Career talks: Meet Jenny Medyati, a certified coach on a mission to make you feel good

I love courageous people, who know what they want and don't hesitate to pursue it. In today's interview with Jenny Medyati, ICF ACC , I felt inspired by the way she ventured from a successful career into pursuing her passion in coaching. I have seen her studying hard in the past few months to get certified, and I am more impressed today checking how professional and well developed her new company's website looks. Many of us don't realize how essential coaching is, reading Jenny's answers might give you a better idea.

Learn about this and much more in this valuable career talk! But before you start, don't forget to?subscribe?for weekly career inspirational stories.

I became a certified mental strength and career coach working with high potential leaders to help them gain the self-confidence, the performance and the mental resilience required to get to the next level in their career.?

Fadi: Hello Jenny, first I’d like to congratulate you for becoming a Certified Professional Coach. I know that you have been working hard on this certificate. Tell me more about it. Why did you pursue it? and what are your plans now after getting certified?

Jenny: Hello Fadi, I am very pleased to be your guest today and thank you for having me! Let me introduce myself; my name is Jenny Medyati, I was born and raised in France and I moved to Dubai 11 years ago to pursue a career in Retail and Luxury. After 15 years of experience in corporation,?I became a certified mental strength and career coach working with high potential leaders to help them gain the self-confidence, the performance and the mental resilience required to get to the next level in their career.?I work mainly with corporations, entrepreneurs and young athletes in the making. But I also coach people who strive to overcome stressful challenges by helping them build the right mindset.?My role is also to accompany people in their career transition and help them find a meaningful career aspiration in line with their values, by getting to the root of what truly motivates them and identifying their natural strengths.?

mental resilience and emotional intelligence are more important than intelligence and talent, with studies highlighting that IQ only accounts for only 30% of your performance.

Fadi: How did you become interested in coaching? What triggered it?

Jenny: I held a variety of senior roles within high-profile companies in Luxury and Tech industries from France to Dubai, gaining the opportunity to work in different work cultures and environments. During these 15 years of Leadership experience, I realized how mental strength plays an important role, more than anything else, for achieving your goals in health, business and life.?In fact, mental resilience and emotional intelligence are more important than intelligence and talent, with studies highlighting that IQ only accounts for only 30% of your performance.

In a business and education sense, mentally strong people don’t allow small misfortunes, negative feedback or busy schedules to get in the way of achieving their goals. Nowadays, being talented and hard worker is not enough to thrive in a society where adversity has never been so present. Success and achievements require both resilience and self-confidence.?The most successful people are the talented ones who do not fear anything and who have adopted the right mindset in seeing an opportunity in every challenge.?

This is why I decided to pursue this career - helping talented and ambitious professionals in developing their confidence and overcoming their fear to achieve the success they deserve have always provided a real sense of fairness and equity to me.

I am a firm believer that you can achieve anything you want in life if you know what you really want and why.

Fadi: You recently made a very bold decision to switch careers and verge on your own. Not only becoming a professional coach, but also starting your own coaching agency Elevate - The Feel Good Company. When did the idea come to you? And what motivated you to pursue this path? What services are you offering at Elevate?

Jenny: I am a firm believer that you can achieve anything you want in life if you know what you really want and why. Being aware of what drives your motivation is the first step to learn who you are. It all starts from knowing who you really are and who you aspire to be.?Once you have a clear understanding of it, nothing can prevent you from achieving your goal.?Elevate, The Feel Good Company has been created with a strong mission - to bring to people the best-in-class coaching services in any areas of life.?At Elevate, everything starts from exploring your inner motivation. By knowing what really drives you, you will aim to realise your objective.

But Elevate, is more than just a coaching agency that accompanies people in their life or career transition, it uses a holistic approach to empower people by improving their wellbeing and quality of life. We are human beings which means that we are holistic and emotional beings too.?Humans can only function at their best if the balance between the mind, the spirit and the body is fulfilled and attained, this is the most efficient way to procure a deep and sustainable sense of wellbeing and performance that leads undeniably to happiness and success. To serve this mission, Elevate, offers a wide range of coaching services such as Mental Strength and Self-Confidence coaching, Career Transition and Leadership coaching as well as Lifestyle and Wellness coaching including Nutrition and Personal Fitness Training. ?Elevate is here to accompany people in their personal elevation through high quality coaching for them to perform and be well.

Fadi: Coaching has become trendy in the past few years. I, myself, had a wonderful experience working with a career coach last year. I didn’t believe in coaching before, but after that experience, I realized that I wasted a lot of time. How important is it for anyone to have a career coach? What makes a good coach? And how do you intend to differentiate your offerings from what’s there in the market now?

Jenny: “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player. We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve." (Bill Gates, 2013).

