hundreds of resources that we created and then coaches have been adding to. It's this living document that we share with coaches as well as HR partners that we work with. Different topics, whether it's working from home and managing kids, managing teams, and keeping up morale remotely, all those things. Making sure that our clients, coaches, and HR partners feel supported at this time and feel like they have what they need from us. Trying to be a little bit flexible on cancellation and timings and things like that. Kickoff timings, we work closely with our partners to make sure that they're going to be able to get the full engagement and utilization that they expect to get with us.

Most of our partners have doubled down on the usage because, A, their people need something, they need some form of support, they need that touch from the organization. Coaching is a great way to give that. B, there's a little bit more time to focus on your development, communication, and leadership skills because you are a bit isolated in that sense. You can take a little bit of that time in a way that you might not when you were in and out of the office. You don't always have a private room you could go to. People see the value even more with coaching assuming that you have good coaches who can be sensitive to the moment and help people talk to the things that they need to talk through. If you're trying to do coaching that's more like a guided curriculum, you would struggle because now is not the time for some of that stuff. You have to have a talented enough coach-base that can be reactive to what clients are going through and experiencing. We're well set up for that as well because the coach-client work is bespoke in our platform. All of our coaches are executive-level coaches. They have that talent and ability to meet the clients where they're at and discuss the issues that are most important for them.

I've been studying this and talking to a lot of people about the response to COVID-19 and everybody going to work remotely, at least most companies out there are sending a lot of people home. What's been important for making that transition successful. We have experience in how to lead through a crisis. Some of the key points we bring out in there are, leaders need to be empathetic. They need to understand what their employees are going through. Build trust and improve that communication. I can see how coaching can provide that extra benefit to people when they are feeling isolated, feeling out there, and needing that extra communication. I can see that being more beneficial. I was curious, are organizations recognizing that and investing more in coaching, or are they pulling back because we're in tough times in a lot of industries?

[bctt tweet="There will always be a tradeoff between doing as much coaching as possible and working on sales and marketing." via="no"]

For our existing client base, which is quite broad, nobody is pulling back. The attitude is, “We know Pluma. We trust Pluma. There's a real need here, full steam ahead.” It's always an interesting conversation when you're doing new sales. Some people are closed off, they've been told by their executive teams that budget is frozen. When we hear that, our attitude always with sales is, “That's fine. Here's how we can add a little bit of value whether it’s sharing this resource, share this podcast, or whatever it might be. We'll check in with you later.” It’s not the time to force a sale or try to bully your way in with people. If you can lead by example a little bit and make yourself useful to new customers, when they do have the opportunity or when they do see the need, they will think of you first when it comes to that outreach.

You and I talked about with what's going on with our businesses and the pandemic. We have to be sensitive, you’ve got to be empathetic. There are some industries where they're not able to invest much in development, coaching, whatever it may be, or they're incredibly busy. I have clients and friends in healthcare that are all hands on deck. I was working on an opportunity to create a new diversity and inclusion program for a company that makes ventilators. They're a little bit busy with some more things, not thinking about development, but other companies, a lot of tech companies I talked to its business as usual. I like to think that many of them are still taking this opportunity to double down and invest in their people in different ways so they come out stronger.

Gilead, the makers of the new vaccine that's in testing are a client of ours. We work closely with them, their clinical ops team. We have a lot of clients who are busy and working nonstop. They're kicking off another group with us because of the moment that we're in. There are plenty of partners for whom this is even more than they might normally or they're moving up their schedule. There are some partners for whom they're recognizing that. For example, we work with Sephora. We work with a lot of their district and store managers, people who are not going to work in the retail field. Sephora has also sped things up to make sure that those people are getting the support and the development that they need to support themselves and their teams while the stores are closed down. It's a complete reprioritization for those leaders. “How do I move everything we did, keep people engaged, and rethink this entire thing?” That's also a great time for coaching. In that sense, no matter where you are on the spectrum of being affected, the actual vaccine maker, or brick-and-mortar retailer, there is an opportunity for coaching. We've seen that even in our client base.

It's cool to hear that some of these organizations are still investing in their people even during tough times. Alexandra, what has been your proudest accomplishment or moment throughout this journey so far?

Is it through the journey of entrepreneurship?

Yeah, building this company and providing coaching to many organizations?

