Working with an executive coach - Rebecca’s personal branding experience
Rebecca Siler is an executive coach, working with high-level executives who are burned out and stressed in their careers. Her clients tend to struggle with perfectionism and a difficulty delegating, traits which have brought them immense success, but aren’t working for them any more.
As she is seriously launching her coaching business, Rebecca wanted photos that felt like her, and not just the regular branding photos that feel stiff and look awkward. In this conversation, we discuss Rebecca’s career path, and how we worked together to get her the photos she really wanted.
I’ve summarized the conversation in this blog post. The full video is at the end of this post.
What drew you to coaching? What kind of coaching do you do?
When Rebecca’s clients first come to her, they’re often stressed and burned out, with a defeated attitude.
I got into coaching by largely following my curiosity. A lot of coaches will help you do strategic work for your business or career. But I’m much more about supporting you coming to the answers that you already have, and are just having trouble accessing.
My clients are often very passionate about the work they do and very good at it. But they’re in a place where they’re cringing and tight and worried about the next step they’re going to take. I get to coach them into more ease so they can make their own decisions about what to do next.
Rebecca tailors her approach to each client.
My approach is tailored to every single person, but overall, it’s about finding ways to help them be consistently relaxed in their body. That might be through breath work, releasing anger, and emotional clearing. What they have at the end of their time working with me, is the ability to experience calm and ease throughout their day.
This is important for my clients because the alternative is burnout. It’s ok to be stressed from time to time, but living constantly in that state leads to your body becoming frayed. In the long term, you can either learn to relax your body, or you can run yourself ragged, crash and burn.
My clients come to me recognizing that they need support to address their stress so they can continue doing the things they love, be more effective and clarify what exactly they want in their next career step.
Why is this anger work you do with your clients so important?
Women in particular are often taught that anger is something we’re not supposed to express. Anger is a dangerous thing, it’s bad, period.
I believe that there are healthy and unhealthy ways of expressing anger. When you’re not directing your anger at someone, just releasing it for yourself, your anger gets to be expressed and it’s really powerful.
Growing up, I bought into the stereotypes of what a good girl is supposed to be, or the stereotype that redheads have a short fuse. I took pride in the idea that I have no fuse at all, there’s no anger.
In practice, I was simply stuffing it all down and building resentment. Letting go of the anger helps me build capacity to recognize when I want or don’t want to do something, and the ability to offer a ‘No’ lovingly.
Releasing anger in non-harmful ways, such as punching a pillow, is a tool that Rebecca might use with her clients.
Anger release helps us recognize why we’re doing certain things. You recognize that when you say yes to the wrong things or no to the right things, it simply doesn’t work in the long term.
Why was it important for you to have photos that are a bit different from the norm?
Whenever someone pulls out a camera, I immediately go stiff. I start thinking about how I’m supposed to be presenting? Am I smiling too big? Not smiling enough? Am I slouching? Oh God is that curry stain on my shirt going to be in the photo?
“I wanted my [photo] session to reflect the experience of working with me.”
That’s the exact opposite of what my clients experience when they’re working with me. The whole point of my work is to pull them out of their heads and into their bodies so they can be more present.
I needed my photo experience to be like that, to reflect the experience of working with me.
I also want my clients to be able to see the invitation, not only to work with me, but also to feel more spacious in their own lives; like there’s more space to breathe and take care of themselves. I wanted them to get a visual impression of what working with me is like.
Let’s talk a little bit about the process leading up to the photo shoot. What was that like for you?
I got to go with your free workshop where I created the first version of my mood board. I remember the prompt from you that I could add anything that was inspiring to me, and in my case it was largely people who were so joyful. Specifically, I was drawn to people showing true laughter, gorgeous beaming and delighted smiles, not just the perfect pretty smiles.
Rebecca’s mood board was full of people with joyful smiles, movement and flow. “Genuine” came through as a deep and important value that she sought in her photos and brand.
That process brought me clarity in terms of the genuineness I wanted in the photos. I didn’t want all of them featuring me beaming brightly, but there was that genuine component to each one that I appreciated.
After that, we had a long conversation where you asked me in-depth questions about my business; who my clients were and how they experienced me. That was really helpful because I’ve never had that kind of conversation before.
I’ve been wanting to build out my website for a while, but I was getting in my head about what I was supposed to say and how it’s supposed to flow. You invited me to do the photo shoot first, embody everything I want to create for my clients and then tell that on my website. That sounded exactly like the experience I want my clients to have!
