Aura BarabasiCoaching & advisory
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Coaching

Two programmes, for two points in a career.

One is for getting to the senior role. The other is for what happens once you are in it and the decisions are yours. They are separate, and most people need only one.

For your next role

Rising in fashion

For people in fashion and luxury who are working towards a senior role or a bigger scope, and who want to get there deliberately rather than wait to be noticed.

The usual pattern: you are the best-prepared person in the room, and the role still goes to someone who was better known. Another year of that, and the explanation becomes the story people tell about you.

  • The role you want next, and a plan for how it is won
  • How you come across in the meetings where careers are decided
  • Reading senior dynamics and building the support you need
  • Keeping your standards as your responsibilities grow

What changes

  • You know which role you are going for and what it will take
  • The people who decide know your name and your work before the decision is made
  • You walk into the conversation that decides it prepared, and you can say what you want
Format
Six sessions of an hour over three months, online or in person, with notes between sessions
Fee
Fixed, on request
Ask about this programme

For leaders

Deciding at the top

For directors and executives in fashion houses who have to make and defend decisions that the whole business will live with, including the technology ones, and who want a thinking partner who has been on the product side.

The usual pattern: a vendor, a consultant or your own team puts a confident case in front of you, and you have to sign it on evidence you cannot fully judge. Sign the wrong one and you own the rollout, the budget and the next, harder, proposal.

  • A call before each big decision, and a monthly session in between
  • How to read what you are being shown, from a vendor, a board or your own team
  • Holding a position under pressure, and changing it when the evidence says so
  • Where a decision needs more than coaching, the advisory below picks it up

What changes

  • You can read what you are shown and say what it still has to prove
  • You sign or decline with a reason you can defend to anyone in the building
  • The decisions you make this quarter are ones you can still explain a year later
Format
Three months at a time, renewed if it is useful
Fee
Fixed, on request
Ask about this programme

How I coach

Practically, and with a background in the work itself. I developed product at Burberry and at adidas and ran a knitwear factory supplying luxury houses, so I know the rooms you are describing. My coaching training is in psychology and cognitive behavioural approaches, which means we work on what you actually do and say, not on theory. Everything said in a session stays in it.

How it starts

  1. A thirty-minute conversation about where you are and what you want, free and without obligation.
  2. If it fits, a short written outline of the programme and the fee.
  3. We start when you are ready. If your employer is paying, I can write the outline for them.

Coaching is for you as a person in your career. If what you need is a verdict on a technology decision for your house, that is the advisory, below.

Start with a conversation

Wherever you are, start with a conversation.

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