Beth McKinnon Leads with Wisdom and Joy, as She Coaches CareerBuilder Techies to Manage Change, the Feminine Way
By: Julie Mignone

“Close your eyes and begin by focusing on your feet to bring your awareness out of the chaos of your head and down into the wisdom of your body.” These are the words Empowered Life Coach, Beth McKinnon, spoke to our Women in Technology group on December 13th during her, 3 Keys to Meeting and Managing Change workshop at CareerBuilder. Beth calls this the ‘Grounding Breath’, during her relaxation exercises in the beginning of her sessions.

All participants completed a self-assessment rating their stress-level before and after the ‘Grounding Breath’. I found this particularly interesting, as I actually felt my stress-level decrease after this exercise. “It really prepares you to open your mind and to go into the rest of the session with the right mindset”, said another participant. After the initial assessment and breathing exercises, Beth begins to discuss ‘limiting beliefs’, how each and every one of us have them and finally how we can learn to stop sabotaging our own dreams and desires with these ‘limiting beliefs’.

Beth made the decision over 15 years ago to follow her dream to become a life coach after a wake-up call. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the age of 60 she began to learn all she could to execute on her dream. “I am a strong believer that it’s never too late to do the thing you most want to do”, says Beth. She later explains, “You must change your attitude and how you react to make or effect positive change”.

Many of us here at CareerBuilder can relate to these ideals of ‘stress’ and ‘change’ due to the recent CareerBuilder transition to the SaaS space and all of the uncertainties that come along with a major technology organization. After all, agility is one of our core values and to be successful within our organization one must be a master of agility.

Because of this, Beth continued to zone in on these principles and even went further to acknowledge all that women do in the workplace and at home, but said, “women must have work-life-balance and nurture and take care of themselves, in order to not burn out easily. Stress depletes our body’s oxytocin”, which is the hormone responsible for reducing feelings of fear and often called the ‘love hormone’; it’s the thing that makes us feel all ‘warm and fuzzy’ inside.

Beth’s sentiment towards hard work, self-sacrifice, and the need for self-nurturement and balance resonated with everyone in the room. We at CareerBuilder are no strangers to hard work and self-sacrifice, especially us women. As I looked around the room, I saw more than just programmers and engineers, I saw mothers, wives, volunteers and community leaders. All heavily concentrating on Beth’s key principles, most likely to learn how to positively effect change in their world and most likely…. for others around them.

Hopefully, some of us will remember to leave some room to nurture ourselves using Beth’s keys to meeting and managing change…. the feminine way.