Pluma’s Achievements And Impact

There are a lot of different things that I'm proud of. We have an incredible team. The Pluma team, coaches, our organizational partners are amazing. I'm proud of the fact that we've shown that. Even with a smaller organization like ours, if you are authentic, you create value, you are reliable and persistent, you can partner with Fortune 500 organizations like Gap Inc., Adobe, Gilead, and Sephora. All of these amazing organizations that we work with, Dropbox and the like. My daily thing that I'm proud of is we use Slack for messaging across the company. We created a Slack channel called Nice Things That People Tell Us. As entrepreneurs, you get told a lot of not nice things. “The buck stops here and the buck tends to be negative.” My cofounder and I were like, “How do we make sure that the team is seeing the impact that we're having because we're unique in the sense that our product does change people's lives and that's cool?” We share in that channel things that HR partners, coachees or end-users tell us, things that coaches tell us. At least 10 or 15 times a day, we have quotes from different clients.

Executive Coaching: Coaching is a cultural mover. An individual who receives coaching affects everyone around them with what they take away from the coaching experience.

Reading those things that are like, “I feel like I greatly benefited from coaching.” “Working with Pluma has helped me ask better questions and guide my counselees and team members to better answers.” “This experience has been incredibly rewarding. It's taught me to make new habits and be genuinely curious about contrasting viewpoints.” These things where people are doing serious work on themselves, how they perceive themselves, and how others perceive them. Being able to see that feedback and be like, “I was part of making that.” That's the thing I'm the proudest of and of everyone on our team as well.

That's a lot to be proud of. I'm glad you're making note of those things. I'm trying to do more of that as well, myself. When you're on an entrepreneurial journey, there are plenty of mistakes that are usually made, and they always say in Silicon Valley to fail fast. What's been one of your biggest mistakes or failures? What did you learn from it?

There are many mistakes and failures. The truth is I tend not to think of them because it's almost like that butterfly effect thing where it’s like, “If I hadn't made that mistake, then I wouldn't have had this.” I can't undo any of it. In terms of the things about myself that I've had to change that was probably where I spend the most time thinking, “What did I fundamentally have to change about myself? What mistakes was I making?” When we first started, a lot of the sales responsibility fell on me. I hadn't ever done sales before. I was a rookie in the sales space in terms of I was surprised by how aggressive you needed to be to do base level sales. At first, I thought, “If someone wants it, they'll get back to me.” I was like, “Wow.” It turns out I'm not top of mind to these people who run enormous organizations.

They have a lot of stuff going on.

I'm going to have to get a lot more comfortable making the ask, whether the ask is, “When's our next call? Are you going to purchase? How are we going to try this out?” That was something that I had to get comfortable with. It was a challenge for me to practice that area. I don't know if it was like a failure or mistake as it was this thing about myself that I realized I needed to reinvent in a way. Be more comfortable with, “I'm selling something phenomenal. I'm going to sell it, it's phenomenal. I'm going to talk about it.” I tended to err on the side of humbled to the point of maybe people thought that it wasn't good. I started to realize, “People from different backgrounds are different about that. You have to go big on that front.” I was surprised by that.

I've been on the same journey. We all learn things about ourselves, things we are good and need to get better at. I've been in sales for a few years and I'm still not good at it. Making that ask and be like, “Will you give me money for this?” I'll provide permits.

I'm calling you for the fifth time. I'm trying to figure out a new way to open this email that's not like, “Are you buying now?”

[bctt tweet="In times like this, coaching should not work like a guided curriculum. Coaches should be responsive to what their clients are going through." via="no"]

“Have you looked at the other emails?” In my experience, you follow up 4 or 5 times, you think you're being annoying and then someone says, “Thank you so much. I haven't seen your other emails because they've been buried in my inbox. I've been meaning to get back to you,” whatever it may be. I always call it patience and persistence. You’ve got to keep going.

Pride in the sense of, “I know what I'm selling you is amazing. I should be for your benefit, getting in touch with you.” If you don't see that, then that's my fault because that means I haven't articulated it in a way that's valuable to you, or I haven't understood your need in a way that can make me be able to help you. When we work with our sales team, we're always having the conversation in that direction because of the nature of the product that we sell. One, we need to be representative of the culture that someone would want to see in their own organization. If they see us behaving a certain way, it has to be aligned with the product. It has to be aligned with what they would want as the best possible outcome. We have to go above and beyond in terms of our customer service, support, responsiveness, and empathy. The other is that we have to continuously follow-up and follow through. Be brave about making the ask. You never want to be annoying or harassing, but in a way that shows that we know the product is valuable and that this would be a benefit to anyone who works with us.

Build relationships, show value, patience and persistence. We're talking about sales, but for talent development practitioners who are selling programs, coaching, or whatever it may be internally, you’ve got to use all these things as well to sell this stuff.

