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Show Notes
Background
Shirley Sutton is a leadership coach and People & Culture leader with a background in talent and recruitment, where she has spent years identifying and developing high potential leaders inside corporate and enterprise organisations. She is the creator of the Managers to Leaders program, helping managers get unstuck and step into leadership roles in just 90 days. Through her signature Authority Shift method focused on leadership mindset and personal brand, she helps high performers stop waiting to be recognised and start leading with confidence, clarity, and influence.
Why Leadership Coaching Matters
People often land in management roles and when they get there, people leadership skills are something they still have to learn. Putting people leadership into practice is something very different. A lot of that learning comes when you are actually faced with day to day leadership challenges.
Taking the Leap into Coaching
So many people feel like they need guidance. Things are becoming more challenging. Artificial Intelligence has come into play. There is a lot of uncertainty. It is really about helping managers and leaders navigate through all of that. Shirley completed her Neuro Linguistic Programming certification and turned that into a coaching business. She was doing it as a passion project while still working in corporate. When her son became less dependent on her, she felt it was the right stage in life to finally do something she had always wanted to do full time.
Moving out of corporate has definitely been a big shift. Once you step into that role, there is no turning back. You just have to keep going.
Seeking Support
The support probably came from reaching out to my previous networks that had actually done the same leap. When I did my certification with my coaching and Neuro Linguistic Programming, I was part of a group. Some of them went back to corporate, some had fully committed to coaching full time, and others were still doing both.
I wanted to get ideas about what was happening because when I first started, probably seven years ago, and then came back to it, the landscape had changed. When I decided whether I wanted to go back into career transitioning or focus on helping managers become leaders, I really honed in on that decision.
I spoke to previous colleagues and other Human Resources professionals to test whether what I wanted to offer actually solved a real problem.
There was a lot of networking. It was all about sense checking. I was leaving a comfortable role with stability. At the same time, I was feeling really burnt out in what I was doing. I had almost lost the reason I wanted to be in that role. So speaking to people who had already moved into product and service based businesses really helped me hear their experiences.
Not one of them told me it was easy. They all said there would be good months and quiet months. Sometimes you spend your time marketing instead of coaching. It really showed me that everyone has different motivations for running their own business.
For me, it has almost been rediscovering what gets me out of bed in the morning. If I do not move my business forward, nothing happens. That was a huge deciding factor for me. The workforce is changing. There are restructures happening everywhere, especially in Human Resources.
Ironically, I now take people through their own personal transformation. That ninety day transformation and personal branding has become central to what I do. That is why I offer a personal branding checklist.
It helps people do an audit of themselves and ask:
What still drives me?
Is what I am doing still feeding my passion?
There was a lot of reflection before I took the leap.
Finding Your Niche Matters
I think that is really important because you mentioned quite a few things. You spoke about networking. You spoke about talking to colleagues who had already done it. You looked at what worked for them and then adapted it to your own situation. You started in one niche because it suited your stage of life.
As your life changed, your niche changed too. That is important. Where you start does not have to be where you finish. You need to evolve as you evolve. Not simply chop and change.
Quite a few of the things you mentioned are things I have spoken about on this podcast for years. It is really important to hone in on your niche. If you are trying to talk to everybody, you will talk to nobody.
Sometimes, during a career transition, people become worried. They wonder if they are becoming too pigeonholed. They question whether their skills are too specialised. They wonder how they are going to use those skills.
Personal Branding Matters
In my previous role, I also delivered personal branding training because many people do not really think about it. It is not just a corporate exercise, especially for business owners in the coaching and consulting world where there are a lot of people doing what we do. It is really about the personal brand.
For corporate people and business owners that I work with, I always remind senior leaders that if someone is deciding whether to take a role with Company A or Company B, the first thing they do is look you up. They ask about you in the network. You may carry the big company logo, but at the end of the day you report to a person. Do you want to be working with that person for that purpose? Really, your interaction is there.
The personal branding checklist that I use today would be very different from five years ago. Hopefully it is different. An improved version. If not, it is also a good opportunity for personal reflection.
At the end of the year, it is always good to ask: What were the things that worked well?
Sometimes we do not always celebrate. Especially in corporate where you are given such heavy targets and then the next quarter rolls around.
What if this quarter is not as good as the last one? You should definitely be celebrating. The personal branding exercise is really to reflect on what you need to work on next year or next quarter and what you should continue doing.
Because really, the brand is you. You are your own brand. You may have the big logo, but at the end of the day, who are you when you are not behind that logo? Stand on your own brand, especially if you are thinking of moving into your own business.
You definitely need your own branding. Even if you are simply moving into another leadership role, people look you up.They ask colleagues about you. They want to know who you are as a person. Standing behind the corporate brand is one thing.
Having your own personal brand means that when you move into another role or start your own business, you can stand on your own two feet.
The Identity Shift
The way you call yourself. For example, last time I went on another podcast and they introduced me as Shirley the entrepreneur.
Itthought of myself like a leadership coach and I was like, yeah, you know what, I am. You know, I own this company. It is like I am a founder. And yes, it goes back to that identity. This is actually what I teach. This is what I coach people. It is the authority shift. I was thinking more, the mindset and all of that. But it is actually what you call yourself, believing in yourself that I am not just the person in the leadership team. I have to do my own expenses. I have to fill it out.
There is no fancy system that I plug it in. It is such a big responsibility. It is not just the nice fancy stuff and not to mention that as a coach, you work globally. Like you might be in Australia yet you can be working in America. So, sometimes it is a 12 to 15-hour time difference. Fridayfor them can be you Saturday morning or late evening can be their early morning or vice versa. So yyou do have to be able to accommodate for that. So yes, this is a big identity shift for people coming out of corporate. The fact that they now have to do everything for their business. And it is not just the rose-coloured glasses of “I always want to coach and I am only going to coach.” There is the accounts to do, there is the marketing to do
The Reality of Running a Business
There are inquiries coming from other areas that are seven hours away and I cannot be so flat about it, you know, because they are paying customers. They want the best out of you, like hearing them out. You need to be alert, you know.
We could have also got so many different other stuff. You know, you have the plugins, all of that. None of this nice corporate single sign-on that I never knew I took for granted. Now it is so many different stuff that I have got to take care of. Well you can consider outsourcing or delagate some tasks for you like hiring a bookeeper to make sure your accounts are up to date or getting a password manage to make quick log ins. This was something that Caitriona Ford, who is a cyber security expert, has mentioned many and she is also a coach. It keeps your account safe and if you have a team, it can make the sharing easier and still safe at the same time. You can listen to Caitriona’s episode here:
Episode 085: What are the Real Cyber Risks For Small Businesses with Caitriona Forde
Advice for People Leaving Corporate
Reflect on what you enjoy doing and something that is really solving a problem. Because if it is not actually answering someone’s problem, then you cannot monetize that. And it is not a hobby anymore. You have to be commercially minded.
Be confident that you are actually providing something. You are solving something for someone. It is not about making a mistake. Do not look at it as a mistake but another learning. If you get hacked, now you know where the vulnerabilities are. Then you are learning from your mistake. If it does not work, then you learn from that and try something else.
So yes, the biggest advice is to really believe in yourself and go for it. And be resilient as well. If we ever come up against something that did not work out, you should learn to bounce from it. If you have had a really tough day, find something that you can reflect on that is a win and then build those up.
Links
Contacts
How to Turn Your Leadership Skills Into a Coaching Business.
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 356.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.
