Career Growth Advice from Kea Meyers Duggan, Career Development Leader | Career Tips for Women in Career Development

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 23
Featuring Kea Meyers Duggan

Episode Title: #23 Career Podcast Featuring Kea Meyers Duggan, a Professional Life Coach Who Helps Women Break Through Barriers to have Successful Careers they Love

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Kea Meyers Duggan



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you, encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Thanks for tuning in. Today my guest is Kea Meyers Duggan. Kea is a successful life and career coach who helps women stop working in jobs they hate and helps them plan a career change with confidence. Kea, thank you for being here.

Kea Meyers Duggan (Guest): Thank you, Mary. I'm so glad to be talking to you today. Thanks for the invite.

Mary Killelea: Awesome. All right. So let's get started by having you help us understand what exactly is a life coach and a career coach.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah. So, without sounding airy-fairy, a life and career coach is someone who partners with their clients to really help them get to the root of what hurts, why, and help them to discover the tools and resources and knowledge that they already have within them and the potential that's already living within them and help them uncover that, help them to uncover truth to then help them to have the permission to say what they want and take steps to planning and transforming to get from where they are to where they want to be.

Mary Killelea: That is a great explanation or description of it because I think it's so vital. I find that just knowing my own experience as well as peers or friends, we self-sabotage.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Oh, yes.

Mary Killelea: Yes. And so if a person like you can come in and help us see that, admit it, and, you know, and then get past it, I think that's amazing.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we are our own worst enemy.

Mary Killelea: Definitely. How did you get started in this?

Kea Meyers Duggan: It’s so interesting because I actually wanted to be a therapist or thought I wanted to be a therapist. And actually one of your other guests, Katie Kelly, was my reference point for this. And I knew that she had been a therapist and I talked to her about it and she was like, nope, you do not want to do that. But she's like, have you ever thought about becoming a life coach? And honestly, Mary, at the time, I didn't know that was a thing. I was like, people get paid to do that? Like, really? And so I really, I pooh-poohed it initially. I was like, no, I think I'm just going to stay on my path. So there was a few years gap, I would say probably between learning about life coaching and actually doing something about it was probably about five or six years before I was open to coming back to the idea of being a coach.

Mary Killelea: So now that you've gotten past it and you decided to become one, what was that like?

Kea Meyers Duggan: It was really eye-opening. And first of all, what I realized once I came back to it and decided, okay, yes, this is a path that I'm going to follow. What I realized, and this is going to sound familiar based on what we were just saying, what I realized was the reason I discounted the notion of becoming a life coach initially was fear. All the unknowns, right? How am I going to make money doing this? This is a thing. What are people going to think? And then the fear of what is it going to take to get there? What am I going to learn in the process of doing it? And so that was really the first thing because once I was open to it and decided to start going through the process of learning what it meant to be a coach and what the modality was actually like, it was so enlightening. It was so enlightening. And again, from that enlightenment, I said, oh, well, now I understand why I didn't do this initially because it's scary. It's scary to make a big career pivot like that. And I've made career pivots before, but that was a new one. But I'm glad that I stuck with it and continued forward.

Mary Killelea: Don't you think sometimes the career pivots that are the most meaningful to us, we resist the most sometimes because we like, one, we don't want to fail, but we really don't want to fail at the thing we think we're going to toss about.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah. And that calls to mind a quote, it's a long quote, but just this short passage from Marianne Williamson, where she essentially is saying, we're more afraid of our light than our darkness. Essentially meaning we're more afraid of our greatness and all the good things and the fulfillment that is waiting for us than the things that we really don't like about ourselves or criticize ourselves for.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that is so true. So what are some of the services that you offer your clients?

Kea Meyers Duggan: So at a very high level, the main service offering for my clients is private one-on-one coaching, which covers a wide range of sub-services all the way from really transformational life coaching to career pivot advice to personal branding advice. But then also I offer workshops, and this is not just for clients, but for clients and people who are prospective clients or people who are just interested in my insights. So, I do offer workshops as well. But in 2021, I will be starting or launching a group coaching offering, which has kind of been in demand for a while. And I've been resisting, but I'm finally going to add that to my portfolio.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. Do you cater to just women or do you have female, male, and do the ages range?

