Student Corner
By Leda Karabela, Cohort 7A
What do normal people usually do at 3 o’clock in the morning? And if they are not peacefully resigned into Morpheus’ arms at this wee hour, what do you think they might be up to?
Got ya! Those of you ardent coaching aficionados must have subconsciously started the analysis: Distortion, deletion, generalization or complex equivalence? And is there an ethical consideration here asking about people’s sleeping habits in the middle of the night?
But, let’s pause for a moment.
I’ve never been a night owl – so on September 14th, the first day of class for Cohort 7A, I wondered how I would stay awake. I am not in Dallas; I began this course in Greece with an eight hour time difference at a competitive disadvantage. The decision to dedicate a full year to training to be a coach was a cinch. I was determined; committed; passionate and thought I knew what I was doing.
Would I let a global recession and the security of a highly paid executive job get in my way?
Following my heart and instinct at this stage in my life became more compelling than my uncertainties. I researched options, looked into possibilities, spent hours on market demand, certification issues, methodologies, and even asked for virtual meetings with program directors to hear their approach. I concluded that UTD offered the best: a business focused accredited coach training program, high caliber faculty, and great reputation.
Deep diving into coaching proved fascinating. Undisciplined, contrarian, action-oriented and sleep-deprived while in class did not exactly paint the ideal scholar picture. But at the same time, these traits have made this a deliciously new and challenging experience. How to let go of my own biases, experiences, successes and core competencies and open up to the fresh, the different, the novel? Going through the stages of resistance to overcome these biases has proved fascinating. Learning comes slowly. While you resist, over time you gradually get drunk with the sweetness of tasting the new approaches. You talk to your friends, and you feel like you will never go back to the way you used to be. Your ears have grown to elf size, while your mouth has been sealed with an invisible tape that constrains your formerly quick and sharp tongue. It’s not easy.
But there is another element to all this: Opening up to possibilities also opens you up to new friends from class. A comment here, a virtual smile and nudge there and all of a sudden you are transported back in time, at your third grade desk. Somehow being alone in an empty classroom is not fun. The exchanges, the interactions and the off line collaborations make this interactivity stick so that information is processed and absorbed better and faster. In this era of digital social media, “friendships” have taken a whole new meaning. However, as we move on deeper into our coaching life, the support for thought lessons begin with the wonderful interactions with our fellow students. So, here’s to my new friends in Cohort 7A – you know who you are! And yes, I think I know what I am doing.
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Leda’s professional life packs over 20 years of corporate experience in management, public affairs, marketing, branding and strategic philanthropy. Her career focus has been building alliances with institutional stakeholders with primary emphasis on external audiences, such as opinion leaders, press, customers, and donors. Born in Greece, she studied law but decided against practicing. Instead she got her M.S. in Communication from Boston University, "connecting the dots" among people, products and ideas. While she has spent the last few years in Europe and the Middle East, working for BP, Microsoft and the largest food conglomerate in Greece, her career was mostly spent in the USA, and specifically Silicon Valley. She has worked with BP both in London and Athens, first as public affairs director and subsequently as Regional Brand Communications Manager responsible for corporate reputation and brand image campaigns in several developing regions such as Azerbaijan and Georgia. In the USA, she has worked with Stanford University, and during her position as Corporate Relations Director at the Stanford Business School, she worked with many dot.com companies and was also the Stanford Computer Industry Project Assistant Director. For the last couple of years she returned to Microsoft Middle East & Africa region to focus on cultivating relationships with the online/offline technical communities (user groups).