Welcome
About Us
Are you ready to have a powerful conversation
Working with a coach is an incredible and powerful tool that helps create a more productive and engaging work environment and increase your salary.
The benefits of coaching are profound both personally and professionally, for both individuals and teams.
In a recent study of over 42,000 people, Talent Source compared their scores to their annual incomes. "We found that people with high levels of specific work skills make an average of $29,000 per year more than people who exhibit other specific work skills. On average, every point increase in the scale used added $1,300 to an annual salary."
A 2020 LinkedIn Survey using data from their network of over 660+ million professionals and 20+ million jobs to reveal the 15 most in-demand soft and hard skills. More specifically, they looked at the skills that are in the highest demand (based on hiring rate) relative to the supply of people who have those skills. These are global rankings, but we only included cities with 100,000 LinkedIn members or more. Creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and emotional intelligence topped the list.
In the high-stakes and rapidly innovating financial services industry, the need for coaching is high. However, many coaching engagements don't succeed in financial services where there is a high demand for production and growth. Some coaches come in with an approach that is just too soft of a touch for hard charging, data-driven financial executives. Financial services professionals are skilled at getting information from all relevant sources not limited to financial statements.
Some coaches lack the industry expertise required to understand the complex business problems facing their clients. Some coaches have never been responsible for complying with the laws, government regulations and standards of a highly regulated businesses like financial services, so they just don't get what those pressures are like. Through all this, account managers are responsible for establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships with their clients and maintaining and growing them over time.
One crucial way coaching helps individuals is by helping them to see themselves more clearly. A coach provides space and structure for the reflection that is necessary for learning and growth. They help you understand what your values are and where your actions diverge from your values or stated goals.
At ROE, my coaching philosophy is rooted in nurturing the potential already in people, because I believe in what is uniquely human in each of us—finding ways to foster an environment where each person can be their absolute best.
A good coach can help you reconnect with what you love about your life and your work.
Contrary to the classical understanding that pressure is necessary for peak performance, we now know that high pressure actually makes individuals less efficient.
Mental fitness, on the other hand, is associated with an increase in productivity, collaboration, innovation, and job satisfaction.
Reasons why individuals may seek out a career coach
"The Skills Gap"
Employees don’t have the work skills they need, and they know it.
Employees don’t have the work skills they need, and they know it.
The ‘skills gap’ is the phrase used to describe the difference between the skills that employers want, as shown by their job advertisements, and skills available from workers looking for a job.
In a recent study by Rios et al. The four most in-demand 21st-century skills were oral and written communication, problem solving and collaboration.
The Rios study investigated skill demand based on direct communication from employers to potential employees via job advertisements.
Employees don’t have the work skills they need, and they know it.
Employees don’t have the work skills they need, and they know it.
Employees don’t have the work skills they need, and they know it.
Academic research has found that people tend to build these "soft skills" of mental fitness in a certain order.
Building these core skills sets the foundation for deeper, more nuanced competencies.
How do your career skills present to employers?
Are you making yourself attractive to employers?
Are you making yourself attractive to employers?
In a Udemy study, 54% of employees report that they do not already know everything they need to know to do their current jobs.
Moreover, about one third of employees report that a lack of skills held them back from making more money;
A third also report that inadequate skills caused them to miss a promotion or to not get a job.
Employees are starting to realize that the remedy to their skills gap might just be in their own hands.
Are you making yourself attractive to employers?
Are you making yourself attractive to employers?
Are you making yourself attractive to employers?
Individual coaching helps address the whole person by providing meaningful development on topics like communication,
collaborating and leading remotely, inclusive leadership, and
well-being.
Common problems that lead people to seek coaching
You Want a Good Start in a New Role
Your Employer has Identified You as “High-Potential”
You Want a Good Start in a New Role
People can get a new job by joining a new organization or by making a move within an organization (e.g., as a promotion or lateral move). Either way, a fast start in the first weeks and months in a new role can be critical to long-term success. A career coach can help clarify and track goals for the first 100 days, navigate relationships with new colleagues, and identify skills needed to pick up to succeed in the new role. Hiring a career coach at the start of a new role can be a smart, well-timed investment.
You Want to Find a New Role
Your Employer has Identified You as “High-Potential”
You Want a Good Start in a New Role
Career advancement often means getting a promotion or new role with your current employer or finding a new employer. Either way, a career coach can be particularly helpful in securing a new role. Coaches can help clients clarify goals and target jobs. They can also help clients put their best foot forward in applying and interviewing for new jobs. That can include reviewing your resume to doing practice job interviews with you.