At the end of our conversation, I realized that what you were asking me to to do is to just show up with a level of consideration for what I want, instead of performing for the camera. I felt the same spaciousness, invitation and warmth from you that I want my clients to feel from me.
Let’s talk about the day of the session itself. Were there any worries or concerns that you had to deal with as it approached?
The professional makeup session before the shoot helped Rebecca with her nerves.
Oh yeah, I was pretty frazzled, because I felt like this was THE THING that everything else about my public presentation hinged upon. I’m very good at making things large in my head - that’s my perfectionism at play.
There were points that I felt stressed, but through conversations with you I’d feel more comfortable and at ease again, I’d be able to right-size the experience once more.
Clothing was a source of stress for me. I wanted to find clothes that not only looked good in photos but felt good to me to wear. I got to show you the clothes, but ultimately, the things I wore were things I felt good in.
You also recommended this wonderful makeup artist who helped talk me out of my nerves before the photo shoot started. She gave me this extra element of feeling supported, listening to me and supporting me in creating my vision.
How did the actual session go for you once it started?
We started with me dancing, which instantly helped me get those nerves out and settle into my body. Everything else felt easier after that. In coaching, you can only take clients as deep as you are willing to go yourself. There were moments that you asked about what something would feel like for my client. Because I’ve been willing to deepen those emotions in my own work for myself, it was easy to pull them up for the shoot and express them as appropriate in that context.
During the shoot, Rebecca got to throw an actual tantrum on the floor …
The most fun I’ve ever had during a photo shoot was when I got to throw an actual tantrum on the floor, flailing and just getting all this anger out. It felt so good and so real! I loved those photos, and the photos where I’m sitting up against a wall like, alright, that happened.
… and then she got to relax and process the experience of throwing the tantrum, just like her clients get to do.
What was it like to see your photos?
My typical reaction when I see a photo of myself is, “Oh God, I don’t know about that!” So often it can be weeks or even months before I can be okay with a photo of myself.
When Rebecca saw this photo, her first thought was that this was the look her little brother had to grow up with!
But in this case, when I got to see the photos at the reveal session, I didn’t have that reaction at all! I felt genuine delight in what I was seeing, because the photos actually mirrored what I was feeling in those moments. It felt like everything we’ve talked about had actually come to fruition. I trusted your skill, but I don’t know if I necessarily trusted myself. I was really thrilled with it because it felt like I was seeing what was genuinely like that day.
I love the photos of me dancing at the beginning of the shoot. I also really enjoyed the anger ones, particularly the one where I have my face buried in the pillow and looking up. I immediately thought of my little brother, “Ohhhh, that’s the look he grew up seeing!” That’s a really powerful part of me that I’d have been completely embarrassed to show anyone even a couple of years ago. I also love the tantrum pictures on the floor.
There was one set of photos that stood out for me. You had an assistant during the shoot. When you asked her to move something, I’d sometimes do it instead, because, I was closer to it and all that. She challenged me at one point, observing that I might not be good at receiving help. Maybe this would be an opportunity for me to practice receiving, just like my clients receive from me. So that resulted in a set of photos where I’m processing that and going, “Dammit, she’s right!”
When my assistant pointed out that Rebecca might have a challenge with accepting help herself, Rebecca had to take a moment to process and accept that, which resulted in some unexpected and genuine emotions reflecting something her clients also frequently experience in their sessions with her.
I loved that there were so many such moments captured that I simply couldn’t have planned for.
Would you recommend this experience to a friend? What would you tell them?
Yes, there’s an undeniable 10 out of 10, actually more like 1000 out of 10!
I really love your process.
My worry was that in working with a photographer we’d have a quick conversation, and then capture photos of me feeling stiff and uncomfortable, which would leave me deeply unsatisfied. Then I’d repeat that with multiple photographers, wasting time and money.
But in your process, there were several clear steps. The mood board helped me gain clarity in terms of the core of what I wanted from my business and my photos. From there, we had explicit conversations about what we wanted the look and feel to be. By the time we got to the session, we had already built the trust and connection in terms of what the outcomes and story should be.
You were really good at creating ease through the whole shoot; prompting me, asking questions, capturing me as I was sharing my responses, putting on music when I needed to dance. I was feeling all the emotions that come up as I work with clients, which is where you see the genuineness in the photos.
You were good for both the technical as well as emotional support. I would absolutely recommend it.
