How to Become an Organizational Consultant and Executive Coach: A Career Guide for Therapists | E86

About this episode

If you’re a therapist who’s quietly thinking, “I cannot do 30 more years of back-to-back sessions… but I don’t know what else is possible,” you are so not alone. Also, you have tons of transferable skills and deep knowledge that could be deployed to help not just individuals, but organizations flourish and thrive. Most therapists are never exposed to organizational consulting or executive coaching. However, this can be a really exciting and lucrative career path for professional therapists. In fact, becoming an organizational consultant or executive coach is one path that opens far more doors than most clinicians realize.

If this idea just lit something up inside of you, I am so glad that you are here for today's episode of Love, Happiness, and Success for Therapists.

I’m talking with psychologist and trusted leadership advisor Dr. Shannon Sheehan Jennings (Dr. J), a PsyD in Business Psychology who supports mid-market CEOs with the “sticky human stuff” behind growth and change: hard conversations, power dynamics, trust ruptures, and decisions that actually stick. Dr. Shannon walks us through her own pivot from therapist to organizational consultant, what executive coaching really looks like in the wild (small businesses vs. big corporate settings), and the specific business concepts you’ll want to learn so you can take your existing clinical skills into boardrooms, leadership teams, and workplace systems with confidence and integrity as an organizational consultant or executive coach.

Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Why Work Systems “Suck” (and Why Therapists Are Needed in Organizations)
01:48 Dr. Shannon’s Journey from Therapist to Organizational Consultant
08:20 How Therapists Help Leaders, Teams, and Workplace Systems
16:20 First Steps for Therapists Becoming Organizational Consultants and Executive Coaches
20:10 What Executive Coaching Really Involves in Small Business vs Corporate Settings
30:36 Coaching vs Therapy, Ethics, and Staying Within Your Scope
46:20 Community, Networking, and Next-Step Resources for Therapists Pivoting Careers

We also talk honestly about coaching vs. therapy, scope of practice, and how to protect both yourself and the public in a largely unregulated coaching and organizational consulting landscape, while still giving yourself permission to grow past the therapy room and into the kind of work that lights you up.

If you’re craving more support as you sort out your next professional chapter, including a possible move into work as an organizational consultant or executive coach, I’d love to invite you to The Growth Collective for Therapists - a space I created so you don’t have to do this work in isolation anymore. It’s a genuine professional home for therapists who want real consultation, real community, and guidance for building a career that feels sustainable and alive.

And if you’d like to stay connected, come find me on LinkedIn! I truly enjoy hearing your thoughts, questions, and ideas about how we as therapists can step into leadership, coaching, and organizational life in a bigger way.

xoxo,
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
Growing Self