Your Employer has Identified You as “High-Potential”
Your Employer has Identified You as “High-Potential”
Your Employer has Identified You as “Needs Improvement”
Some employers identify employees with the highest potential as future leaders in the company and target them for investments in their development as leaders. This identification process can often be synchronized with performance assessment cycles. These investments often take the form of training programs and career coaching. Many times, training and coaching are offered as a pair to get the biggest impact in learning and applying new skills. Employers may have a set of executive coaches for their employees to choose from, or they may reimburse coaching fees paid to a coach the employee finds.
Your Employer has Identified You as “Needs Improvement”
Your Employer has Identified You as “Needs Improvement”
Your Employer has Identified You as “Needs Improvement”
Employers will sometimes offer coaching to employees who have been rated as needing improvement in their current roles. Coaching may be part of a spectrum of services employers offer to employees who are not meeting the expectations of their job to give them the best chance of an improvement in performance. In this case, the HR/People department often finds and pays for the coach to work with the employee.
You Need to Fix a Challenging Work Relationship
Your Employer has Identified You as “Needs Improvement”
You Need to Fix a Challenging Work Relationship
People often seek a coach to help them work through problems they are having with a difficult relationship at work. These difficult relationships can be with a manager, direct reports, colleagues, or even with customers or other external parties. Coaches can help work through problematic relationships by helping identify points of conflict, role playing to prepare for difficult conversations, and identifying tactics and strategies to solve underlying problems.
You are Facing a New Opportunity / Challenge
Your Employer has Identified You as “Needs Improvement”
You Need to Fix a Challenging Work Relationship
Sometimes people seek a coach when a big problem or opportunity presents itself at work and they want help to make sure they handle it as best they can. For business owners, this can be when new competitors, partners, or investors (e.g., private equity firms). For individuals, this can be when executive recruiters call. For executives, this can come during regular strategic planning processes. In these situations, clients often look for coaches with specific expertise in the industry or function they are in to get targeted help.
You Want to Fill a Skill/Behavioral Gap
You Want to Fill a Skill/Behavioral Gap
You Want to Fill a Skill/Behavioral Gap
Some people proactively target themselves for self-improvement and get an executive coach to help. Maybe they have seen the benefit of having a coach to help them in another area (e.g., golf game, physical fitness, financial planning) and decide to try it at work. Sometimes their boss has told them they could benefit by improving in some area. Sometimes they have self-identified their needs. Common areas that people ask me to help with are to improve their “executive presence,” to help them prioritize and manage their time more efficiently, and to get to a more sustainable work/life balance. Experienced coaches often have a set of proven tools and frameworks to aid clients with these common problems.
Meet Carolyn Ashby
Mindset coach for financial services account managers.
As a 25 + year student of business and people, I have come to believe that when we focus on people, good things happen for business.
Carolyn is uniquely qualified as a mindset and career coach for financial services account managers. As a former commercial loan officer at several of the largest U.S. banks, including JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo and Company bank, she understands what it is like to lead a team and be responsible for a P&L in the financial services industry.
With a Ph.D. in Creative Leadership for Innovation and Change and a Certificate in Creative Change Leadership, she gets the science behind human behavior. As a Marquette MBA in Finance, she gets the technical part of the financial world. And, as an instructor in Finance at Grand Canyon University she guides the next generation through the complex strategic issues in the ever-changing financial services industry.
Carolyn approaches coaching by helping the client identify their goals and then employing the right information, tools, and techniques to achieve those goals.
Carolyn helps ambitious executives in the financial services industry find a competitive edge by improving key workplace skills:
Academic Degrees:
Ph.D. (Creative Leadership for Innovation & Change), University of the Virgin Islands, 2021
Certificate. (Creativity and Change Leadership) SUNY College at Buffalo, 2019
M.B.A. (Finance), Marquette University, 1994
B.S. (Accounting), Cardinal Stritch University, 1992
B.A. (Geography), Wilfrid Laurier University, 1982
Employment History:
JP Morgan Chase & Company
Wells Fargo & Company
Comerica Bank
National Bank of Arizona
Meridian Bank
M& I Marshall & Illsley
Banco Popular de Puerto Rico
coaching components
Behavioral Assessments:
The Proscan ® assessment is a survey instrument, which is comprised of 60 strategically selected self-descriptive adjectives, with the purpose of measuring important behavioral traits that are possessed in different amounts by every individual. The report shares how individuals demonstrate specific behaviors, identifies development opportunities, and measures their effectiveness after the program.
Individual Coaching Sessions:
Individual coaching offers the opportunity for personalized assistance in interpreting assessment results, provides an opportunity to dive deeper into personal issues, tends to be better for the execution of ideas, is more flexible, and promotes a higher level of comfort as there is less fear of peer judgement. This allows for the creation of an individual development plan, focusing on goals, and refining participants’ personal vision
The Coaching Process
In addition to earning more money, expert coaching can have profound impact on individuals in their personal and professional lives. and continues to pay dividends over the years, from role to role, over the course of a career and a lifetime.
