Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

Patti Cotton

The 3 Things You Need to Get Ahead

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The 3 Things You Need to Get Ahead, Influence Others, and Drive Results

Once upon a time, there was a talented executive who was on her way to the top. She excelled at everything that was thrown her way, and remained hungry for more.

The great boss at the top turned to the leadership team and said, “Let’s bring her into the circle. Let’s promote her. For she has done well, and she will therefore do well, here, with greater responsibility.”

And so they did. And everyone applauded. And the talented executive beamed. She knew she had this one.

She knew she could achieve the impossible at this new level, because she created a large trail of success, wherever she went.

But instead of succeeding, she fell flat on her face.

And the leadership team began to doubt its decision.

“What do I do?” she cried out one evening at her desk. “I know I am talented. And I have always achieved at whatever has been placed before me. Am I not leadership material, as I previously thought I was?”

Right then, there was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” she called out.

“Burt,” the voice responded. “It’s Burt, the leadership genie. I heard your cry. And I have a package here for you – it’s the missing ingredient to your success…”

Okay, dear Reader, now you know why I’m not a well-known author of fairy tales. But let me pick up here to make the point:  There are just 3 ingredients to success. Really – just 3 ingredients. And we are often missing just one when we find ourselves on the other side of the window looking in at the inner leadership circle.

Here are the 3 ingredients:

mindset-engagement-energy_model 

You must have all 3 of these supporting each other in order to get ahead. If one of them is out of sync, you cannot lead effectively.

Here is a brief explanation of each, and how they need to play together to support you:

  • Mindset: How you lead yourself. Mindset is the way you perceive yourself; your beliefs in your ability to lead and succeed. And it’s what you do with these – how you manage yourself – your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors – in an aligned way that reflects integrity, strength, and authenticity.
  • Engagement: How you lead others. Engagement is how you show up and connect with others. It’s how you communicate to build trust and influence. It’s your ability to exude a powerful and respected presence, which causes others to stop and listen when you speak, and to regard your opinions with respect.
  • Energy: How you lead the enterprise. Energy is how you support the larger vision while masterfully aligning and managing the moving parts. It is systems thinking in your goal-setting, decision-making, and your action-taking to keep the enterprise relevant and vibrant.

So what does this have to do with our talented executive in the fairy tale?

Let’s listen in to the scene where she is carrying on about her frustration…

(knock on the door)

“Who is it?” she called out.

“Burt,” the voice responded. “It’s Burt, the leadership genie. I heard your cry. And I have a package here for you – it’s the missing ingredient to your success…”

She opened the door to find – her boss.

He smiled, came in, and sat down.

“Okay, true confessions, as you know, my first name is Burt, but surprise, surprise, I’m not a genie. However, I think I have the answer to what you were carrying on about in here a minute ago.”

“Oops,” she said sheepishly.

“Talented Executive, you’ve been a success up to this point in whatever you’ve undertaken. And I believe you can be a success in this new appointment as well. But you are going to have to change something fundamental about the way you operate.”

“The way I operate?” she said. “It’s always gotten me where I need to go – what do I need to change?”

“Talented Executive, you have a healthy Mindset. You believe in your ability to succeed, and you are eager to take charge and achieve your goals through successful implementation.

What’s more, you are able to look at the larger picture strategically, so that your goal-setting and work supports the larger vision of the company. So your use of Energy is great.”

“So what gives?” she answered. “What’s not to love?”

“What got you here won’t get you where you want to go. Just because you’ve succeeded with a certain approach in the past doesn’t mean it will work in this new position. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve been getting sideways glances from some of your new leadership team. And a bit of rumbling. I saw you bristle the other day when you heard someone question whether you could make your initiative work. What you may not know is that some are questioning your motives.”

“I don’t understand,” she protested. “It’s a great plan, and they should see that!”

“Talented Executive, when you joined this team, you forgot one thing. Everything you do affects the entire system, now. Your new responsibilities cover many areas, so what you do affects your entire leadership team and their areas, as well. And they don’t know you.  Why should they support your ideas? The one ingredient you are missing is strong Engagement, and your leadership future depends on this. Building trust, being able to exercise your influence effectively…  Heck, even getting others to listen to you when you speak up in meetings – think about it.”

Talented Executive was silent.

Burt Boss continued. “So although I think you can pull this initiative off, I’m going to ask you to put it on the shelf, for now. For this year, I want you to build relationships with your peers and key stakeholders. Because without establishing yourself as part of the team, strengthening your influence factor with them, getting them to listen to you and enlisting their buy-in, well, you just won’t get far in this position if you don’t have that rapport first.”

Talented Executive was floored. “You’re kidding,” she said. “You are going to kiss the potential of more than $3 Mil in the next 18 months goodbye?”

