Hana Jacover | Spear Marketing Group, MadKudu, HypeHouse Coaching
Hana Jacover | Spear Marketing Group, MadKudu, HypeHouse Coaching
Why real coaching can be a game-changer for your career
One of the reasons I started writing this newsletter was because I was feeling a bit lost on my career journey. I felt like what I was doing daily wasn’t necessarily getting me closer to my end goal, and from conversations with other operators, I knew I wasn’t alone.
I wanted to document and share what I was learning in the hope that it could benefit someone else who might find themselves in a similar situation.
As I considered different ways I could grow, I reviewed a few different career coaching options.
I’ve been recommended various coaches in my career and have even considered talking to a few, but I wasn’t sure how exactly they could help, or what they even did.
In this week’s newsletter I’ve captured some key takeaways and highlights from my conversation with Hana Jacover, who has the unique distinction of being a credentialed (read: seriously educated) career coach with legitimate B2B/tech Marketing experience as well.
If I could, I would have included the entire interview - maybe I’ll figure out a way to do that at some point. She dropped some serious knowledge during our conversation, ranging from how proper coaching works and how it can benefit you, to fighting burnout, to understanding our internal motivations and how those manifest themselves in career planning, to understanding some of our biological systems, and everything in between.
Buckle up, this is going to be a good one!
Hana’s start to her career in marketing has a unique twist - while looking for a nannying job she came in touch with the owner of a tech-focused marketing agency that wanted to hire her not only for her childcare abilities but for her marketing chops as well.
With a decade of experience working on the agency side of things Hana had broad exposure to cutting-edge thinking around tech marketing and operational concepts. Eventually Hana moved in-house and found herself in the big leagues, leading Demand Gen at Revenue Intelligence Automation tool MadKudu.
During a lengthy period of significant personal experiences and challenges, a different path forward became clear for Hana. She moved from her role at MadKudu and began doing some individual consulting and fractional leadership for Marketing teams as she ramped up her efforts as a Leadership and Executive Coach.
While seemingly a somewhat random career shift, the move to coaching was not completely out of the blue. Both of Hana’s parents are executive coaches, and she has long excelled in the people and relationship side of her roles. The change was an intentional shift that allowed Hana to be in a role that was much more aligned with her internal motivation and allowed her to focus her work more specifically on people - the human aspect of business.
Hana now focuses primarily on leadership and executive coaching (more on that towards the end of the post) and still gets to be involved in Marketing as an advisor for a few different organizations.
Here are some of the highlights from our conversation that stuck out to me:
How do you know if coaching is right for you?
In some cases, it might seem like coaches typically work with those in leadership roles, or that coaching won’t be very beneficial for someone who isn’t leading a team.
Hana says, “I think any time is a good time for having a coach - coaching is for everybody. It’s for people who want to focus on their growth, people who want to focus on balance, people who want to focus on how they lead or how to get to that position where they can lead. It’s also beneficial for people who want to better align with who they are and start to discover that.”
A leadership position isn’t a prerequisite to “qualify” for coaching - it’s much more determined by your attitude. So, if you’ve ever wondered if coaching is right for you, it’s probably a good idea to give it a shot. Many organizations will cover some or all of the cost under a professional development expense.
Coaches vs. “Advisors” - Are you getting the right kind of help?
If you’ve been on LinkedIn recently, you’ve probably noticed that it’s very much en-vogue for people with a lot of experience and success in a specific type of career to brand themselves as coaches and start charging hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour for advice.
Hana highlights some of the key differences between this informal type of coaching and what you might get from a trained and credentialed executive coach. She says, “Coaching is a distinct skill set. Career context and similar experiences are nice to have. It's comforting to the person being coached. However, It's not required for a coach to have that experience.”
She continues, “Many people ask, “How are you going to coach somebody if you haven't been in that position?” It's not about being in that position. It's not about me leading that team, or me sitting in that board meeting, or me communicating that message. It's about discovering what is it within you that is blocking you from doing that or preventing you from doing that in the way that you want, which is a very different thing.”
You might assume that one of the main things a coach is going to do is give you advice. I was surprised to learn that is not the case.
Hana says, “People don't pay me for advice. That's the opposite of what I should be doing. It’s the opposite of what you should expect working with me. As a coach, I'm not here to give you the answers or give you advice or tell you how to do things because the idea is that you have the answer and I'm pulling it out of you. I'm helping you see that for yourself.”
The more I thought about this, the more sense it made. Having someone give you advice can certainly be helpful, but compared to having someone be your sherpa on a journey to find the answer seems much more involved. If you’re being coached, receiving advice can be primarily a passive experience, while working on finding the answer inside yourself is a full-contact sport.