Not many corporate benefits or training programs can make that claim.
Understand what makes you uniquely you.
What you know.
How you hold what you know, and
How it affects what you do
Coaching Agreement
Every client is different, but a typical coaching engagement with you may look like this:
1. Establish and Maintain Coaching Agreement - Partners with the client and relevant stakeholders to create clear agreements about the coaching relationship, process, plans and goals. Establishes agreements for the overall coaching engagement as well as those for each coaching session. Reaches agreement about the guidelines and specific parameters of the coaching relationship such as logistics, fees, scheduling, duration, termination, confidentiality and inclusion of others.
2. Gather Baseline Information - Partners with the client to define what the client believes they need to address or resolve to achieve what they want to accomplish in the sessions. Partners with the client to define or reconfirm measures of success for what the client wants to accomplish in the coaching engagement. Partners with the client to create a safe, supportive environment that allows the client to share freely.
3. Identify Opportunities for Improvement -Summarizes what the client communicated to ensure clarity and understanding. Focuses on what the client is and is not saying to fully understand what is being communicated. Recognizes and inquires when there is more to what the client is communicating. Supports the client in re framing perspectives.
Works with the client to integrate awareness and learned insight into their behaviors.
4. Coaching Sessions - We meet initially for 2-3 hours to establish our baseline and get to know each other's styles. We can then meet for an hour, every other week, over a phone or video call. Carolyn uses a conversational technique called Appreciative Inquiry to guide the conversation to help you explore and identify potential and alternative solutions to your problems and opportunities. Carolyn’s process builds focus and accountability through personal goal tracking, handpicked resources mapped with those goals, and nudges to keep users on track and notify them of other learning opportunities. Each session ends with you identifying a few next steps you want to focus on doing before the next meeting.
5. Track Progress to Build Accountability - Each session starts by reviewing the progress on the next steps from previous sessions. Track progress and compare your skills to industry benchmarks with metrics that combine key behaviors and mindsets that research suggests are the strongest predictors of positive business outcomes, belonging, and inclusion.
6. Review and Assess - At the end of the three or six months, Carolyn prepares a short summary of the results and reviews with you.
7. Next Steps - At the end of six months, we decide whether we want to start a new engagement immediately or take a break.
Provide Ad Hoc Support as Needed - During our engagement, Carolyn can also help you by playing other roles too during our sessions. She can be a sounding board for new ideas. She can role-play to prepare you for a critical conversation or a big meeting. She can help with time management and communication skills. She can curate training and reading for you. At times, where appropriate, Carolyn can also provide technical advice to you in areas where she has experience and expertise. If needed, Carolyn can also provide facilitation as a separate engagement.
References
Alimujiang, A., Wiensch, A., & Boss, J. (2019). Association between Life Purpose and Mortality among adults older than 50 years. JAMA, AMA New Open. 2019;2(5):e194270. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.4270.
Department of Labor. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.doleta.gov/programs/onet/eta_default.cfm
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
International Labour Organization. (2017b). Global Employment Trends for Youth 2017: Paths to a better working future. Geneva.
Ryff, C., Singer, B., & Love, G. (2004). Positive Health: Connecting well-being with biology. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, https://dx.doi.org/10.1098%2Frstb.2004.1521.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. (1990). Emotional Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.2190%2FDUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG
2019/2020 Skills Gap Report: Home - Udemy Research
Research and Development Division Professional DynaMetric Programs, Inc. Psychometric and Statistical Evolution of the ProScan® Survey By: Lauren Matheny, PhDc, MPH. University of Northern Colorado July 2019
LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2022. The Transformation of L&D Learning leads the way through the Great Reshuffle
2020 International Coaching Federation. This is a summary of the findings from the 2020 ICF Global Coaching Study. The study was commissioned in 2019 by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Executive Summary: 2013 ICF Organizational Coaching Study (Lexington: International Coach Federation, 2013), 13–14.
Josh Bersin and David Mallon, The Enterprise Learning Framework: A Modern Approach to Corporate Training (Oakland: Bersin & Associates, 2009), 24.
Carol Kauffman and Diane Coutu, “What Can Coaches Do For You?” Harvard Business Review Research Report: The Realities of Executive Coaching (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009), 27.
David B. Peterson, “Does Your Coach Give You Value for Your Money?” Harvard Business Review Research Report: The Realities of Executive Coaching, 29.
https://www.linkedin.com/business/learning/blog/learning-and-development/most-in-demand-skills-2020