“You bet,” said Boss. “Because if you do what I am recommending, I believe we will see an even greater ROI.”

And they actually did. Talented Executive worked on her Engagement – and by the end of that first year, had actually worked with a couple of the other members of the leadership team to come up with something that generated far more revenue.

I love a happy ending – don’t you?

When you think about Mindset, Engagement, and Energy – which one is holding you back? Join us for our LinkedIn discussion and share!

Patti Cotton helps women executives optimize their effectiveness in leading self, others, and enterprises. Her areas of focus include confidence, leadership style, executive presence, effective communication, and masterful execution. With over 25 years of leadership experience, both stateside and abroad, Patti works with individuals, teams, and organizations across industries, providing executive coaching, women’s leadership development, change, and conflict management. She is also a Fortune 500 speaker. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

Why Aren’t Your Strengths Working For You?

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Why Aren’t Your Strengths Working For You?

Mastering Your Inner Leader, Part III

Why aren’t your strengths working for you?

You’ve read the book. You went to the company training. You’ve taken the assessment that told you what your top strengths are. It was kind of an interesting exercise.

But knowing what your strengths are hasn’t changed a thing for you.

Unfortunately, strengths become hungry when they aren’t used. In fact, your strengths might just do you in, rather than help you out.

What do you do?

You must address the issue because, without mastering your strengths, you won’t be able to master your leadership.

In the last two weeks, we’ve talked about the importance of mastering your inner leader, or your “leadership DNA,” in order to powerfully engage with others and execute your best work (if you missed the first two steps, click here for Part I and Part II of this series).

As a reminder, your leadership DNA is the unique combination of values, themes, and strengths that you bring to the table to powerfully engage and execute your work effectively. The third step in identifying yours is to discover and integrate your unique strengths.

Why is this important? You’ve been getting your work done – and getting it done well – without paying much attention to strengths. What will being intentional about integrating yours do for you?

Here are 3 reasons why you want to pay attention to your strengths:

  1. Quality of work. Your strengths are what allow you to do your best work. Have you ever heard of the term “being in flow”? Flow is the mental state of being completely immersed in an activity. You are so into what you are doing, so energized, that you don’t realize the amount of time that has passed. This is what utilizing your top strengths can do for you. Since your strengths are the natural wiring you possess for getting your best work done, they get excited and invigorated when you use them, supporting you in energy, focus, and creativity.
  2. Positive self-identity. Your strengths are natural gifts that support your best self. How you feel about the contribution you are making to the world is very important to your self-worth and well-being. Using your strengths on a consistent basis reinforces who you are at your best and the value you bring. It’s a natural motivator to continue moving forward with purpose, because you experience feeling grounded and aligned as you show up in the world when you operate from your natural strengths.
  3. Health and well-being. Your strengths are hungry. If you don’t feed them, they get cranky. It actually takes more effort for you to work without coming from your top strengths. There are many of you reading this who operate consistently with your “non-strengths.” When you do this, you spend a dollar in personal energy to get a penny of outcome in return. Doing so can cause stress, low energy, difficulty in focusing – and over time, burnout. Meanwhile, while you are neglecting your top strengths, they grow frustrated. They beg to be used, and this plea can come disguised as irritability and overwhelm as you go about your work. Who needs that?!

So how do you identify and integrate your own strengths?

First, to identify them…  There are some respected assessments in discovering your strengths, and I have used them in my work. Whatever the assessment you choose, be sure it is reputable and tested for validity (how accurate is it in the research world?). One excellent free resource I use with clients is the VIA Strengths Survey, which allows you to discover top character strengths – strengths that are valid not only for your work, but also for the rest of your life. Character strengths mesh well with your life themes (last week’s focus) to shape how you fuel your work when you are at your best.

And now, to put your top strengths to work. Being intentional means to flex and practice, and there are several ways to do this. Here is one approach that works extremely well for the beginning stages of integration. I’d advise running through your top five strengths twice with this method to firmly increase awareness and begin to firm up your strengths approach:

  1. Selecting one strength weekly, journal who you are as leader, at your best, when you exercise this strength.
  2. Then, review your calendar’s upcoming meetings, projects, and conversations, and ask yourself how you will use this strength in the interface.
  3. Debrief each evening, and ask yourself how you did, congratulate yourself on being more intentional, ask yourself what learning you gleaned, and how you will approach the same next time.

What is your biggest question about your own strengths? Join us in the LinkedIn discussion here.

Why Aren’t You Leading? Part II

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Why Aren’t You Leading? Part II

Mastering Your Inner Leader, Part II

Last week, I asked you why you aren’t leading.

And a lot of you have written in to tell me why.

  • A few of you cited you needed more confidence – most of you stated you were ready to do the work, but you weren’t quite sure where to start.
  • Not surprisingly, every single one of you admitted that you were capable of more.
  • You also mentioned being at a place in your life where you are ready to lead – to take charge, and to accept greater responsibility for more recognition and reward.