Kea Meyers Duggan: I do primarily work with women. I have worked with men though. And then age ranges, most of my clients fall into the late 30s to mid to late 40s, which is kind of prime career pivoting age range. But I've had very young clients. I've had clients who are pretty early in their careers, but because there's so much information out there about being on the right career path and self-awareness, people are tuning into that much sooner I'm finding, and having the courage to pursue that much sooner than people of my generation. So yeah, the age ranges and gender do vary, but there are some themes.

Mary Killelea: Is there like something common, like a common theme that you see amongst your clients?

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah, I would say the two biggest things, and obviously there are subsets that fall underneath these big themes, but I would say the two biggest themes are fear and all that's encompassed in that. Usually, it's fear of failure and fear of what other people will think about what they're going to do. And fear of admitting what they want. That's the other big thing that ends up coming up a lot in coaching. So fear, but then also lack of self-awareness. Our culture is very much hustle, achieve, grind. And because we're so focused on achievement, we don't take time to do any self-reflection on what's stressing us out, what's overwhelming, what's angry, what's worrisome. It's just, no, I'm just going to keep pushing. I'm just going to keep pushing. So lack of self-awareness is a theme that comes up quite a bit in coaching.

Mary Killelea: Interesting. What's been some of the biggest challenges you faced in your own career journey?

Kea Meyers Duggan: Myself. I really went, and this is the thing that I like to tell my clients, and I think this is what helps with breakthroughs sometimes, is there's a perception that coaches have it all figured out. Like, oh, you couldn't possibly be dealing with these things because you're helping me. And I would say that that's actually what helped me to help my clients is that my clients are some version of me at some point on my career journey. So, I'm always very clear that I either am dealing with or have dealt with the same challenges that my clients are dealing with. There is a common saying that comes up among coaches is that we coach the people that are dealing with the things that we're working on. So that comes up a lot. But just to answer your question, I'm my own worst enemy. My overachieving, my type A-ness, which I would say I'm recovering. I have moments and stretches where I'm really good about not pushing myself so hard and about maintaining my boundaries that I set. And then I get really overconfident when things have been going really smoothly. And then it's like, oh, I'm just, I'm going to keep adding these things on. And then because I just keep pushing and driving through, then I look up and I'm like, oh, wait, I'm really, I'm feeling kind of burned out right now. So, I get in my own way a lot.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I can relate to that. What advice do you have for women who feel trapped in their current careers?

Kea Meyers Duggan: The thing that I share with either current clients or people who are thinking of becoming clients or just people who I encounter who come up to me with this question is you have to check in with yourself. Like I was saying before, there is this temptation. There is this belief that we have to be hard charging all the time. And when that happens, which is usually us being on autopilot, being on this automatic programming so often, is that we don't take time to check in with ourselves on what hurts right now. What is it that has me feeling trapped? What is it that has me feeling so overwhelmed, so stressed, so distraught about the career path that I'm on right now? And because we don't take that time to ask ourselves those questions, often we don't ask them because we're afraid of what the answer is going to be. But in order to get to the other side, you have to take the time to do that check-in. There's something that one of my early coaches said to me is what's in the way is the way. And that's what checking in with yourself affords you the opportunity to do is to see what that thing is that's in the way and start taking those bricks of that wall down piece by piece so that you can get to the other side. Because everything that you're waiting for, everything that you've been dreaming about, talking about, wishing for, journaling about, is on the other side of that. So, I really do invite people to check in with themselves, ask themselves those tough questions, and stick with the answer.

Mary Killelea: Good advice. Right now, there's a lot of women who put their careers on pause because of COVID or just making their families their priority, which I get and I respect and I think that's awesome. But women are really getting hit hard in the workforce. What can they do for themselves during this time that they pause their careers so that they're engaged and when it is the right time to transition back into work, it won't be so hard?

