Meet female founder Shira Baron, a remarkable local mom, whose career trajectory has evolved from law to leadership and career coaching!
Shira’s journey from a high-pressure legal career to becoming a leadership and career coach is truly inspiring. She specializes in helping clients gain clarity and direction in their professional lives using neuroscience-backed strategies. After realizing her passion for guiding others through career challenges, she pivoted from law to coaching, where she now empowers individuals, executives, and groups to achieve fulfilling and balanced careers. Get to know Shira’s story, her challenges, successes, and why this work creates impactful and life-changing experiences! Welcome, Shira!
Hi Shira! Please introduce yourself. Where are you from originally? What city do you live in now? What brought you here?
Hi, I’m Shira Baron! I am a Professional Co-Active Institute Coach. I have a Juris Doctorate from Fordham Law School and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from University of Michigan. I have three little kids and love all things outside, including: eating good food, walking, hiking, horseback riding, and traveling. I am an avid reader and TV watcher and recently started practicing hot yoga. I also really want a Bernese Mountain Dog, but haven’t convinced everyone else in my family to get one. Yet.
I am originally from St. Louis, spent many years in New York City, and moved to Chicago in 2019. We moved to Chicago because of a few different things happening at once: my husband and I were both ready for a career shift, I was pregnant with my second kiddo and we were living in a one-bedroom apartment with a two-year old, and the midwest is the best.
Please introduce your business, Shira Baron Coaching!
I am so excited to talk with you and your readers! I am a leadership and career coach. I specialize in using neuroscience backed strategies to help my clients get really clear on what they want in their professional lives.
When I started coaching, I didn’t know what type of coach I wanted to be. I was open to coaching anyone and everyone. But after coaching for only a few months, it became clear that I was drawn to coaching clients who were struggling with their career trajectories. I decided to niche in career and leadership coaching and now I coach individuals, executives, leaders, and groups.
What did you do before starting Shira Baron Coaching and why did you decide to forge a career in leadership and career coaching?
After a decade of practicing civil and criminal law, I hit a wall. I chose to become a lawyer as a teenager, but as my career progressed, my life changed shape as well. In my mid-thirties, I found myself stressed and overwhelmed, trying to balance the challenges of parenting while deeply immersed in a career that did not feel right for me. I had no clue what to do next. I felt completely lost.
Through working with my own career coach, I found my way to becoming a career coach. It did not happen overnight. It also did not happen in a way I expected. My coach did not help me discover the unicorn job that I never knew existed. She didn’t help me uncover the buried skillset that I had been hoping to find. BUT she did help me completely shift my perspective on what a job should look and feel like. She helped me use my values and career goals as a lens to see a new career path that could be rewarding, fulfilling, and energizing. Ultimately, I realized I wanted to be a coach and business owner. Coaching was the career I had been searching for, but it had never occurred to me until I worked with a coach myself.
You work with both men and women, however, we’re curious to learn how your personal experience as a professional and parent has impacted your work with women similarly situated to you?
As a lawyer, my favorite part of advocating for my clients was the portion of time I spent talking with them and learning about their lives. When I decided to leave the legal world, I knew I needed a career that capitalized on my natural skill of rapport building, my very curious and interested nature, and my desire to help other people. Coaching allows me to use my skill sets in the most natural way possible. And what is especially important to me is how it gives me an opportunity to work with women who feel stuck and uncertain in their next steps and help them reconnect with their identities and values in order to create a future where their careers and lives complement and balance one another. Ultimately, I get to be a guide for these women on their path to finding their fulfilling and balanced career trajectory. How lucky am I?!
Starting your own coaching business must have been quite a journey. What were the biggest hurdles you faced, and how did you conquer them to establish your thriving practice?
The first time I considered being a coach, I had so many doubts about my ability to put myself out there and be vulnerable to rejection or my business not taking off that I immediately rejected the idea. But it was only a few months later that I reconsidered coaching after a specific homework assignment from my coach made it so abundantly clear that a coaching career was perfectly aligned with what I was seeking – a job that optimized my natural skills, was stimulating, and gave me the autonomy and flexibility that I was seeking.
