Do any of the executives at your company feel they’re at a career crossroads? Or looking for promotion? They’re finding a colleague or boss tricky to deal with, maybe they’ve lost their passion for work or the business. Do they feel the need to grow and invest in themselves? These are the kind of scenarios that Crescendo Coaching helps people with.

Crescendo Coaching is on a mission to support and enable executives to reach their goals, specialising in coaching senior people who are already doing a great job. Just as elite sportspeople seek out top coaches to accelerate their performance, a great CEO (or any of his or her directors) needs a coach alongside to help them to achieve the optimum results, to challenge, reassure and sometimes to push them.

Coaching looks to the future, giving time and space to explore what executives are looking for and to help them to get there. Through coaching, my clients focus on working out the most effective actions to take, on accelerating their careers, businesses and relationships. It’s action-centred.

Business and career development coaching is for anyone from the CEO to the aspiring Marketing Executive.

Because it is tailored to the individual, every coaching programme looks different, bespoke to whatever the need. With Crescendo they can sign up for a one-off session; a series of six; or monthly, quarterly or annual check-ins.

Are you at a certain level in your organisation and champing at the bit to move up, Head of Marketing to Marketing Director or VP Marketing to CMO?

Making this leap can be confusing: you feel you’re there, yet you’re told “you’re not ready” or you apply for a job at the new, desired level and are told, “we’re looking for the finished article”. But no one articulates what this looks like so how do you know what to do to be ready? There’s no enigma and there is no magic key. It is never about one thing.

I have worked with a number of people who are looking to make a step change in their career journey, helping them to recognise and develop the full set of skills CEOs expect to see in their senior executives.

In just six coaching sessions, I will help you to grow into the CMO or the Marketing Director that you want to be, ensuring that others see you in the right light, that you’re invited to the right meetings and that others in the business are behind your promotion. This programme demands an open mind and a commitment to work hard to effect this change because, ultimately, only you can do it.

The first 90 days in any new job can be daunting – information overload, new faces to meet, new systems and processes to learn. You’re often champing at the bit to make changes and put your stamp on the business that has invited you in to impact sales, marketing, finance, HR, whatever your area of expertise.

Many interview processes ask you to present on what you would do in your first 90 days with the company but how many offer you support in the way of executive coaching as you settle in?

It’s an important time – you need to adjust and you want to prove that you’re the perfect hire, it’s the ideal time to ask all the questions you have. You want to achieve all this, however, while building new relationships and understanding a new business. It’s a lot to ask of yourself and so there are many opportunities for it to go horribly wrong.

I have designed a coaching programme that sets the scene for success and gives you, the successful candidate, the optimum conditions to really shine and settle in to a new business and to fly high.

The programme consists of six coaching sessions and will address your agenda and your particular needs, concerns and challenges. It will also cover effective operating at C suite, building great business relationships, leading a new team and peer to peer networking.

There are 1.44m people seeking work in the UK right now and the number of job vacancies is still falling. It’s one of life’s ironies that marketing has always been one of the first departments to feel cuts when revenues are down so if you are currently in the market for a great marketing job, you’ve got to be at the very top of your game…at a time when you probably feel the opposite.

I have developed a coaching programme to help senior marketing professionals navigate the job market, create the best CV and LinkedIn profile, write great covering letters, prepare for interviews and find their way to landing a great job. Better still, the immediate cost is a modest £100, you pay the rest out of your first month’s salary.

Many people find, when they are looking for work, that something is working against them, beyond the obvious of a less than optimum CV or covering letter. It might be how they present, a nervous habit they’re unaware of, they’re not coming across as strongly as they might or any number of other reasons.

The programme explores what your blockers might be and coaches you through them, as well as providing very practical application and CV support, presentation practice and interview help. If this sounds like something you would benefit from, get in touch now – the sooner we start, the sooner you land that next great job.

Some of the most interesting feedback I receive from my coachees is about their heightened self-awareness, insights into their own behaviours and its impact in the workplace. I am a qualified practitioner for the Thomas PPA psychometric test.

The PPA is a forced-choice questionnaire, which takes about 8 minutes to complete, and where you are shown short statements and asked to choose two trait adjectives from a list of four, one ‘most like’ and one ‘least like’ you. An individual’s choice of adjectives reflects their behavioural tendencies and personality in a workplace setting.

From this, a personal profile is created around four traits, which are ranked, in order, to form one’s unique character. The instrument is based on Marston’s DISC theory which classifies an individual’s behavioural preferences and splits them into four factors: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S) and Compliance (C).

While most people will show all four of these behaviour patterns at times, an individual will display one or more of them consistently in the workplace. This is because we all develop a behavioural style which places more emphasis on one preference and less emphasis on others.

The PPA provides a comprehensive assessment of an individual including their fears, motivators, values and behavioural style. It gives you insights into how you’re likely to perform under pressure, how you modify your behaviour in your current job and any frustrations or problems you may be facing. It also improves people management through a greater understanding of why people behave the way they do.

For more information see https://www.thomas.co/assessments/personal-profile-analysis-ppa and contact me for your link and to book in a debrief.

Ask any number of colleagues and friends, and a large proportion will say their job or career is more important than a car or a holiday. They’d rather enjoy a satisfying, fulfilling and rewarding career year-round than a great two weeks in the Maldives. Yet, we spend £3,000 or £4,000 each on that great two weeks and neglect to invest anything in our careers year after year.

Whatever car you drive, classic or otherwise and even if you own it outright, keeping it on the road involves insurance (ugh), servicing, a budget for tyres and other ‘consumables’ like fuel, toll charges and cleaning (if, like me, you’d rather go to a car wash than do it yourself).

Whether your career is motoring, cruising, bumping along or stalled, consider investing £2000 per year to benefit from a monthly hour-long coaching session – pay just £200/month Jan to Oct (or whichever month you start in), a bit like your Council Tax and get Nov and Dec free.

Your ROI will be time and space to think, greater self-awareness, a more thoughtful and planned career path, improved working relationships, greater fulfilment and much more. Get in touch for more details and a free half hour chemistry chat.

I don’t have a Buckler but I do live in Crowthorne, where these classic cars were built.