Kea Meyers Duggan: My answer to this is going to be similar is doing this check-in, but not just the check-in of what hurts because this is a little bit of a different situation, but checking in with what is really important. What are my core values? Because our core value, those top three to five personal requirements that have to be met and what this time is showing us is that we have been using work and all the distractions that we don't have anymore, going to the movies, going out for nice dinners and happy hours with friends and all the things that have been stripped away because of COVID. We use those as ways to distract and ignore and step over the things that are really burning for us and so now, we have no choice but to pay attention to what's out of alignment. So for those women, my guidance is to really tune into what is really important to you. That's what this time has showed us is what is vitally important to us. So check in on that. Tune in to that. What is mandatory for me and what's noise or what are nice to have? And what are the ideal scenarios that you would like to see come forward when we get back to some semblance of regularity or normal so that you can with confidence start to create new situations, new set, new boundaries for yourself with the knowledge that you have honed during this time.

Mary Killelea: Have you seen a rise in people reaching out to you in this time or do you?

Kea Meyers Duggan: I will, I will actually say that this is the busiest I've ever been. I wasn't sure what it was going to look like, but I will say this time is the busiest I have ever been because, like I said, because you've been working from home and in many cases there is more pressure, either perceived or real, more pressure to complete tasks, to be, and I'm using air quotes here, to be on. And as a result of that, people are really for the first time honestly looking at themselves in the mirror and are like, this is decidedly not working for me. And so that is, that is ramping up the calls and the emails that I've been getting, the enrollment in workshops that I've been hosting and requests to have a discovery session on if coaching is right for them. So yes, this is the busiest I've ever been for that exact reason.

Mary Killelea: Oh, that's so interesting. And I'm so glad. I really am glad because I think people need people like you. And I think that's wonderful that people are doing some self-discovery. So

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: So I read that you're an active volunteer. Can talk about some of the things that you've been a part of and I guess explain why they align or how they align to your passions and why is it important for others to volunteer?

Kea Meyers Duggan: So a lot of my volunteering right now, there's two, actually there's one that is really alive right now. And that passion is rooted in my passion for social justice. And so, I actually was just appointed as a new member of the Portland committee on community engaged policing, which is while I was appointed by the mayor and the city council, it is a volunteer role. And the sole purpose of this role is to partner with the community and the police to find ways to build trust, to build respect, to build human connections, right? There's a lot of othering that is happening. And everyone is really planted in their position. But what I am seeing, and some of this is an observation because of my training as a coach is there's a lot of talking past each other and not really conversations to talk to each other, to figure out what is what's missing, what do we need, what is not working. And I mean, it's very clear on what isn't working, but this committee's role is to try to build those bridges between the community and the police so that there's, like I said, that human connection. So that is something that is taking up a lot of my time right now, but in all the best ways, because it feels really good to be able to take action and to be on the front lines of proposing recommendations to the police department that come from the community of this is what we need from you. This is what we need to see.

But the thing that I will say of why, why I enjoy doing this, but also why it's important for other people to really decide what lane they want to be in, in terms of volunteering is when you pay attention to your passion, sometimes that provides clarity on what your purpose is. Because that's one of the questions or frustrations that I get from clients is they know that they want to do something else. They just don't know what that thing is. And sometimes, or oftentimes it's because we don't take time, like I said, because of that hard charging nature, we don't take time to dream. We don't take time to think about what is it that I really enjoy? What feels really good to be doing? And when you do volunteering, that's one way to really get clarity on what your purpose might be. But volunteering is also really important, Mary, because oftentimes we're in jobs that are not fulfilling for us, and there may not be an immediate solution because you're not clear on what's next. But volunteering can be a way for you to find fulfillment in other ways that maybe makes your nine to five more tolerable.

Mary Killelea: Right. Yeah, no, that's great. And thank you for doing the volunteering that you're doing, because it is so very important.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Mary Killelea: How do you define success?

Kea Meyers Duggan: Oh, this is my favorite question. I am because everyone defines success differently. And I think, but there is this unspoken definition of what success is. And sometimes that is the thing that has people feeling trapped or has them feel like they have fallen behind or are behind. Right? And so, the way that I define success, and once I clued into this, it was a game changer. I define success as having choices or freedom, and freedom is actually one of my core values. When you have clarity, and you know what you want to do, that means you have choices. You have choices of the ways that you can make good on that knowledge. So that's how I define success is having a choice or having choices.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's wonderful. That's so funny, because I always tell my kids, part of education is it creates options for you. It's just, once you have options, you have choices, you're, the world opens up to you.

