Today we’d like to introduce you to Susan M. Barber.
Susan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My corporate career experience started out with entry level Sales and Supply Chain roles in Atlanta and ended up moving into Program and Information Technology leadership roles in Chicago. I am the exception in comparison to most people today having stayed at one company for over 26 years. I worked at a global consumer goods organization with a great culture that offered a lot of opportunities for me. I moved into so many different types of roles and had so many valuable experiences, that it worked out well for me.
I spent more than half of my career in IT. Although I wasn’t a traditional IT person by education, I realized that I had an affinity for it. I was able to quickly pick up the terminology, the logic of systems and how they all worked together. Leveraging my business, operations and customer service experience really helped me when I moved into IT. I loved the fast pace of IT and all the innovative things we were doing that were making a big difference for our business. One of the best things about our IT function was the focus that is placed on leadership development. We designed some really creative programs and groups that made such a difference in elevating our leadership. My legacy will always be the enterprise group I founded with some great women leaders in our company. We successfully built an award-winning program for the company focused on helping women at all locations grow their leadership, preparing themselves for new opportunities and creating advocacy throughout the organization to support them.
My involvement with these leadership programs, made me realize that I wanted to focus on leadership development and coaching in my next career move. I completed a coaching program at night while I was still working and got my certification. I began creating some courses through a local university and facilitating leadership development workshops to some of their corporate clients as well as coaching individuals. As part of a merger my company was going through, I decided to leave the corporate world and begin the new adventure of starting my own business focused on coaching and leadership development in 2015. Although this transition has been an adjustment for me, I have found the most supportive people in the coaching area who have made it easier. I have learned so much about starting a business, marketing yourself and staying focused. I am able to spend more time with my family now and I get to work with people that inspire me every day.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There have been more than a few struggles, but I will share three of them. The first was finding ways to establish credibility for me in this new role. I had been at my former company so long that I needed to do some things to help people see me differently and to start establishing myself as a thought leader in this new space. In the past, I had credibility simply because I said that I worked for this big company, but now I needed to establish it for myself. I started writing a blog every weekday, publishing articles on LinkedIn and being a guest on podcasts to help accomplish that goal.
Learning how to market and sell the services of my company to others has been an adjustment as well. I needed to figure out how to do it in the best way for my business. I have found some great people who are more established that have been sharing some of their experiences and what they do to market themselves. It comes down to finding a way to build a connection with people. In the world of social media we have a lot of connections and friends, but to really take the time to get to know another person is what has made a difference for me. We can share information, connections, and resources to help each other.
Being able to focus on the right things has also been more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I need to plan and work on my priorities every day. Being an IT person, I found ways to automate things and leverage technology wherever possible. Having all of these tools seemed like a good idea when I first started, but as I learned more, I found I needed to get rid of some of them and simplify. I also decided that it was time to outsource some of the work that I could do, but that someone else could do for me instead. I have found a great virtual assistant who has been a coach before and knows technology to help keep me on track and assist me in accomplishing more in my day. This helps me focus on what I need to get done and allows me to spend more time working with my clients.
Please tell us about Susan M Barber Coaching & Consulting.
Our company is passionate about seeing leaders create breakthrough results. We focus on helping business leaders build the capabilities they need to lead themselves and their teams as they go through major transformations and change. We start off by assessing the client or team to understand what types of challenges that they are facing in order to create the right program to deliver the best outcome. In addition, we may leverage one of the following assessments including DISC, Motivators, Hogan Core or Hogan 360s to reveal blind spots, perceptions, natural/adapted styles, strengths and opportunities of the individuals and the team as a whole.
We offer a full package of leadership development, coaching and many years of business, operations, sales and IT experience to our clients. For our corporate clients, we create customized Powerful Leadership programs that successfully deliver the results that our clients need. We leverage coaching to reinforce the learnings and we align the work we do with our client’s business needs. We utilize our many years of business experience and a strong network of partners to provide additional value and experiences for our clients.
We also offer individual and group coaching to our clients. One on one coaching is focused on the individual and the results that they want to reach. Many of our one on one clients have continued to have on-going coaching relationships with us. Group coaching sessions are also successfully used to bring groups together to learn about specific leadership topics. These sessions create some dynamic discussions and also help the group learn from each other.
We are most proud of the relationships that we have built with our clients. All of our corporate clients have remained with us and continue to leverage our experience and knowledge to help them build the capabilities of their teams as business needs change.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
There were times during my time in corporate that I played too small. I believed other people’s opinions of me instead of believing in myself. If I had it to do over again, I would have found an executive coach sooner. She truly helped me get through some tough times and believe in myself again.
What I learned is that when you believe in yourself, what others say about you doesn’t matter. You know you are doing the right thing and you just keep doing it no matter what.
I have always believed that things happen for a reason and I had to go through those experiences to be able to learn from them. I know that those experiences were also what put me on the path to becoming a coach. Becoming a coach has made such a difference in my life and now I get to help others as they go through their own challenges.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://susanmbarber.com/
- Phone: 847-736-1984
- Email: susan@susanmbarber.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susanmbarber29/
- Facebook: https://business.facebook.com/susanbarbercoaching
- Twitter: : https://twitter.com/SusanMBarber
- Other: www.linkedin.com/in/susanbarbercoaching
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
