With her new responsibilities came a new title and more money. Wessel credits much of her success to her career coach. When I went to a career coach I was, for lack of a better word, pretty desperate. I was very unhappy with what I was doing. Wessel says her coach Ruth Ledesma helped her realize what she really wanted to do, and develop a plan to get there.
Professional coaches are the hottest thing in business.
Many Fortune 500 companies and top executives use them, but few want to talk about it. Ledesma says executive coaches are part career counselor, part boss, part consultant, and part therapist. She encourages her clients to toot their own horn in order to get promotions. There is the thing that I call a brag file. When you get commendations from customers or from supervisors or co-workers, you can put it in that file.