So I took baby steps. I read a book. I took a class. I signed up for coach training. I practiced coaching with my friends. And finally I established Shira Baron Coaching and started putting myself out there. Some ways I put myself out there felt very authentic and others felt really uncomfortable. With a lot of trial and error, I am now able to grow my business in a way that feels really good to me and is successful.
Women encounter numerous hurdles in their careers. How do you tackle these head-on through your coaching, ensuring they emerge stronger and more empowered?
What a good question! Women encounter SO many unique challenges in the workforce. I just started writing them and stopped because my list was getting ridiculously long! Here’s what I do with my clients facing these types of hurdles (and what I do with all my clients because everyone has hurdles!):
My client and I get very clear on the challenges they are experiencing and, based on those, we come up with the three top goals they want to achieve during our time working together. We flesh out the goals so that we are crystal clear on their significance to my client and what the results look like in actuality. We talk about barriers to achieving the goals. And then we spend a lot of time exploring, optimizing and utilizing their unique skillsets and values to develop an action plan to achieve their goals and overcome the barriers. The most rewarding part of the coaching experience for me is that I get to be their accountability partner through the whole process and support them as they impressively achieve each goal.
Share a standout moment or success story from your coaching experience that truly embodies the impact you make in your clients’ lives.
Mark came to me at a point of crisis: he had been working at the high-powered job he had always thought was his dream career, but it just wasn’t what he thought it would be. Some days he liked the work, but a lot of days he found it draining and frustrating. He was feeling incredibly unfulfilled. Although hard to admit, the dream job wasn’t what he had envisioned, but it was stable and still had its good moments. He felt very conflicted over whether he should leave or stay. So he came to me.
Our work together first focused on figuring out what he actually wanted to get out of his career. We dug into what he wanted to achieve in his work in the long-term and in who he wanted to be in that job. We talked about how his personal life and job would ideally fit together. It didn’t take long for Mark to realize that the high-powered job did not align with his sense of self, his goal of enjoying his days, or his long-term career vision. Then we began the exploration of identifying what career would be fulfilling, energizing, and fit his lifestyle. This process was significant and the meat of our work together, but once Mark landed on what he wanted to do next, we figured out the action plan. Then we identified the first step to getting there. I held him accountable in committing to that first step. Then the next. Then the next.
He quit his job. He is taking some time to pursue a career that he knows will bring him purpose and joy and allow him time to spend with his family. We finished our coaching sessions and committed to staying in close touch.
You offer both 1:1 sessions and dynamic group workshops. How do these formats synergize to propel your clients toward their professional goals?
I love one-on-one and group work!
One-on-one sessions give my clients and me the space for a unique and undivided connection that allows us to get into a zone where we focus solely on them. One-on-one coaching allows for intense creativity, deep thinking about oneself, and individualized attention.
Group coaching allows the group to form deep connections in an incredibly powerful, validating, and supportive way. Our group forms a special dynamic that allows for vulnerability, reflection, and impactful change.
The coolest part is that both types of coaching are designed for clients to achieve their goals and make lasting change.
What has been the hardest part of being a small business owner?
At the end of the day, I am running Shira Baron Coaching all on my own. There are so many benefits to this, but I really miss having colleagues and peers with whom collaboration happened so easily and organically. This has led me to making friendships a top priority and connecting with other coaches regularly. This fills my cup in a similar way, but I often still wish I could just go drop by my colleagues office with a quick question or just to say “hi.”
What’s on the horizon for your line of work?
Ahh so many fun things (I still cannot believe I find work fun!). I am working with several nonprofits and businesses to develop coaching programs and collaborations. These include group-coaching around issues that are indirectly connected to careers (imposter syndrome, being present, stress/anxiety), providing performance plan coaching for employees who are struggling, providing leadership and executive coaching, as well as offering coaching to employees as part of a company benefit package.
How do you want our readers to reach you?
Reach out to me at [email protected], www.shirabaroncoaching.com, or any of my social media accounts: Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook