Career Coaching Secrets

Beyond 1-on-1: Teneal Taylor on Facilitating High-Impact Leadership Teams

• Davis Nguyen

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In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Teneal Taylor, a certified career and leadership coach and author. Drawing on over two decades as an HR leader, Teneal now helps C-suite professionals with career and leadership growth.

Teneal transitioned to full-time coaching driven by her passion for one-on-one executive conversations. She finds it most rewarding to help clients "remember their greatness" and focuses on those with a growth mindset. Her engagements typically require a minimum of three months, covering self-discovery, action planning, and implementation. She also facilitates leadership team off-sites.

LinkedIn is Teneal's main channel for career clients, while executive clients come from her professional network. She emphasizes providing valuable content over direct ads and sees her future in online courses and public speaking, embracing a "portfolio career." Her key investments include a comprehensive website and LinkedIn Premium. Teneal's advice to coaches: "Don't wait till you think everything is perfect. Just start."

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Teneal Taylor:

The primary one for me for career clients is LinkedIn. People who are kind of filling out a request for resume help or job interview prep. A lot of the clients will come through that funnel. The executive and leadership coaching is usually through people I've worked with in the past. It's personal relationships and listening and understanding what do you need. And if I'm the right fit, then I'll engage. So there's kind of two separate ones for the different kinds of work.

Davis Nguyen:

welcome to career coaching secrets the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way my name is davis win and i'm the founder of purple circle where we help career coaches scale their business to hundred thousand dollar years hundred thousand dollar months and even hundred thousand dollar weeks before purple circle i've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time You'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regan, and today's guest is Tenille Taylor, a certified career coach, leadership coach, and author with over two decades of experience guiding C-suite leaders and professionals through transformative career and leadership growth. With a background As a strategic HR leader, Tenille has worked across 14 countries and supported hundreds of executives in navigating career transitions, building resilient teams, and leading with authenticity and clarity. She's the author of From Burnout to Balance, a powerful guide for professionals reclaiming control over their work-life rhythm. And she brings a refreshingly human, practical, and empowering approach to leadership and career strategy. And it's a pleasure for me to have her the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Tania.

Teneal Taylor:

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much. And it's a pleasure for us to have you on. I want to learn more in regards to how your coaching business got started. What inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business? What sparked all of this?

Teneal Taylor:

Yeah, so the HR leader, many of the times I would meet one-on-one with my executives, the vice presidents, the C-suite folks. And after about 20 years doing HR, I realized that what I loved the most was having those one-on-one conversations. And one time I was just having dinner outside of work with one of my leaders and our conversation immediately went back into that coach mode where I was coaching the leader and just reminding them how amazing they are and that they could handle their challenges. And I just had this moment of this is what I love. This is what I love doing is these one-on-one conversations, reflecting back, providing the safe space for them. And I thought, you know, why don't I just do that full time? So it was a combination of a little bit of burnout of doing some of the HR, what I would call bread and butter work, like the investigations. and realizing that my true joy and purpose was kind of these one-on-one conversations of helping leaders be their best selves.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And so it has been about a year and a half since you started your coaching business? As

Teneal Taylor:

a full-time coach, yes. I mean, when you're an embedded HR business partner working with a leadership team, you are doing coaching as part of your job. But as a full-time job, just full career coaching, it's been about a year and a half.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. So a year and a half full time. And throughout this last few months of doing it full time, which part of your coaching journey, and maybe not just the last year and a half, but also before that, which part of your coaching journey when working with these clients would you say you find the most rewarding since you started doing this?

Teneal Taylor:

I think the most rewarding part is where people forget who they are and when you can have a conversation with them and remind them to tap into their inner potential and their inner strength, That to me is the most rewarding part of it. Or if I'm working with a career client, if someone's been laid off, it's a real hard thing for your self-esteem. So reminding them that this is not personal, that this is probably a financial decision of a company and you're still amazing, you have a lot to offer because people forget. So I just really like helping people remember their greatness.

Rexhen Doda:

Right now, when it comes to your clients, how would you describe the ideal client profile? Is it of a specific industry or a specific demographic or is it more kind of broad as long as it's on leadership?

