Exclusive Interview – Elisia Keown, an Executive Coach Helping Leaders To Have Tough conversations
Elisia has 21 years of experience and a passion for coaching leaders, which makes her uniquely qualified to be the perfect coach for you. She's managed multiple geographically dispersed retail locations and led teams of employees numbering in the hundreds. She knows the importance of delegation, clear communication, and the power of direct feedback for development. She can help you organize yourself, your time, and your team to focus on the right priorities to drive results.
She's led Talent Acquisition teams and has global recruiting experience. She learned quickly how hiring and retaining the right talent in a business truly impacts results. She can help you decipher if you have the right team in place to support you and what to do if you don't. She's supported multiple leaders of large teams (some managing up to 30,000+ employees) with all aspects of Human Resources.
She's coached leaders to manage the performance of their teams, including having the most difficult and emotional conversations. She's helped leaders navigate through internal politics and helped them learn how to have a productive working relationship with their boss.
She can support you with all of this and more.
Elisia Keown, Executive Coach To Leaders
Tell us about yourself.
I'm an Executive Coach with 21 years of experience with coaching and leading teams. I have deep experience with Management, Talent Acquisition and Human Resources. Now I've combined my corporate experience with a unique style of coaching and started an Executive Coaching business of my own. On a personal note, I live in Columbus, Ohio with my husband and we are parents to five kids.
What inspired you to do this work with leaders and start your own business?
Leaders are key to culture within an organization. An employee-supervisor relationship can make or break the experience for an employee at a company. The leader has so much power to positively influence large teams of people. We need more great leaders in the world. My mission is to help good leaders become great, quicker than they would by going at it alone.
What is it that you do for your clients?
My clients are leaders in their organizations. They are smart, driven, accomplished. They've been able to figure out so much of their role and leadership on their own up until now, but they've reached the point where they don't have time to work on leadership on their own by reading a book or listening to podcasts. Because of their level in the organization, there's not a lot of peers to turn to, and the company is not providing them with the leadership development they need. I help them with issues that come up with managing their team or managing up to their boss.
What are some of the issues that you help leaders face?
One that comes up frequently is handling difficult conversations. Typically, they are struggling with having tough, critical conversations to move their employees and business goals forward. They know that the conversations must happen, but the stakes are so high that they aren't quite sure how to go about it. They are super uncomfortable with having the conversations and don't want to feel that way anymore. Sometimes they don't even know where to start. They avoid the conversation, and it only makes the situation worse. So that's where I come in to help. I get them unstuck. We work on tackling the issues and get to the point where they can have any conversation, with anyone, on any topic.
What advice do you have for leaders in organizations?
Just because you've hit this level of success (title, education, etc.), doesn't mean you have to have it all figured out. You don't have to have all the answers. It's ok to ask for help to get to the next level. You're not alone, and your problem is probably not unique. Someone else has probably struggled with this too, so there's no reason to suffer through it alone.
Who should hire/work with you?
If you're in a situation where you're leading a team, working for a boss, and struggling with how to handle it all, I can help. If you feel frozen when you face having a tough conversation and would rather feel like you can handle it with ease, I'm the coach for you. If you're struggling with time management as a boss/employee and feel like you'll never get it all done at work and have a personal life too, I can help you.
Where can we connect with you?
You can connect with me through my website, www.elisiakeowncoaching.com, or CLICK HERE to follow me on Linkedin. If you want to set up a chat directly with me, CLICK HERE to schedule a free 30 minute call.