Kea Meyers Duggan: It really does. That's so right. That's so right.

Mary Killelea: What would you say to skeptics of life coaches?

Kea Meyers Duggan: So in true coaching form, I think I would respond with a question. The first question is, have you tried it? And actually, before I even go further on that, is it is true that there, just as with anything, there are people who call themselves coaches who have not gone through certification programs, which I have, or don't have any training or are really early in their careers, and they don't have the experience that makes coaching so rich, right? So, they don't have a lot to draw on. So sometimes the skepticism of coaches or coaching is warranted, but I would just then say, have you tried it? Two, have you done the research? Have you done the research to see what coaching brings forward for people? As you've been talking about the self discovery, right? Like, have you done that research? But then also the next question would be, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid will come forward if you do that work to get that experience? You do that work to look at yourself in the mirror without rose colored glasses on.

Mary Killelea: What's been one of the best pieces of business advice that you've received?

Kea Meyers Duggan: Oh, so much. I've gotten so much good guidance over the years. But I would say, really, there's two. The first piece of advice that was really helpful for me was to manage up, down, and across. One of my clients in my pre coaching career was Intel, and we had to be on top of our feet and be thinking five steps ahead every time, but managing expectations is so important. And so that has served me so well in my career, that advice. But I would say the number two piece of advice that has been so important to me and has been so helpful is to use your emotions to step into your power. Sometimes people feel like it's that you have to like dim or really push down your emotions and what's coming forward so that you do and mostly for women, right? Because the feeling is that, oh, I can't appear unstable, right? I can't appear too emotional or too worked up about something. But there is power in really tapping into what is this about? Like, what is this trying to tell me? Because then when you can key in on that, then that allows you to step into your power in untold ways. So really using emotions as a stepping stone as opposed to a hindrance has been a great piece of advice for me as well.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. So this next question, I like to ask all my guests, what does to be bolder mean to you?

Kea Meyers Duggan: To me, that means living with, acting with, speaking with, authenticity and integrity. I mean, that's the first thing that comes to mind when you say that.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Kea Meyers Duggan: Oh, what would I tell my 20 year old self? Two things. One, I would say, practice setting your boundaries now. It gets real hard when you're in your mid 40s to do that. So, work on setting your boundaries. Work that muscle. The finish line always moves. So you just have to keep re-upping that. And the other thing I would say, and I saw this on an Instagram post, and it has just stuck with me because it's true. No one cares as much as you think they do. When you're belly aching about, oh, well, if I send the email this way, or if I post about this, or if I don't post, if I don't post for five days, people are going to think, I don't know, five days, people are going to think, I don't know what I'm doing. You know what? No one is checking for you. No one cares as much as you think they do. And it may sound crass, but really no one is thinking about you like that. People have their own stuff to deal with. They don't, they don't have time to think about and worry about what you're doing too.

Mary Killelea: Oh, that is so true. We get so caught up in ourselves.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Oh my goodness. I know. I know.

Mary Killelea: Okay. Second to last question. Who's been your biggest inspiration?

Kea Meyers Duggan: My parents. And that may sound trite, but my parents have set such a wonderful example for me. And of course I appreciate it now. I may not have appreciated it as my 20 year old self or my like 15 year old self, but now, oh my gosh, like I, some key lessons from them just have guided my career and steps that I have taken. And they guide how I act in my relationships, how I show up in life. Yeah, they have their guidance and just who and how they are have been my biggest inspiration for sure.

Mary Killelea: Well, I hope they hear this. How can people get in touch with you? It's been so awesome getting to hear what you do, learn about your business. So how can someone learn more?

Kea Meyers Duggan: Yeah. The best way to get in touch with me and to learn more about me is to go to my website, keameyersduggan.com, K-E-A-M-E-Y-E-R-S-D-U-G-G-A-N.com. And they'll learn about career makeovers. You can learn more about my group coaching program that is soon to launch. So yeah, my website is the best place.

Mary Killelea: Awesome. Well, thank you so very, very much for being on the show today. It's been a pleasure.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Thank you, Mary. I've really enjoyed our conversation. This was so much fun.

Mary Killelea: Good. Thanks.

Kea Meyers Duggan: Thank you.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number 2, little b, bolder.com.