I am excited to bring you another Bright Arrow Coach Spotlight, featuring Cheryl Schofield. I hope you enjoy getting to know our coaches and getting a glimpse into their personalities and coaching style. All of our coaches are highly trained, experienced, certified, and hand-selected for our clients. Serving as executive or leadership team members for organizations of all sizes, our coaches have walked in your shoes. Bright Arrow coaches spent decades navigating the business landscape and successfully climbing the corporate ladder prior to entering the executive coaching field. Our coaches have experienced the same volatilities and uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities prevalent in most organizations today.
Let’s get to know Cheryl Schofield, Bright Arrow Coach.
Why did you become a coach?
It’s in my bones! It seems I’ve been coaching people since my high school days. Originally, I wanted to be a therapist and my undergraduate degree is in psychology. Because I funded my own college, I didn’t have enough money to attend graduate school directly thereafter. Instead, I landed in the corporate world in HR where coaching was always a responsibility of the roles I held. The draw of coaching for me is the possibility of helping others discover new perspectives that help them grow and improve their lives.
What are your special focus areas as a coach?
Executive and leadership coaching – I have a keen interest in learning and understanding a client’s business, which has served in relating to the client’s concerns and needs and increases credibility.
Career transition coaching – Coaching all levels, from recent college graduates planning their professions to mid-career executives feeling a calling to do something different, and professionals displaced as a result of organization right-sizing or restructure. I am a steady partner in the journey to a new opportunity.
What is it like to work with Bright Arrow and Bright Arrow clients?
Awesome! I am grateful for the opportunity and I love working with my clients! Tegan is the proverbial rock star, modeling the values and competencies aligned with my own, and building a business to be admired.
What do you believe is important that leaders embody in order to be effective in the future?
Virtue. The University of Michigan’s distinguished professor and researcher, Kim Cameron, describes virtue as having attributes that represent moral excellence, inherent goodness, and humanity’s very best qualities. His research shows a virtuous leader has a strong prescriptive effect on individuals, leading them to act consistently and as role models for other individuals, thus generating a collective positive pattern of behaviors and emotions that creates a self-reinforcing virtuous spiral. Organizational virtuousness can reinforce a positive work climate, teamwork effectiveness, social capital, and adaptation to change. I believe strength and virtue need not be mutually exclusive in good leaders.
What is the best advice about leadership you’ve ever received? OR your favorite quote about leadership?
“Always do right – this will gratify some and astonish the rest.” ~ Mark Twain
Tell us a little about yourself.
I was raised in the Chicago suburbs as one of five children and I’m the middle child and middle girl (two sisters and two brothers). My siblings and their families are all still in the Chicago area, though we lost both our parents. I’m married for 25 years to Gary and we have one grown son, Ryan. For many years I worked as a Human Resources leader for a global Fortune 500 organization before leaving and starting a coaching and consulting practice. I love to travel, photography, parties, spending time with family and friends, and reading. Also, I’m an enduring learner.
