On Smashing The Jolly Rancher, and Other Coaching-Related Revelations

Sarah Trocchio • February 20, 2022
On Smashing The Jolly Rancher, and Other Coaching-Related Revelations

A few days ago, my four year old daughter came bounding into the house, carrying a decorated paper bag containing all the contents of her Valentine’s day party at school, a plethora of treats and cards, and stamps, and plastic lips and stickers. She walked to the kitchen table and dove in excitedly with one of her little fingers. I could hear her parting the sea of the bag’s contents, and as she did, I could see it on her face-- she found a coveted item-- a hard, shiny, perfectly wrapped orange Jolly Rancher. “Can I have this!?” she asked me, eyes wide with excitement.

 

My partner and I have avoided giving our kid hard candy until now-- it takes a certain kind of muscle development to safely, and we’re not quite sure she’s got the skills just yet. Allowing her to just throw the whole thing in her mouth felt foolish. The obvious choice was to allow her to take a potentially dangerous risk, or to take no risk at all. Yes or no. Open it or toss it. Option A or B. Neither felt quite right apart from them being instinctive, almost obvious choices.


 The thing is, for all my education and training, my brain still often wants to reduce decisions, particularly decisions around risk, as binary: stay or go. Persist or give up. There are lots of reasons for this, reasons that have been thoughtfully examined in psychological research (if you’re a nerd and feeling curious to learn more, check out contributions on heuristics). 


Anyways, I never set out to add “career coach” to my professional title. I certainly never envisioned having a specialty like "values alignment"? I mean come on, what is that even? But I also bet that many of you didn't expect to get hooked on your favorite Peloton instructor or adopt a second pandemic pup. As with much of life’s magic, It just sort of happened.


My coaching clients are magical. Even though they are a diverse lot of academics, they all come to me because something is already swirling in them, something that doesn’t feel quite right or quite fully explored. A lot of that swirling is rightfully centered on what feels broken about higher education right now. And as I’ve talked to more and more academics, I’ve found that our common experiences and language, and the breaking of academic status-conventions afforded by coaching conversations, have the potential to be deeply liberating. 


I’ve also always been an activator, someone that likes being in the ground swell, and the necessary discomfort of personal & social change. Part of the necessary discomfort starts with the practice of illuminating. I've always wanted to help expose and uncover, to collaborate as earnestly as possible by simply talking deeply with others, and it turns out coaching activates many of those favorite parts of myself. It also helped me realize that I had to slow the f down for a second to figure that out. But I did, and I'm grateful, and I want that for others for a multitude of reasons, some of which are discretely connected to my disciplinary training and expertise as an inequity scholar. 


It also just feels really good to be myself, and by that I mean to really direct energy towards who I am and what I care the most about. And I’ve discovered that being able to support a little more joy and love among a group that never gets either enough of either in so much of the academic experience is deeply rewarding. 


So here I am. I am an academic & a career coach specializing in values alignment and I love it. And not because it's all I am or will ever do, but because holding space for academics to get real about their core values and how they can best be activated to prompt greater professional freedom in higher & ed & beyond, is immensely creative, stimulating, and satisfying.



And now, back to kid & the jolly rancher. A simple choice with simple options it seemed. Allow a big risk, or take none. But coaching has taught me differently, and the positive ripple effects are everywhere in my life. I grabbed a mug from our cupboard, put that one piece of hard candy on a paper plate, and crushed the hell out of it until it shattered into 40 pieces of tiny sugar crystals. This small act of creativity brought immediate delight to my gem-loving kiddo, as she pressed her fingertips onto the plate to scoop up the tasty, glistening pieces. This story is as much about parenting as it is about coaching, as much about our default patterns for thinking about problems and solutions, and the power of holding space for curiosity. I invite you to do the same.


Entrepreneurship & Joy

What the French?! Sarah's Reflections on Entrepreneurship & Joy

By Sarah Trocchio • September 2, 2022
This summer I read Trudi LeBron’s “ Anti-Racist Business Book .” Even though I’ve been coaching for about a year and a half at this point, I hadn’t read one fucking business-related book until a month ago. This was on purpose. I have a history of getting a bit emphatically vocational about shit, like pursuing a doctoral degree, or increasingly becoming known as a chronic dog rescuer. Anyone that knows me knows that I can get a little intense about things I believe in. With all of this in mind, I decided to spend at least a year just focusing on improving my coaching skills and getting as much experience as I could get. I didn’t want to also have to reckon with the fact that if I were ever to make this THE thing that I did professionally, I would have to *directly* participate in the sheer capitalism of it all. Surely that had to be much, much worse than being a professor teaching about and researching inequality. More morally bankrupt. Less substantial. In avoiding any real discourse on business apart from one tiny podcast that I allowed myself to digest once a month, I kept some real identity-based distance between myself and “entrepreneurship.” What’s with the French anyways? Now, well over a year since taking on my first paid client, I’m in a completely different place. You wanna know why? Cause I fell in love with coaching and as is the case with many other kinds of love, that falling also necessitated some serious reckoning with who I am, what I believe in, what I can forsake, what makes me happy, and what I can not endure. In particular, I had to deeply interrogate whether or not I had been wrong about my previous way of thinking about the world and my involvement in it. LeBron’s work really, really helped understand the short-sightedness with which I had thought about being something like a business owner. Charging people for shit I made or provided to them. That just sounded so---scandalous. But you know what else is also true? I now have the opportunity to have the same moral compass as my employer. My employer is my coaching practice. My coaching practice is my moral compass, in verb form. It is the first time I’ve ever gotten to know with absolute certainty that the policy decisions I believe need to be made, will be made. Where I can wrestle with a hard equity or ethics issue and know that at least I’m sparring with the nuances, on the margins of ethical boundaries that are most closely aligned with who the fuck I am. I am not bullied or gaslit. It is work that requires deep care and attention. Most of it is not easy and yet it is ease-full because there is no questioning or undercutting of my priorities. When there are celebrations-- a new job offer for a client, a sweet thank you letter from a coaching alum, a text from a friend that they are proud of what I’m doing, I know it’s all going just as it should be. There is a spaciousness and a sense of renewing wonder about it all. My clients are the fucking best. Most of them are women who have been subject to the particular cruelty of academia’s grandest irony-- that it perpetuates systemic harms while fashioning itself as the cure for outdated & problematic thinking. For as free as I thought I would feel in academia, this sensation of rippling far eclipses even my most incredible daydream I had. That’s why I want more of it. I encourage you to check out “The AntiRacist Business Book” & support LeBron’s work if it resonates with you. I also encourage you to check out how our coaching can help prompt and nurture these kinds of joy-filled & impactful revelations, in addition to offering the hands-on support from two academics-turned coaches who have successfully traveled down a similar path as you dip your toe into your first new adventure, either within or outside of academia. with love, Sarah

Are Your Summer Scaries Ramping Up? Sarah's Here to Drop Some  Love

By Sarah Trocchio • August 3, 2022
Hello Dear Ones! It's almost August, can you freaking believe it? Some of you may know me for my day job as a professor. I am a sociologist by training. I am an expert in institutional racism and sexism. I’m a fast-talking Northeastern half Middle-Eastern half Italian, Virgo, & Sephardic Jew with 5 tattoos and a love for never too dainty floral prints and fun AF earrings. Proof below.