Work With Me

Your career path winds its way through your life with the choices you make and relationships you nurture. Sometimes, finding clarity is a challenge. Martina can help you sort through your path to find the nuggets and gems that will help you build a strong foundation for your career path, no matter what comes your way.

Whether you’re considering or struggling with a career change or starting an entrepreneurial adventure, you’ll most likely find yourself faced with challenges that you did not foresee.  Change is a learning journey. Resilience comes from first, knowing yourself at your core: your competencies, skills, values, interests, and challenges. Second, your ability to communicate your professional story competently and confidently to connect with fitting opportunities or customers.  Third, the place; the market that needs you. And fourth, the resources and relationships to bring it to life.

The only difference between the career change and entrepreneur journey, is that as an entrepreneur you’ll need to work through all 4 elements twice: once for you and once for your business offer!

Martina Will Help You:

  • Clarify your career path options
  • Connect to research resources to access the information you need to make an informed choice
  • Evaluate your career path options to determine your, best, next career move
  • Prepare your career path communication plan and strategy for moving forward
  • Write your communications/marketing materials (resumes, cover letters, networking communications, LinkedIn profile)
  • Prepare and Practice for networking and interview activities
  • Assess and refresh your activities as you move through the learning journey of job search, career change exploration and/or entrepreneurship
  • Celebrate the wins and Challenge you to stretch & grow in your career path journey: To ebb and flow with what emerges as you learn.

My process and philosophy

Noomii Interview Transcript

Hi, my name is Carolyn with Noomii.com, the professional coach directory. Today I am interviewing Martina Payette in Calgary. Martina, how are you?

I’m well, thanks for having me.

Thanks for joining us. Can you start by describing your ideal client?

Yeah, my ideal client really is someone who is stuck getting off the ground. I kind of compare it to a balloon ride. So, there’s the stuck on the ground, [they] don’t know how to get started, to get up and launch their plans. And then there’s also the other side of sort of being up in the air and having a great time and discovering a leak, or not really knowing where they’re gonna land. And really I’m that person that brings the anchor to that process. So, [I] give them the hope and the safety net to really get started and to either find that place to land, or to get started on the journey itself.

Awesome, that’s a great analogy! Can you tell us a little about the process you use to help your clients?

Yeah, I think it’s a real creative process. I’ve been in career development for other 20 years, and so that together with coaching practices that really look at your whole self. So, a lot of time someone who’s very intuitive maybe needs to work a bit with the language side of things in order to be able to connect with people better [and] land that interview. Or as an entrepreneur, really put[ting] the package together that they need to sell. So, I really work holistically, so to speak. It’s kind of hard to explain sometimes but the best example that I can share in terms of process would be in, for instance, an interview situation. Where someone gets really nervous, and they get tongue-tied. It’s working with their actual physical ‘What do you look like when you’re in an interview? What happens to you? Are your feet tied around the chair? Do you start to slump? What happens to your voice in those situations and what happens to your words?’ So, we practice sitting up and putting the feet on the floor, and then also clear language and how to speak their story in an effective way that lands with the listener. That would be my best example, but it’s a creative process with structure and strategy from years working in the [career development] space.

That sounds excellent! What kind of feedback do you usually receive?

I think the most common thing is sort of a feeling of they felt really safe, and it was a very open environment to really share what they were thinking. To be able to talk through it with somebody who is an objective listener and somebody who’s going to challenge them a bit as well, feeling much more confident. And also a few people have said ‘You know, you just really gave me hope that I know everything I need to know, and I just needed to clarify what I need to get going- to actually get started.’ And then, really supportive I think is the other feedback that I get from people, kind of a new way to look at things and feeling supported in kind of trying that out.

Alright, well that’s really wonderful feedback. Martina, how did you get into coaching? What’s your background?