Hustling for the promotion - or not?
Most of us may view the external validation and recognition that comes with a promotion as confirmation of our progress and growth in our career. It could mean that someone else has noticed our capability, our skills, and our contribution to the team and the business and certified that we’re “ready for the next level”.
In actuality, many of these decisions are somewhat arbitrary and political and are a product of archaic systems. And, like I mentioned above - they’re all external.
Hana challenges the notion that a promotion is an appropriate measuring stick for our career progress.
She says, “ It’s challenging and understanding why you really want a promotion. What is the motivation? Is it financial? Is it your ego? Is it the perception that you’ll be able to have a bigger impact? This is a good time to do some serious self-reflection.”
That clarity can be helpful - and enlightening. Hana continues, “Getting clear on why you want a promotion and then comparing it to what you have now helps you see where the gaps are. Then you can analyze if that promotion will help fill the gap. You might realize that it’s not just about leading a team - you might be able to get what you want in your current role.”
She highlights the fact that many people aren’t comfortable having open conversations around this with their bosses. It’s been my experience that there are some competent and helpful managers out there that you can be very open with, but they’re few and far between. It also takes some time to build a relationship to the point where you can have that level of honesty.
“Maybe it's not really about money. What's the real issue? What's the real motivator for you? So many people are scared to talk to their bosses. So many people are scared to have open, honest conversations about their career progression. And I think that it's just about having that conversation and sharing, here's what I want, and here's why I want this,” Hana says.
Once you’ve had some time to reflect, you might discover that your desire for a promotion is motivated by the fact that you think you’ll have more control over your time or you’ll be in a more influential position.
If you share these things with your manager or mentor, they may be able to help you find opportunities or ways to accomplish these things without a formal change of role.
It’s not that promotions are bad - we all need to provide for ourselves and those close to us and should be properly recognized and compensated for our time and expertise. It’s more about learning about what your motivations are internally and finding the best way to satisfy them. Hana talks about finding “different tracks” - keying into your internal motivators and prioritizing them over external ones can help determine which track is the best for you.
Normalize the “lurk”
If you do find that your internal and external motivations are aligning in a promotion, role change, or even just a different job, Hana mentioned that another tool available to you is the “lurk”.
“Leverage what other people have done,” she says. “Find somebody that is doing what you want to do and just lurk. Try and connect with them, talk to them, interview them - see how they’re talking about themselves and what they’re doing. Then you can do your own skills assessment gap and understand what is it that they have that you don’t? What are they doing that you aren’t?”
There’s so much being shared today that you could do this with almost anybody, especially on a network like LinkedIn. If this experience of reaching out to people for interviews and conversations has taught me anything, it’s that most people are willing to talk, and even more willing when you want to learn more about them.
Getting off the burnout treadmill
Being intentional and proactive in your career, in addition to just doing your job, doesn’t have to lead to crazy hours, unmet expectations, and real mental and physical burnout.
Hana recommends educating yourself about burnout so you can use knowledge to help you avoid serious issues. She says, “Learn about how your nervous system works. We talk about burnout, but we don't always discuss what is happening in your body when you’re burnt out. Learning about your burnout will allow you to see the red flags and will allow you to put strategies in place that are impactful.”
Most of us aren’t mental and physical superheros. We all have days, weeks, or even months where the motivation is lagging, our energy is down, and we have to muster all of our willpower to make it to the end of the day. It’s important to realize that proper self-care is critical to avoid chronic long-term issues.
Hana continues, “It’s the things that many people know about but don’t do that can help the most. Traditional things like exercise and meditation and even newer, “trendier” practices like cold exposure can have significant positive impacts on your overall well being.”
But, as Hana highlights, the trickiest part may be making time for some of these activities. She says, “It’s important to audit your energy and where your energy is going and what you’re receiving back. If there are areas in your life where you’re doing all of the giving and not getting anything back, you may need to set some boundaries.”
Making the most of each day
One of the areas I was most interested in discussing with Hana was the idea that we can harness our natural rhythms and states to our advantage to help us be more effective when we’re at work.
There’s a lot to dig in here, so I’m going to include a couple of extended quotes:
Brain waves
“Brain waves are essentially electrical oscillations in our brain and they're measured by frequency. They’re all happening at once, but during certain times you have dominant brain waves. Some of the ones that people may have heard about are the delta waves, when you’re in deep sleep, or theta waves, when you’re falling asleep.
These different stages are associated with different mental states. In our normal waking state, most people are in a dominant beta wave state. This state is great for certain things, like thinking quickly on your feet or having conversations and making decisions.