Teneal Taylor:

Yeah, I work across all industries and all levels. So, you know, if you believe the idea of coaching, that the coaching process stays the same and you as a coach are really there to support them where they're at, it doesn't matter their level or their industry. The process is the same. The process is still understanding what they're working on, asking them questions to help them figure out what do they need to do to get unstuck, and then holding them accountable and encouraging them. That process is the same regardless of who the client is. And then what makes it fun is that every client is working on something different and unique for them. So then you figure out what that is and help them achieve that. And then you partner with them. So the most important thing for a client is someone who's curious, someone who genuinely wants to understand who am I and how can I be better? If someone feels like they know everything, I don't want to work with them. If someone feels like what I'm going to offer them is stupid or dumb, I don't want to work with them. You really have to have a growth mindset and you have to want to make positive change. Otherwise, it's a waste of time.

Rexhen Doda:

And I didn't mention this in the beginning, or actually I did when we were talking earlier. There's a certain audience of the podcast that is not just coaches. There could be also leaders potentially listening to this because I interview a lot of executive coaches and leadership coaches. For any leader out there that is listening, how would you describe working with you? Is there a certain program? Is it of a certain length? How is the engagement?

Teneal Taylor:

Yeah. So for me, with leadership coaching, executive coaching, I typically require at least three months to work with me. If someone only wants to do one or two sessions, that really doesn't move the needle much. You don't see much progress. So I usually require a three-month minimum. And I always like to start, I kind of have three steps. The first start is self-discovery assessment. What are you already good at? What do you want to work on? The second part is creating the action plan together. And the third part is working the plan. So that first stage is we might use different personality instruments to figure out what are you good at? What are you not good at? We You might do a 360 evaluation and interview people in your life to find out what is so-and-so really good at, what are their blind spots. But the first step is to figure out what do we want to work on. Then we create that plan and then work it. So that's kind of the general flow in working with me. Many clients want to meet weekly. Some folks, that's just too busy with their schedules, so we meet twice a month. And then I always say I'm available for breakthroughs or breakdowns anytime you need to connect because sometimes you just need that safe space to kind of talk and process things through. That doesn't happen too often, but it's available for folks that need it.

Rexhen Doda:

And since these are leaders, do you often, do you just do one-on-one coaching or do you also happen to work with their teams when needed?

Teneal Taylor:

I do both. I do the one-on-one, but I've also done over a hundred leadership team off-sites And so I will often do a team analysis and do some team dynamics. I also work with clients who want to do like an annual strategy review or a quarterly review. Sometimes it's nice to have an outside facilitator walk your team through it so you as the leader can participate. Leaders will only do that if they really trust you. They don't want to turn over their leadership team meeting to you. So you as the facilitator really have to partner with that leader to kind of co-lead that. That's also kind of another way to work with a team is, you know, let's talk about how we did this past quarter and what do we need to adjust going forward. So that's something I've done a lot of as well.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And for any coach listening, how do you go about marketing yourself or where do clients find you? What marketing channel works best?

Teneal Taylor:

Yeah. The primary one for me for career clients is LinkedIn. People who are kind of filling out a request for resume help or job interview prep. A lot of the clients will come through that funnel. The executive and leadership coaching is usually through people I've worked with in the past. It's personal relationships and listening and understanding what do you need. And if I'm the right fit, then I'll engage. So there's kind of two separate ones for the different kinds of work.

Rexhen Doda:

And so for LinkedIn, Is there a certain strategy? Is it mostly content? How would you describe the activity in there?

Teneal Taylor:

Yeah, I find on LinkedIn, it's kind of like a Google review. People are going to look at your profile and see, do they know what they're talking about? How long have they been doing this? So I do a mixture. I make sure that I post two or three times a week with helpful content. And then also the leads through direct messaging. So those are the two. But if you don't have a robust... profile, then people will think that you're not really serious about what you do. Because I'm a full-time coach now, it's really important for me that I let people know this is my craft. This is what I'm focusing. It's not a side gig for me. This is my full-time job. And I take it very seriously. And a lot of people that meet with me will say, I was inundated with requests, but I saw your profile and you looked human or you looked like you really knew what you were talking about. And so I picked you. So they do look at my profile and that gives me credibility I also try I don't know if this I think it helps more with the younger generation versus older people but for over a year I've been posting on TikTok Instagram Facebook all the social medias just for credibility have I gotten any leads from that work no but I think that when people look up your profile and they see that you're active and you're producing content, that gives you credibility. Maybe someday it will give me leads, but right now I'm just hoping it helps with like the reputation and the image.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, TikTok is not, let's say, the most popular channel for coaches from the interviews that I've done. Only one coach that I've interviewed has actually managed to get a lot of traction from TikTok. And weirdly enough, it was mostly age of 50. which you don't

Teneal Taylor:

expect

Rexhen Doda:

in tiktok yeah there seems to be that audience there is just the ones engaging obviously are the younger generation so there is room there but it's just been very uncommon for for that to be a channel that actually generates leads but linkedin still remains number one and Now, how do you see your coaching business moving forward? For example, for the next one to three years, are there any specific goals that you're working towards?

