Executive Speaking Reviews

- Cruel ironies of life The CEO coaches people to speak with "precision and purpose – authentically". Yet, when it comes to her own communication style she doesn't live up to her own standard. While I'm sure she was nothing but authentic, she was anything but precise. It wasn't unusual for her to go on long winded rants that derailed meetings and left us all exhausted and confused. Belittles and berates employees I was a couple days into the job when I learned the CEO liked to log into meetings five minutes early and then go on a self righteous rant and berate you when you logged on at the scheduled time. On more than one occasion, I witnessed her become belligerent with my coworkers over the smallest misunderstandings. Misunderstandings that she caused because she couldn't communicate her asks clearly. Within my first week working here, she called an all team meeting. When one of my coworkers logged on she said, "Oh, they still work here?" She then went on to berate half the team over some perceived misstep. She went on to praise the other half of the team over a recent triumph we had, that in fact, she had made up. It was clear she was trying to create a divide between the most recent hires and the rest of the team. It should be noted here that none of us had been with Executive Speaking for more than a few months at this point so we were all essentially new hires. Still we all had already figured out the CEO was a less than great person so some unhinged rant wasn't going to get anyone on her side. The person that the CEO didn't know was still working at Executive Speaking? Was let go the next day. The constant berating only led to a tense work environment where everyone walked on eggshells around her. There was a period of time when I'd become physically ill thinking about interacting with her. Not the ideal working conditions to say the least. - Meaningless Assignments Oftentimes, she'd become obsessed with certain tasks being done. For example, she was obsessed with filling the company CRM with every single client she had ever worked with in her 30+ year history of coaching. I was assigned to go through past employee's emails and make a list of every client they ever interacted with. I was even asked to come into the office to go through TWENTY YEARS worth of handwritten calendars to expand on that list. When all this was finally said and done, I found out it had already been done by someone else in the past. -Job not as advertised When I took the job, I was promised a lot of upward mobility. It was advertised as a writing job but first I was to send out HUNDREDS of LinkedIn messages each day (spam messages). But -- the CEO promised -- eventually, I'd start to get more and more opportunities to write blog posts and ghost write articles that she could publish in various publications. Instead, I was assigned meaningless projects like mentioned above. Then the team began to dwindle down and I took on tasks that were getting me further and further from my career goals. Meanwhile, she continued to write blog posts herself. (Reading the reviews shortly after starting I realized this wasn't the first time she'd done this to someone.) - Constant micro-aggressions Since she's so long lived and well traveled, I figured she'd know how to speak to and about people from various cultures. Unfortunately, she does not. Everyday she'd make inappropriate comments about specific ethnic groups, reducing them down to the simplest stereotype as if it were a fact. And if someone from a historically Brown or Black country reached out for coaching services? I was told not to respond because "they can't afford me. They don't have money there." I could go on, but will leave it here. Needless to say, think twice before taking a job at Executive Speaking.

The owner, Anett Grant, is extremely erratic. She's the kind of person that makes decisions on a whim and then, always, without fail, reverses course. If you're lucky, she'll do it before you actually start working on what she tells you to, but usually you'll be halfway through with a task or even finished when she comes to tell you to do it differently. There's also always a pretty good chance that she'll deny ever having told you do it the first way. She's entitled and ungrateful. She cannot do anything for herself, and yet she treats everyone who works for her like garbage. When I was working for her, she regularly took over a month in vacation every year (30+ business days) but I didn't even get PTO. She'll stand around and brag about her expensive lifestyle to the employees she pays less than a living wage. She just does not understand that she isn't the center of everyone else's world, either: she gets utterly incensed when people don't immediately agree with everything she says or she doesn't get exactly what she wants (rude to waiters, etc.). Her clients seem to be be more than happy to entertain her delusions of grandeur, but I think that they're just happy to get an expensed trip and a few nights in a fancy hotel. All they have to do is put up with Anett's nonsense for a couple hours per day.