About the Episode

Terry is an executive and career coach, speaker and best-selling author of Winning the Game of Work: Career Happiness and Success on Your Own Terms. 

She works with managers, executives and professionals who want to draw upon their greatest, most authentic abilities to positively impact their organizations. She supports clients who are creating change, driving innovation, and navigating transitions.

Terry relies on both her formal training as a coach and first-hand experience as a corporate leader to support her clients as they work towards their goals. In coaching engagements, Terry serves her clients as a partner and encourager as they break new ground; as a sounding board, supporting them as an objective listener; as a scout, who sees the larger context, their possibilities and potential; and, as a catalyst, helping to spark their commitment and action.

After 30 years of corporate business experience, 15 of which were in senior managerial roles, Terry chose to become a coach to concentrate on helping leaders step fully into their potential to lead satisfying careers. Though the majority of her professional experience is in financial services and marketing, her work exposed her to a wide variety of industries, business climates and corporate transitions such as mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and restructures.

We start our conversation with how Terry decided to make a significant pivot in her career and become a coach. Terry’s area of expertise is helping high-achieving professionals with their career growth. And there are some characteristics and personal traits of high-achieving professionals that influence their behaviors and decisions. Terry shares with us her thoughts on how these traits are shaped from childhood and how we can identify and transform these behaviors positively.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a psycho-social intervention that aims to improve mental health, is another area Terry discusses in detail in her book. She walks us through what CBT is, how she uses CBT to help her clients and a couple of examples of how we can use it in our lives to handle some of our daily dilemmas better. We also talk about some of the lesser-known traits that help us be successful in our careers and how to develop them in our lives. 

Sometimes we tend to have the same problem repeatedly in our careers, and that’s when it’s time to consider making a change in our lives. Terry walks us through the process of understanding this need for a change and how to go through with it. We also talk about handling our inner critic and using it to our advantage. Wrapping up the session, Terry debunks some of the biggest misconceptions around coaching. We hope you enjoy our discussion with Terry McDougall.