Teneal Taylor:

Yes. So one of them is just to continue getting more certifications and accreditations. So that's kind of one piece of it. I do want to get a little bit more busy with leadership teams and not just one-on-ones because I do love doing that work. The book that I recently published, I hope to turn that into an online course so that people can figure out their work-life balance and figure out what they need to work on and create an action plan. So I see some of the content turning to some online courses and possibly some public speaking, but I feel like the coaching piece of it, you know, just get more clients and build that relationship with them and help them. So yeah, there's like a few different things. I think a lot of coaches end up having what we call a portfolio career. They, instead of being a corporate employee, a nine to five employee, you have multiple gigs going on at the same time. So that's what I have. I have a few areas of business to grow simultaneously and in parallel. And that's what makes it so fun.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you for sharing that. So far, when it comes to investments, and this is also for my research, in terms of investments that you've made, what are some good investments that you feel like have actually moved the needle for your coaching business or have helped the business grow? And if none, or what are some bad investments would be the other option that you feel like you could have avoided?

Teneal Taylor:

Yeah, I think a really wise investment for any coach or professional is a good website. And if you think you're going to grow. So for a while there, I did Linktree. You know what Linktree is, where you have all your different links, right? For a while there, I did that. But after a while, and if you're going to grow, you want a comprehensive website where people can get all your social media links, where they can download PDFs, where they can book time with you. Instead of having five different links, just create a good website from the beginning and have all of your products and information there. And that way you can just direct everyone to a website. I probably wouldn't have done that at first as like link tree and do this, do this, click here for this, click here for this. No, just go to my website. So that's probably probably one thing I learned. Definitely you need professional headshots. You need good photos. One of my best tools is Canva Pro. Use Canva Pro. Figure out how to make attractive looking posts. Figure out a good logo for you. And then LinkedIn. A LinkedIn premium page, LinkedIn leads, all that stuff is worth the money. I think those are the best bets from a return on investment standpoint.

Rexhen Doda:

So right now, moving, thinking about your goals as well, what would you say is a challenge that you're trying to solve for next? Where is the bottleneck for you right now?

Teneal Taylor:

It's a good question. I am very grateful that I am a very adaptable person. I think some people get locked in and they're like, nope, I got to do this. I feel like every interaction and every result is a data point, and I'm going to use that data point to make a smarter decision next time. So I feel like I'm constantly changing. You want some things to stay the same. I have an overall brand reputation. I want to kind of keep it, but am I going to slightly adjust here and there? Constantly. I'm going to constantly evolve and grow. You want to be this AI learning machine that every moment I get smarter and better. I think a downfall for a lot of people is they start chasing and wasting time on minutiae where you need to spend time on what's making you money and what brings you joy. It's easy to get caught up in emails or market research or this stuff. Is it making you money? No. So focus on what's making you money. So I think that that can be a possible distractor is just time wasters, but constantly learn and grow. Everything is a data point. Nothing is personal. I don't I don't want every client I talk to to hire me because some are not a good fit and some don't want to work with me. And that's fine, too. So you can't take anything personal and use every ounce of data as information to be smarter and better. Constantly learn and grow.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you for sharing that. This has been great so far, but I wanted to ask you, is there, and this is a final question, what advice would you give to other coaches, either career coaches or leadership coaches who are trying to scale their impact?

Teneal Taylor:

I would say, understand who your demographic is, understand who you're trying to appeal to. and try to be in those places where they are, whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's Instagram, whether it's TikTok. Who are your key customers? And then go where you think they're going to be. The other thing I would say with, and this is what I've learned with all of my social media posts, is people don't really like it when you're advertising your services. People like it when you're giving them useful information. So if I do a resume tip, That's going to show up. That actually gets a lot better views than me posting a client testimonial. So if I give tips and advice, those are always very well liked. So provide useful content and people like that. So yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Tenille. And thank you for coming to the podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can go into LinkedIn, Tenille Taylor. They'll be able to find you there. There's also the website, leadershipwithtenille.com, where where they can also go and reach out to you. Is there any other way that they could do that?

Teneal Taylor:

No, everything goes through the website. So if you want to connect on any other platform, you can get it from there. So that's it.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Daniel. And thank you for coming to the. podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on.

Teneal Taylor:

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle dot com.