Last week, we talked about the vital step of mastering your inner leader before you can “take it outside” to effectively engage and execute as one. Most people make the mistake of thinking they can develop their leadership simply by attending a company’ program designed for this, or by reading the best books on the subject and putting learning to practice. How hard can it be, after all? But these efforts fail.

There are a few reasons why this doesn’t work, even though the United States spends more than $170 Billion annually on training. And we explored this last week.

But it came down to this:  You must empower your leadership from the inside out!

In other words, you must identify and know how to effectively use the unique abilities you possess within to govern your decisions, behaviors, and actions. And we started with values – key to success. You can read more about it here in Part I.

This week, I want to discuss the next important step in mastering your inner leader…identifying into your life themes to discover your purpose, or your “why.”

Why is this important? It’s how you do your job – and why.

Keeping your purpose central to all you do keeps the passion flowing in your leadership. It’s the heart-to-action connection. It also makes your leadership distinctive – something that helps you to stand out and rise above the crowd.

A while ago, I sat with a woman named Jane.

“Patti,” she said, “I doubt you can help. My motivation left me about a year ago. I’ve lost touch with colleagues and team. Goals aren’t exciting. I wish I was retired – yesterday.”

“You are checking out – I can hear that,” I answered. “What happened?”

“You tell me. That’s why you are here,” she smiled.

So I asked Jane why she did what she did. What fired her up to get going in the morning? What difference was she making in her leadership, and in the outcomes she produced for the company? And she couldn’t tell me.

“You’ve lost your reason for leading,” I said. “It’s your purpose. We sometimes call it ‘your why.’”

“So,” she asked, “How did that happen?”

“Oh, it happens when we don’t stay true to our life themes, our purpose. Purpose is what drives us. It fuels meaning and satisfaction.”

“Can I get it back?”

“Yes, you can,” I smiled.

I worked with Jane on identifying the main themes throughout her life that had driven her decisions and actions. Two things stood out for us:  Jane had always sought to be an advocate and a teacher – even when small. It showed up on the playground, in her volunteer work in college, and throughout her career. We could look back and see how she had used it to rise to be the executive she was, today.

But about a year ago, Jane had been assigned an ailing initiative requiring her full attention. And we noticed that when she did so, she began to lose the passion in her work. A closer examination revealed that Jane had not actively considered how to use her advocate and teacher themes in approaching the initiative. Instead, she had taken quite a different approach that was creating burnout as it depleted her energy. As she lost her edge, she began to disconnect from others in small ways. Over a year’s time, she wound up feeling isolated and alone.

Fortunately, we were able to turn this around, reconnecting with her life themes of advocate and teacher, and shifting her approach to incorporate these into her work. I’m happy to report that after reconnecting with her purpose, she is back in top form, and loving her work, once again. Others recognize it – and she is being considered for a greater role.

What are your life themes? Can you look back over the years to see what roles you have naturally sought to play, and what energizes you as you do so?

Here’s are some quick questions to get you started in identifying your why:

  1. Describe 3 experiences in your life when you faced challenges. How have they shaped you?
  2. Look back at a period in your life when you felt special, as though you were meant for “this.” What were you doing? What was the role you played, and what energized you?
  3. For what reasons do people seek your help? Among those, which ones energize you?

 

Meanwhile, please join me in our LinkedIn group for more discussion on this topic.

How do you integrate your values in your work?

Why Aren’t You Leading?

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Why Aren’t You Leading?

Mastering Your Inner Leader, Part I

Why aren’t you leading?

You’ve taken leadership boot camps and development programs, and read all the books. And there you are. In the same place. Month in, month out. Year in, year out.

Your influence is respectable, but it isn’t fantastic. You aren’t as effective as you could be, and you aren’t being recognized for your work (Promotion, anyone? Partner? Bonus Pool? Million Dollar Club?) What’s more, your income or sales isn’t increasing – yet you are working just as hard as ever, if not more.

The thing is, you are talented, and you know it. But it’s not showing like it should, in order to get the recognition and reward you deserve.

Nine times out of 10, I find that talented professionals overlook the one thing they should focus on, if they truly want to succeed. And it’s the one thing that can make all the difference.

I coached a vice president who had inherited great responsibility just the year prior. Susan had been a top performer in the company, and because the company did not want to lose her, she had been given a spot on the senior leadership team.

“I’m like a fish out of water,” Susan said over the phone. “And frankly wondering if I’ll ever be able to swim in deep waters with these people. I’ve tried schmoozing with them, I’ve held the same meetings with my team as they do with their teams. Sometimes, I even think I subconsciously try to walk and talk like some of them! But it’s not working.”