It's huge. One of the biggest things that I always like to work with our talent development partners on is how to take the credit in the organization. Especially with our platform and our program, we get rave reviews. We want to set up our talent partners for that win. The number one thing that people ask us when they get the coaching engagement is, “Why was I chosen for this?” It's a huge opportunity for the organization to be saying, “We picked you because you're phenomenal. We value you. We think you're the future of our culture and our business objectives.” When it comes to driving employee engagement, there's nothing that's going to have a bigger impact than this. We try as hard as we can to set our partners up for a win in that regard. Even changing the color of the platform to match the organization, it sets them up for the win of, “This is something that the company is doing, that we're doing to benefit and to support our employees.” It's a part of the company, it's a part of the experience. Employees are going to experience it that way as well. We’re happy to do that. We know that when our partners win, we inevitably win. It's never not happened that way.

I always say I want to make my clients look like rock stars. You want to make them look great because it's their reputation inside the organization and it helps you, as a partner, as well. I always ask my guests for book recommendations. Is there a book that's made a big impact on you or that you often recommend to people?

I do. It's a little bit of an unusual choice because most people recommend business books. When I was in business school or before business school, I read the book, Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. She's a philosopher. It looks at the topic which she calls the Banality of Evil. It's this idea that we hope that evil or bad instances are these super recognizable black and white moments where we can be like, “That person is bad and that person is good.” The reality is that these things are little. It only takes going along with things, slow little snowballing of things to go negative. In the same way, I also think of it as to go positive.

For me, that book was foundational and thinking about the effects that certain actions can have and how, personally from a moral and authentic viewpoint, I need to always be asking myself, “Is this the example I want to set? Is this the culture that I want people to walk away from me? When I manage people, are they watching what I do? Is that good? Is that going to influence them positively in the future?” The same goes for our partners, how they think about the cultures of their organizations. These little signals from the senior levels of the team or from managers, they add up all the sudden to a culture. These things are little and they add up as opposed to doing a one day big, sweeping thing and then hoping that it runs your culture for years to come. That was an influential book, a bit dark but in terms of the philosophy of human nature and how these little things can add up. You have to be constantly vigilant in terms of what your ethics and morals, as the industry says your personal brand is, in order to go forward and have that reputation.

Executive Coaching: No matter where you are on the spectrum of being affected by the COVID-19 crisis, there is always an opportunity for coaching.

I'm big on that stuff. I've studied and practiced in the area of personal brand and reputation. It’s something I'm passionate about and that I've been writing about in the book I'm working on. It's awesome, and I love that recommendation. Last question for you, Alexandra. For those out there in the talent development world or anybody who wants to excel in their career and get to the next level, what's one more piece of advice you would give?

In terms of thinking about excelling in your career, the number one most important thing that you can do is to ensure that you're on a path that you want to be on. One thing that I've kept close to my heart in evaluating careers is I don't want to be at the top of a ladder that I don't want to even be on. I'd rather be at the bottom of a ladder that's the right ladder for me. People can get caught up. We see a lot of people come to coaching and their initial goal is, “I want a promotion.” It's like, “There's a lot to unpack there. That's not a great initial goal. We need to dive into what that means and what it signals to you and what you've got wrapped up in all of that.”

When you think about your career development and your career trajectory, think about it in this way of, “Is the work that I'm doing meaningful to me? Is it impactful? Is it interesting? Do I enjoy the people that I'm around?” If the answer is yes to those questions, then your career will unfold in a certain way. You don't have to rush to the top necessarily, you should be self-advocating and developing in those ways. People put a lot of pressure on themselves that, at any given moment, their job should be the end-all be-all and the most fulfilling thing in their life. It doesn't unfold that way. It's a journey, in a sense. As you go, you piece in certain pieces of the puzzle, like, “Leading people. I'm going to aspire to a role where I have a team under me. I like this aspect or this industry. I'm going to get a job leading people in that industry.” You pile it on as you go as opposed to a dream job or a perfect role. It has a finalist to it that life doesn't have.

I love that advice. If you're going to take ownership of your career, it starts with having a vision, having an idea of where you want to get to, and then staying true to that. It's easier to make decisions along the way to guide you. It’s something I wrote about in my book as well. We're aligned about that. Alexandra, this has been great. For anybody reading who wants to get in touch with you, find out more about Pluma and the services you offer, where should they go?

They can visit our website at www.Pluma.co, there will be tons of information there. They can also feel free to email us at Hello@Pluma.co and someone will get back to them right away.

Alexandra, this has been great. I enjoyed the conversation. I hope our readers did as well. Thank you again for coming on the Talent Development Hot Seat.

Thank you so much for having me, Andy. I appreciate it.

Take care.

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