Westcott Williams

The Discovery Channel

Coaching for performance

Personal coaching from Wescott Williams assisted an explorer and winning documentary filmmaker reinvent his career.

What we did

Coached the accomplished explorer and award winning documentary filmmaker Mark Wild  to search for and negotiate a new position that fulfilled both his career and personal ambitions. 

The scenario

Mark is a key industry figure and a leading light in his profession.

As director of production and development for Animal Planet International (a Discovery Channel subsidiary) and commissioning editor at Animal Planet, he was responsible for producing programmes that reached 300 million households in more than 160 countries worldwide.  

We initially started working with Mark to achieve a promotion at Animal Planet but, early on in proceedings, he was made redundant. Our focus then shifted towards working with Mark to ensure he was able to secure a fulfilling replacement role that met both his professional and financial aspirations. 

The approach 

One-to-one coaching was undertaken to enable Mark to think about what he wanted to achieve. We helped him identify and believe in his goal and the benefits and consequences of its achievement. A structure was created which Mark could use in interviews to demonstrate his commercial value. Shifting Mark's perception of his own business value gave him the capacity and confidence to negotiate more effectively. Establishing a link between what Mark's job meant to him and his role as a provider for his young family gave him a sense of purpose in his negotiations. 

The results

Coaching from Wescott Williams post-redundancy has enabled Mark to reappraise his career goals and find and negotiate a contract for a new position that has a better remuneration package and a broader scope of work.

He has recently been appointed director of international development at National Geographic Television, where he will oversee the development of television programmes with independent producers and global broadcast partners. 

We had also agreed as part of his coaching that, if he had secured a new job before Christmas 2009, his reward to himself and his family would be a brand new Volvo XC90  The car became a talisman. Mark and his family are now not only enjoying a smoother ride, they are also settling into a new home.