What was going on in your business & life when you began to work with Megan?

Hello, my name is Stacy Zinken, and I am the Chief Experience Officer at Paladin. When I first started working with Megan, I was really new to my position and company. I work at a startup, so as you can imagine, on any given day there are a lot of different things happening and you're pulled in a lot of different directions. At the same time, I was trying to balance my new position and company with home life. I have two daughters, and at the time, my oldest daughter was in her senior year at high school, starting to discover what she wanted to do next from a college perspective.

What hesitation or concerns did you have about working with Megan?

My biggest hesitation in starting to work with Megan from a coaching perspective was actually twofold. I was at the time wondering if I would be able to take the time out of my day to spend on coaching versus diving into my new role and my family life. 

The other part was questioning whether coaching would be helpful for me. I know for some that coaching is used to stay on track. I didn't think that this would be the piece that would be helpful to me from a coaching perspective.

What specific results have you achieved?

I am a driver type. When I start my day, I never look back, I get going and I'm in meetings back to back. If I'm not in a meeting, I'm working on a project or working with a colleague on something. One thing I worked with Megan on was finding ways to find time in my day to take breaks and be okay with taking breaks. So typically for me even if I have 15 minutes or half an hour without a meeting, I'm finding something that I should be working on or could be working on to better the company. 

Working with Megan, I found ways to implement into my calendar each day, unplugged time. So I have that now scheduled on my calendar, I push myself to stick with that and actually take breaks throughout the day. What I found with that is I am much better by the end of the day, I'm not wiped out. I'm probably a happier person throughout the day and better to work with because I am taking those breaks.

What did you like most about working with Megan?

I found my coaching sessions with Megan to be super valuable, whether it was working through a project or a different scenario. She asked really good questions to help me think through things a little bit differently, or maybe come at it from a different angle. 

We did use role playing a few different times – and I am not a fan of role playing – but Megan made me feel very comfortable in doing this! And it did give me a different perspective as I was working through different projects and different personalities. 

Megan is a great sounding board and someone who asks really intelligent questions to help you think differently about things.