Caterina Perry is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with her. She impressed us with her professionalism and dedication.

She is committed to equipping leaders with practical tools, strategies and skills to handle current and future workplace challenges with resilience. Today leaders are being challenged like never before. A lack of self confidence, a fear of failure, maintaining authenticity, humble self promotion, impatience, resistance to new ideas, or overcoming impostor syndrome, can be potential roadblocks to leadership success.

Her approach is focused on helping people increase their Emotional Intelligence. As a result, that improves their self confidence, thinking patterns, relationships, and overall happiness.

She says that she is an over achiever but that might be an understatement. Here is what she said.

Meet Life Coach Caterina Perry:

Name: Caterina Perry

Pillar: The Spirit, The Mind, The Heart

Who is this coach for: Leaders or aspiring leaders.

How they can help: By using a scientifically supported, holistic brain based approach to facilitate enhanced workplace performance, learning and development through a combination of coaching, mentoring, training, and consulting.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these Pandemic times?

It’s easy to get comfortable and take life for granted when everything is going smoothly.

Going through the Pandemic gave myself and my family a renewed appreciation for what really matters and how fortunate we are.

We didn’t sweat the small stuff and found ways to maintain and even enhance our relationships.

We are grateful to have made it through stronger than we went in but recognize and empathize with those who were not as fortunate.

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your clients? Did it affect you at all?

The emotional and psychological impact of losing your job or having to lay off good employees during the Pandemic was felt by many of my clients.

Others struggled because they were not prepared to go virtual, especially in an environment where they were already still learning how to effectively lead multi generational teams.

Today, my clients are trying to determine what the new normal looks like.

For me, the Pandemic gave me the opportunity to determine how I wanted to spend my time.

My experience leading people through change in a virtual setting was I high demand (for 10 years, I successfully led a team that was geographically disbursed across 5 different countries in Europe).

The Pandemic made me shift gears, to leave my leadership role and dedicate full time effort to my coaching practice.

What are the biggest lessons that you learned in this pandemic?

1. I have spent years listening to leaders say, “we can’t work virtually.”

The pandemic proved everyone wrong.

The question then is, if we were wrong about that, what else are we wrong about?

2. Many people struggled with mental health issues during the Pandemic.

Some say that the Pandemic caused the problem.

I believe, the Pandemic revealed problems that were already there.

The Origin:

Tell us about you, your career, how you started with your coaching career?

One day, some friends asked me to go to a True Colors workshop with them.

I thought I was going to be learning about what colors I should be wearing.

The workshop was actually about personalities.

It was during that session that I developed an unquenchable thirst for understanding human behaviour.

I pursued qualifications to administer different types of psychological assessments, studied with renowned author and contributor to The Secret, Bob Proctor, learned how to trust in myself from Robin Sharma, author of “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”, became a Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Practioner and rounded it off with Foundations in Neuroleadership.

I pursued all of this to enhance my performance as a leader, however, others kept coming to me for coaching and support, so you could say that my coaching career found me.

What was your biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?

English was not my first language, so I struggled in school.

My report cards always read the same: “Nice kid, isn’t going to amount to much.”

One day, out of desperation, my mother sent me to school with candy to help me make friends.

It worked like a charm, until the candy was gone that is.

That is when the “friends” disappeared.

That’s also when I realized that I was on my own.

My fate was in my hands.

That’s where the title to my book, Now That the Candy’s Gone: Mastering the Art of Self-Confidence comes from.

In the book, I explain that even though I achieved great success in life, I spent most of it suffering from the imposter syndrome, i.e. scared that someone would figure out that I was a fraud so I conditioned myself to overperform as protection.

Even though I overcame those worries, I still overperform so I can say that it did affect who I am.

The Coaching Style:

How do you innovate with coaching your clients?

I innovate with my coaching clients by supporting the enhancement of their emotional intelligence skills.

1. Increasing the ability to stay calm under pressure and handle stress.

2. Enhancing the ability to develop productive relationships, influence others to effectively resolve conflicts, garner cooperation and boost negotiation skills.

3. Helping my clients understand and interpret workplace behaviours to create a culture of team trust and loyalty for peak career performance.

An area that I’m also very passionate about is Career Transition.

As an expert in recruitment, I prime my clients for a highly competitive job market using a personally accumulated arsenal of proven tools, strategies and techniques.

My goal for these clients is to give them a competitive edge against all other candidates.

In that regard, I thrive on being able to succeed where others have failed.

What’s unique about your coaching approach?

I use a scientifically supported, holistic brain based approach to facilitate enhanced workplace performance, learning and development through a combination of coaching, mentoring, training, and consulting.

What benefits do your clients get after working with you?

In the short term, after a session, my clients report being:

1. More confident, with clearer vision and focus.

2. Inspired with a heightened energy level.

3. Eager to try strategies they would not have thought of.

In the long term, my clients have elevated emotional intelligence.

They feel more confident and enjoy enhanced relationships.

Return on investment is important to me which is why the benefits of my coaching are measurable and reportable through the use of baseline and follow up assessments.

Do you use any specific tools to be efficient with your clients?

I do.

I use a variety of psychometric assessment tools, but the BarOn EQi2.0 Emotional Intelligence Assessment is my favourite.

The Impact:

If you had a super megaphone that, when you speak into, the whole world will hear your message, what would you say?

The key to personal and professional resiliency is Emotional Intelligence.

What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your life?

I spent a short time in the military.

During that period, I learned never to say the words, “I can’t”.

Every time I did, I was proven wrong.

Your final thoughts?

Careful about what you think, because,

What you think affects what you feel…

What you feel affects what you do and…

What you do affects the results you get in life.

The more you repeat what you do, the more likely that the behaviour becomes part of whom you see yourself to be.

Where Can You Find Caterina Perry?

If you liked this interview and you would love to learn Emotional Intelligence, go to www.caterinaperry.com and discover how she can help you.

If you like to increase your competitive edge in the job market, go to www.ysu.ca.

If you are a leader and would want to participate in one of Caterina’s projects, go to www.perceptionality.ca and apply.

If you like to connect more personally with her, you can do that through LinkedIn.

To catch a glimpse of her coaching, check her Facebook page and Instagram account. She also has an active YouTube channel where she shares nuggets of value. It was an honor having this interview with her.