But when it comes to other things, like deep work, deep thinking, reflective processes or strategic thinking, the beta wave state is not going to be as conducive to your productivity.
One example is if you know that you’re most creative in an alpha brainwave state, you can learn what types of activities help you get into an alpha state, or understand when you are naturally in that state during the day.
In the case of an alpha state, it is common during activities like exercise, when you release various neurochemicals like endorphins. So this is why people get their best ideas after they work out or while they’re in the shower - it’s driven by their brain wave state. So start learning and thinking about those brain wave states and how to couple them with the things that you want to be doing.”
Pretty deep stuff, right? No simple, cheap 2-minute productivity hacks here.
Ultradian rhythms
Again, Hana does a tremendous job explaining this concept, so I’m going to include another longer quote here:
“When you’re well regulated and you understand your brainwaves, you can work with your ultradian rhythm, which is essentially the different energy outputs of your body. It controls things like hunger, mood, and hormone release.
Essentially, you have a period of peak performance with a ramping period prior and a cool-off period after. After you’ve ramped up, you’re only going to get about 90 minutes of peak performance before you have to come back down.
If you force it, and try to go for more than 90 minutes, that peak performance window gets shorter and shorter, and that starts you down the road to burnout. So while you can’t necessarily demand to have all of your meetings at a certain time, you can be aware of these rhythms that take place and try your best to plan your day around them. You can do things like make sure that you’re not sitting for four hours without getting up and moving around or eating, because you do need to do these things to help flush your brain.”
Really interesting stuff, right?
Like Hana mentioned, most of us aren’t in a position where we can organize our entire day around based on these concepts, but being educated and understanding them gives you tools you can use when you need them. If you’re able to be a bit more effective each day, that adds up quickly.
Of course, we couldn’t go into significant detail on these two topics in a newsletter like this, so Hana recommended a few resources you can check out if you’re interested in learning more:
Neuroscience for Leaders, by Dr Nikolaos Dimitriadis and Dr Alexandros Psychogios
The Leading Brain, by Friederike Fabritius and Hans W. Hagemann
Electric Brain, by R. Douglas Fields
(you can listen to a podcast from the author here)
A study by the Microsoft Human Factors Lab on the benefits of breaks between meetings
Challenge what you know to know more
Now you might be reading these things with a bit of skepticism. After all, you may feel like these concepts feel a bit esoteric or mystical, or that they don’t particularly apply to you or your situation.
A common thread in our conversation was the fact that we should constantly be reflecting, and reviewing what we know, and challenging some of our long-held assumptions about productivity, hustle culture, and the relationship between the capabilities of our physical body and what work we get done.
Hana mentions, “People are proud to be sitting at their desk all day and working late and not getting up and going to the bathroom or taking lunch. None of that is good for our body. That’s not supposed to be the way we work. We should be microdosing our days.”
She continues, “There’s a lot of this information that wasn’t what we were originally told. We have all of these assumptions and beliefs that prevent us from actually being successful. So sometimes we need to think critically about what we’ve been taught and determine if it’s helping or hurting us.”
As a sample size of one, I know that as I’ve started to prioritize activities that promote my physical and mental well-being, I’ve noticed positive changes in my energy and focus levels. The best thing I can recommend at this point is to try things - experiment and learn for yourself.
First-time leaders, this one’s for you
If you’re a new leader, has an exercise specifically for you:
She says, “I ask a lot of people how they define their leadership style and many of them don’t always know. They haven’t taken the time or they just hang their hat on something that is popular. Take the time to reflect and ask yourself - “What is my leadership style?” “How do I want to show up as a leader?” Going through that reflection process will help you define what your style is and what that looks like.”
I know that the evolution of my leadership style has been fairly random and hasn’t been an intentional area of focus. I liked the thought of defining how I would show up for my team, and what that means. That can include things like:
What frameworks are you using to decide what is important?
How do you communicate?
How do you understand your team’s bandwidth?
Hana also mentioned how AI should be viewed as a leader, and how you can leverage it for additional efficiency. She says, “We need to move from this mindset of having AI create things for us to a mindset of having it do things for us. AI should be your assistant, your collaborative partner.”
She continues, “Find managerial things that AI can take off of your plate to allow you to focus more on being a leader, to make your life easier. Managing is all about the tactical, so handing those items off to AI will allow you to focus more on the strategic, long-term responsibilities.”
Wrap Up
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Hana, and would absolutely recommend connecting with her on social media as she shares more insights like the ones in this newsletter.
You can connect with her here:
If you’re interested in potentially working with Hana as a coach, she mentioned that she does have some availability. If you want to learn more about that, you can view the details here.
Some quotes have been edited for clarity in the written format.