There are as many definitions of coaching as there are approaches. Coaching is very much a partnership between coach and client. Coaching supports a person at every level to become the best they can be and achieve the results they want whether in their personal or professional life. Today Executive coaching is recognised as one of the most effective ways to create dynamic, focused individuals and organisations. It is also?important to highlight that many people call themselves “Coach” while they do not have the certification nor the education to do so.?The choice of a certified coach is key for the coachee to have the result expected. It is a methodology that involves different coaching tools and only a certified coach is able to deploy as he has been trained for it.???

Fadi: You held different managerial positions in the past, from Buying and Merchandising to Business Development, Strategy and E-partnerships. What have you learnt during all of these years? and what helped you progress in your career?

Jenny: “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes, then learn how to do it later!”, these words pronounced by Sir Richard Branson gives the answer on the way I moved from a field to another without questioning myself if I was good enough for the role or not.?I have indeed held different managerial positions within a variety of work fields and responsibilities and I have never refused an opportunity even if?I was not familiar with the role itself. The reason on accepting each opportunity, even the scariest ones, was my strong ambition to learn and to grow to the point that failure was not even part of the plan. Failure is just a perception until you get things right. Failure is just an opportunity (a gift) to learn and to get brighter. During all of these years, I have learnt to be resilient, agile, confident, and versatile.?

To be able to grow, you will want to accept challenges and this starts from moving yourself away from your fears. The growth zone genuinely starts when you step out from your Comfort Zone. This can only be realized by having a vision, an ambition and a good level of self-confidence. ?

Helping people becoming the best version of themselves and being part of their transformation is priceless.?

Fadi: Have you ever had a mentor yourself? Anyone who coached you during your career?

Jenny: I have myself been coached through my work. I was among the “Happy few” selected from my corporation who was benefiting from coaching. It has been for me a life-changing experience. Without coaching, I would have never been able to dare reconsidering a new career shift and make this shift happens. Coaching has helped me raise some awareness about my identity, my values and my career aspirations. This is where I have learnt the most about myself. By knowing who you really are, you will be able to know where you want to go. And this is what happened to me! Surprisingly, coaching has also helped me forgive myself, to learn not to be hard on myself and not to take things personally. This was one of the reasons I decided to move to this path. Helping people becoming the best version of themselves and being part of their transformation is priceless.?

Fadi: I love the motto of Elevate, “The Feel Good Company”. It makes me feel good just reading the tagline! It is Brilliant. When you start a coaching session, what are the steps you take to make sure your client feels good?

Jenny: Helping the client feel good and confident is a journey. It all starts from within, spotting out what drains the energy of the client and finding what would increase their motivations is the very first step.?Understanding the stressor and the blockers is another step. My approach in incorporating mental strength to my coaching methodology helps clients to adopt to the right mindset, manage their thoughts and regulate their emotions in order for them to behave productively. This means the client will be able to focus their energy on the things that matter the most.?

You cannot control everything that happen to you in life, but you can control how you respond to hardship. When you are mentally strong, you already have the confidence in your ability to deal with whatever problems you face. You are able to turn challenges into opportunities for growth.?

Fadi: What advices would you give people who feel stuck in their life and don’t know what to do about it?

Jenny: Coaching is the most efficient way to get clarity in knowing what career shift is the right one for you, but before enrolling into a coaching program, I would let the client ask these questions to themselves first:

• How much are you willing to make your life different ?
• How ready are you to do all what it takes to get to the life you want?

If the client expressed their motivations, then coaching is the right tool for them to reach their objectives.?

Fadi: With a combined experience and expertise in retail luxury and coaching, How do you think your past experience shaped your new endeavour?

Jenny: As you correctly mentioned it, I have worked in different activities fields. I have built over the years the ability to develop agility, resilience, and confidence in a fast-paced and demanding work environment that helped me to perform and to achieve. It is now my turn to put in my expertise and help people overcome challenges and achieve their goals by unlocking their full potential.

Fadi: Can you name one person who has been an inspiration for you? How has this person been inspiring you?

Jenny: Novak Djokovic is definitely the person who made me feel like doing my job. Apart from innate skill levels, the key quality of Novak Djokovic is his mental toughness. He survived the bombing of Belgrade, rising from a war-torn childhood to becoming the best tennis player in the world. He has faced adversities on and off the court that have made him only stronger. Over the years, Djokovic has defeated the crowds, his physical issues, as well as his opponents on route to victory. This has made him an absolute mental giant, and one of the most inspiring players on tennis tour and in the sport competition industry globally. His discipline in living a balanced healthy life on daily basis made him the strongest advocate in promoting the power of nutrition and wellness on mental resilience- sharing the same values and beliefs of Elevate.?

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