Getting a Coaching on “Self-Doubt in Career” from Melissa Whiting

Recently I saw Melissa Whiting’s post in Linkedin, she was stating that there was a limited number of coaching places available to work with her. This coaching opportunity was for those who feel self-doubt is holding them back in their career, creativity, life or relationships. Melissa Whiting worked in Philip Morris International for more than 20 years and she was Vice President, Inclusion & Diversity (from Jan 2017 to Oct 2021) in her last assignment. Now she is a leadership, career and life coach, mentor, and gender equity & inclusion consultant. Upon seeing her post about coaching, I sent her a direct message and asked her availability. I was lucky and she accepted me.

This post by Melissa Whiting started the fire

Why did I ask for Coaching?

As Melissa mentioned in her post, the target group for this coaching offer was people who think that self-doubt is holding them back in their career. Am I one of those people? Maybe not a hundred percent but somehow yes. This is something related with my ambition towards a global role with wider responsibility outside of my country Turkey. Until now, I had the chance to work in global companies: PwC, General Motors and Philip Morris. When I was making a move to Philip Morris in 2013, I was expecting to have an international job opportunity, short term assignment (STA) or long term assignment (LTA). Unfortunately things did not go in line with my expectations since my experience was mainly based on statutory tax legislation in Turkey. Then I worked hard to learn more about transfer pricing, independent audit and financial reporting standards which will make me a candidate for positions in HQ which is located in Switzerland. I had dreams that my son would grow in a foreign company, learn foreign language (hopefully English) in childhood and we would have social network in which we could experience new cultures. While I was focused on my growth and making myself ready for the opportunities, the company’s strategy changed and the number of STA/LTA openings decreased. Despite this fall, there were still some opportunities and they were open in internal job postings site.

I know the direction I want to go but I can't go to that direction

I set up a reminder in 2016 and this was reminding me to check the job postings every Friday at 9:00 am. At first, I was only applying to Finance roles. Since there was no positive turn back to my applications, I enlarged the criteria while making applications, this time I did not limit myself with only Finance but also External Affairs and Global Communications roles in Europe. I stated my interest in yearly performance forms and meetings, but I even could not have an interview opportunity.

During this period, I got grades, moved to a different city and started to work with great people. I am on my own individual career journey, I am happy with what I have got but my interest in a global role in a foreign country is always a challenge for me that I want to experience. I am happy in my company PMI, and I find a meaning in it during the transformation journey of my company towards unsmoking the world. On the other hand, as I could not receive a call for an interview in the jobs I applied, this created a self doubt in my career. I was not receiving proper feedback after my applications, there was only generic mails so I invested more in myself. This situation led me to life-long-learning mentality. I spent more time for learning, receiving certifications, completing training programs. In order to increase my visibility, I shared more in social media, created blogs, youtube channel to show my progress, shared them in intranet site of my company but it did not work out. I changed the format of my CV, even got a training on CV update, added keywords, created job specific intention letters. Unfortunately, result did not change. Then I found myself caught up in comparison and judgment.  I have developed beliefs which were developed over time through the combination of my experiences, messages from others and societal and cultural conditioning. I even thought that being a non-EU citizen is a barrier for me (like additional workload to get work permit, etc.) which prevents me to reach the opportunities abroad. All these made me lose my confidence in myself. This was my main driver while I was asking Melissa for coaching. 

I believe in PMI's smoke-free future vision and I work towards it

What Melissa Made me to Discover

On the day of our coaching session, I was extremely excited. As I am not used to one-to-one meetings with VPs, the meeting made me feel “excitement”. I shared this feeling with Melissa in the opening of the call and she told that she was no more a VP to make me calm. I told her about my ambition, my efforts towards reaching my ambition and how it made me feel after all these applications. I called my current mood as “self-doubt in career”. This was not a doubt in my current role but a doubt in the way towards my dream job. I know that coaching starts with a goal and my goal was having confidence in myself within my career journey so that I can have a global role in a foreign country.

Melissa asked me some key questions to gain clarity about my goal. Within the coaching session and after that session, I am thinking about my answers to these questions. The main questions are:

• Why is this goal important for me?
• What can I control for achieving my goal?
• How can I still grow without thinking about my goal?

These are all great questions that made me think deep. During the coaching session, the most powerful recommendation was accepting that I can’t control what the company decides. I recently read from an article in Forbes stating that “We often want to control our environment. Or we may want control over the outcome of every situation. But the more you try to control everything around you, the more anxious you’ll feel.“ (2 Psychological Tricks That Will Help You Stop Worrying About Things You Can’t Control (forbes.com)) The main message of that article was “when you stop worrying about things you can’t control, you’ll have more time and energy to devote to the things you do have control over. And this can be key to reaching your greatest potential.” Now this makes much more sense and I concentrate more on my growth mindset, preparing to be fit when the opportunity comes, and keep looking forward the best opportunities to make my dream come true.

What is Next?

I have a son and I work hard to provide him the best options within my standards. Working abroad will not only be a challenge for me to develop my skills but also open the way for my son’s foreign language learning and become a world citizen. I will go on imagining what will be different in my life when I am assigned to my dream job.

I asked Melissa about her experiences when she was in roles outside of her own country. She told me that these assignments in abroad made her understand differences, see diversity, be humble and curious, listen and learn from other people and gain satisfaction from various experiences. In short, these are also what I look for, therefore hearing her experiences once again let me understand that my expectations are in line with her real time experiences.

Being connected to our dreams is one of the best ways we have to find a connection to our deeper, wiser selves. Therefore, I write in bold that I have an ambition to work abroad for my company PMI with my family, overcome the challenges with a growth mindset, be a life long learner in this journey and enjoy the career path with my family. This time, I am not only telling my dream to my manager or writing it down to my performance form but stating it to the whole world who will somehow read this content.

Thank to Melissa for providing me this coaching opportunity, she made me ask the right questions, think about the answers and re-invent my motivation towards my ambition.

An Awesome Coaching Session - Thanks to Melissa