“Just a few months ago, all of senior leadership was given a leadership assessment. They had two group sessions to talk about it, and handed us books for reference. But knowing about leadership skills and strengths I have isn’t enough to get me anywhere. Help!”

Susan’s case is not atypical. A lot of top performers are promoted to leadership. After all – they performed well where they were before – they can certainly do it, again – right? Not necessarily.

From time to time, companies try to help their leadership teams by bringing on a consultant for assessments of all kinds and a follow-up training for a deeper dive. But testing and acquiring knowledge in specific areas is not enough to develop your leadership.

In fact, America spends more than $170 billion per year in training on topics of this sort, and results show that we are largely wasting money. Studies show that training participants take away about 27% of the learning provided, and then abandon it quickly because they don’t know how to integrate it.

So if copying other leaders doesn’t work, and taking a leadership skills assessment or a personality style diagnostic with some follow-up training isn’t making you a more effective leader, then what does work?

Mastering your inner leader.

Mastering your inner leader involves identifying your core values, and the particular strengths and gifts you bring to the table, so that you can learn to use them powerfully as you lead yourself and others. Only by mastering your inner leader will you stand out with confidence and make greatest impact.

You see, what works for the person down the hall will not necessarily work for you. And without knowing what you have to work with, you will be making decisions and taking actions without coming from a solid leadership foundation. And it will show.

Instead, you must discover what you have to work with, flex and fine-tune it, and the result is that you brand your leadership in a way that is genuine and most powerful.

How do you start?

I often start by having my clients identify their top core values. We then do an inventory in key areas of their life and work to see where they are doing well, and where they need to de-clutter or realign, so that they are living true to their values. I then help them begin to reinforce this learning with a “coach approach” so that the learning becomes a way of being. Over a period of 8-12 weeks, clients report less stress and tension, and more focus, productivity, and enjoyment.

I bet you aren’t surprised. Because coming from your center, from your core values and strengths, is authentic, you are more confident, you feel more energized, and you produce your best.

In my next article, Part II, I’ll talk about a unique way that you can identify life themes and strengths to build on mastering your inner leader.

Meanwhile, please join me in our LinkedIn group for more discussion on this topic.

How do you integrate your values in your work?

How Do You Hold Your Leadership Accountable?

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How Do You Hold Your Leadership Accountable?

Leading While Getting Things Done

In a former corporate life, I was privileged to lead a team of 15 amazing people to raise lots of money. Millions. In fact, we were able to reach organizational goals previously impossible, and the future looked bright. I was told higher leadership was in store for me.

But there came a point when I started to experience burnout, and the fallout nearly did me in.

Reaching the goal had been great affirmation. Creating and implementing a strategic plan with right players and process to meet financial needs had been exciting. But over time, continually chasing that carrot turned into drudgery. The fact was, in my effort to make sure our team did the impossible, I focused exclusively on departmental and organizational metrics and outcomes – and neglected my personal leadership entirely.

And when you do that, things fall apart.

If you are pushing process, proposals, meetings, trainings – you name it – but you are not holding yourself accountable for your personal leadership growth, your shelf life as a viable entity will be short.

Oh, sure, you can coast for a while, but the erosion to your motivation, and then, to your performance, will begin to show. And suddenly, instead of leading, you’ll find yourself going through the rote motions of just getting things done.

How do you avoid this? How do you hold yourself accountable for your leadership development while you are handling impossible deadlines, goals, and outcomes?

I teach and coach individuals and teams around this, and the model can be simplified to just three steps:

  1. Mindset

This has to do with the beliefs you hold around your leadership abilities. Who are you as a leader, and what does this look like? What impact does your leadership make on those around you at the individual, team/relational, and organizational/global levels?

Holding yourself accountable:  How will you know when you are successful in this? What will it look like? Feel like? What are you doing when you are successful?

  1. Knowledge

What top values and strengths will you use to earmark your leadership? If you have identified these, how are you using them?

Holding yourself accountable:  How will you know when you are operating from core strengths and values? What is different about your work? Your energy? Your personal, team, and organizational outcomes? What do you need to change in order to open the gateway for these to happen successfully?

  1. Action

Daily. Flexing your competence strengthens your abilities – and your confidence!  Incorporating your mindset and knowledge into an intentional approach will keep you aligned and effective.

Holding yourself accountable: Keep a list of your core strengths and values at your desk as a handy visible reference. Then, review your 12-month action plan and ask how your leadership, its core strengths and values, will manifest and mold the outcomes. Be specific and write these down. There is power in putting this to paper. After this, drop back to your 90-day action plan to do the same. Now that you have given definition to how this should look, feel, manifest, ask yourself how you will do a weekly review of how you are measuring up over the next few weeks until this becomes an engrained approach.

When have you noticed your own leadership faltering? What has worked for you? Jump over to our LinkedIn group discussion and share!