So, like I mentioned, 20+ years in a post-secondary world in career development. So, you know, working with clients and students, and sometimes their parents to help them let go of their students. And then the whole process of ‘What I want to be when I grow up?’ and how to actually effectively put that together to land somewhere or start a company. And then my coaching came in a bit later in terms of a leadership role that I was in and discovering the challenge of leading, but mostly leading yourself. And I think, in this workplace now we really have to lead ourselves so much more. So that’s where the whole ‘Being U’ came from, because it is about ‘Who am I? How do I relate in the world? And what’s getting in my way of helping me land somewhere where I want to be and get that work-life satisfaction? Or [how do I] start this new company and figure out how to run myself?’ So, background-wise, it comes from the career development and also a really holistic, or whole-person coaching/training that I did with Newfield. Because they really look at how we operate in a world and how we show up in our physical state, or body, emotions, as well as language. How we articulate and make requests and offers and all that good stuff. You know, how we relate to the world in a lot of ways. And I’ve done a lot of work in that body-mind connection, so some of my influences are narrative coaching and people like Amanda Blake with ‘Body=Brain’ kind of stuff. So, the neuroscience and those pieces really is the background that I bring to my coaching.

Alright! Well that’s so great! Thanks for your time Martina, it’s really been a pleasure.

Great! Thank you very much!

Interested in Career Change?

Interested in Career Strategy?

Interested in Work-Life Satisfaction?

Interested in Becoming an Entrepreneur?

What People Are Saying…

During my career transition, Martina is giving me so much hope! Inspiring me with her career knowledge is something I look forward to every time we connect.  Martina opens my eyes to a world of career possibilities as this is important especially living and working in Northern Canada.

K.G.

Martina is an experienced coach. I found her to be warm, friendly, compassionate and able to laugh as we worked together. Her gift lies in her ability to listen carefully, reflect back to you what she heard and ask you the important questions. While going through a career transition I wanted to change my story; Martina gave me the tools to do that as well as deal with some stressful family issues going on at the same time. She really knows her stuff and I highly recommend her to anyone looking for a career or life coach. 

S.M.

Martina is an extraordinary coach: her clear methodology, encouragement and gentle sense of humour has given me the ability to project calm confidence when being interviewed, and a clear strategy for networking. Well done!  

 Louise Jones Jankovic 

Martina is kind, personable, and goes out of her way to support her clients, and others alike. She exceeded all expectation while helping me prepare for an interview. Martina spent a two-hour session with me, conducting a mock interview. She provided valuable feedback that helped me improve my answers. She also gave me advice on how to use my body and hand gestures to help me relax during an interview. As a result, I went into the actual interview feeling more confident than ever before, and I was able to use the techniques Martina taught me to relax and be myself during the interview. With more confidence networking and interviewing, I landed a great position. Thank you Martina, for your dedication and words of encouragement.

 Ksenija Cnogorac 

It’s rare that you come across standout assistance and guidance like I experienced with Martina. I was looking for a new position and Martina was kind enough to go out of her way and take time out of her busy schedule and call me to find out more so that she could assist me with finding a new job. Martina was kind and provided me with various tips and suggestions as to how I could improve my profile and increase my chances and of course get noticed and provide me with other kind of career advice. She further put me in touch with a colleague/friend of hers who could further assist me.

I am very glad to have had the pleasure to speak and work with Martina.

Laila Toscano 

I worked with Martina as a coachee last year, and was amazed at how she was able to help me find simple solutions to situations that I was struggling with. Her style is friendly, approachable, and warm. Her approach to coaching allowed me to identify fresh new ways to think about my life, and I still find myself reflecting on some of her questions when I hit a roadblock. If you’re looking for ways to improve your personal and professional performance, I would wholeheartedly recommend working with Martina!

Stephanie Warner 

Patient, thoughtful (flexible, fun – I can’t pick just two!) 

Anonymous

Thank you for coaching me to learn the skills I needed to minimize my stress at work and maximize my impact. When we started working together, I was losing hope that I would find success in my chosen field. Now I am so confident is my role, received an excellent annual performance review from my employer, and feel like I am growing more and more every week. It’s exciting to see those kind of results.

Sarah Peck

If you’re facing a career change, Martina can help you uncover your strengths, values, and motivators and put them to work in places that value you for BEing U.