Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

Patti Cotton

How I Lost My White-Hot Why

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An Exercise to Put the Passion Back Into Your Work

An Exercise to Put the Passion Back Into Your Work

A few years ago, I found myself staring down the main hall of the building my team and I occupied. We had just celebrated another successful million-dollar event, and a banner year for development and fundraising. I had set personal and professional goals for myself and for the team, and we had reached or exceeded all of them.

And I was bored.

I found myself dreaming about Friday afternoons and caught myself taking a few long lunches because I dreaded going back to the office.

I had lost the passion for my work. And it showed. My boss, the CEO, had called me in to share she was noticing my disengagement, and asked what was happening. I stammered and flustered about, not knowing what to say, because I didn’t know. I felt embarrassed and inadequate, and quite frankly, somewhat of a failure. Who doesn’t know why they are experiencing such a burnout?

I now know what was wrong.

I had lost sight of my “white-hot why” – why I was there and what difference my work made to the larger picture. Without keeping this transformation out in front, work was just drudgery. Same old, same old. Papers in, papers out. Goals set, goals met. The quality of my work and my relationships started to slip. I lost my leadership edge, and my career track lost footing.

Fortunately, I caught this turn of events in time to do something about it. No, I didn’t turn my work around at the company. I actually left. I examined my purpose and what called me, and realized it didn’t mesh with my work at the corporation at all.

But you don’t always have to leave your job to recapture your passion. You do have to relate what you do to the larger picture so that you understand your contribution to the larger picture – the transformation your company provides. This is what keeps the flames of work passion burning.

Recently, I guest-lectured at a university’s executive MBA program. One of the cohort, Sean, shared that he was there because he had hit a plateau in his enthusiasm for work. He was the vice president for IT services for a large healthcare organization, and he thought acquiring more knowledge and skills in leadership might help to reanimate his passion for the role he played. His story hit a chord with me, and we did an exercise right there that he claims will change his professional life. I believe it can.

In the hope that it might bring value to you and your team as you bring your talents to the larger picture, here is the exercise we did together.

Discovering Your White-Hot Why Instructions:

  1. Take a blank sheet of paper and turn it horizontally, or “landscape.”
  2. Take a pen or pencil and draw vertical lines from top to bottom so that you have 3 columns on the paper.
  3. At the top of the first column, write out your role’s top responsibilities – the work you perform each day. List 4-5 to begin with, just for the sake of the exercise.
  4. At the top of the second column, write the words “outcomes that help the company/organization operate.” In bullet point format, write out what the bullet points in column one enable the company to do.
  5. At the top of the third column, write the words “transformation the company/organization provides.” In bullet point format, write out how the company is able to make a difference in the world because of the bullet points in column 2.

With Sean’s permission, here is a sample of his larger exercise. Note how he is able to draw out the transformation he helps the organization to provide, reminding him of the value of his contributions to the larger picture.

Sean’s top responsibilities Outcomes that help the organization operate Transformation the organization provides
·       Design, develop and implement organizational information systems, software applications, and IT support and infrastructure systems ·       Best and highest-functioning infrastructure/communication systems for the healthcare organization are supported, providing critical information supporting effective patient care. ·       Providing healthcare leading to healing and wholeness for individuals, families.
 ·  ·  ·
 ·  ·  ·
 ·  ·  ·
 ·  ·  ·

 

To do your best work, you must keep your heart engaged.

What is your white-hot why?

If you choose to do this exercise, or to help your team do so, I’d love to hear what insights this brings.

 

The Problem With Women and Visionary Thinking

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Women are limiting their own progress by not considering themselves as “visionary thinkers,” according to researchers Ibarra and Obodaru.  In fact, these professionals reveal that the female majority does not value the more abstract “visionary” thinking as much as they value their practical orientation toward solving problems.

This is a game-changer, if we want to elevate women to higher leadership.  It means that even if you are a highly-successful female professional, you are no doubt keeping yourself from an even more incredible future, simply because you may not be developing your visionary thinking.

Vision is the driver for inspiring and engaging your team to move forward together with purpose.  It’s the foundation for creativity and innovation.   Lifting your thinking from simply what’s in front of you to a world of possibilities is necessary to help you and your company remain relevant and positioned for the future.

So if you are a woman who seeks to expand your leadership capacity, you must cultivate visionary thinking as part of your toolkit.

Here are 5 steps to help you begin to make this shift:

  1. Make room for creative space. Schedule this on your calendar regularly, and give yourself permission to daydream, and to dive deep. This may be a big shift for you if you are accustomed to operating from a “get-it-done” mindset.  Recognize that without this space to look beyond what is, you will remain right where you are.  And if you find it is a challenge to make this happen at the office, schedule yourself outside the office for it.  This is foundational.
  2. Make your creative thoughts relevant. How might the ideas you come up with relate to your company, and to your own leadership?  If you catch yourself limiting ideas because of current practices or parameters, ask yourself what might be possible if these were not limiters.
  3. Leverage your thinking and creative process with a brain trust. Utilize the concept of brain trust, forming a small circle of trusted professionals both inside and outside of your industry to discuss ideas.  This one move not only supports synergy, but also begins to develop a forward-thinking network to incubate ideas and innovation.
  4. Develop your outside-in lens. As you go about your daily work, approach it with new eyes.  If you were looking at your company or initiative from the outside, how would what you see compare to what could be?
  5. Disrupt the rules of engagement. Challenge process and protocol.  Ask why, when your team opts for the standard, preferred way of doing.  Ask why not, when you hear someone saying that it simply can’t be done.  Mix up your taskforces, hold meetings in unconventional spots when you want creative thinking.  What else can you switch up that disrupts the status quo?

Cultivating visionary thinking is not an overnight switch.  Developing new habits to shift mindset take time.  But the results are worth it, if you are ready to get from where you are, to where you want to be.  I challenge you to begin cultivating your visionary thinking, and to let me know what shifts you are experiencing.

“The possibilities that tomorrow brings are proportional to the beliefs you hold about them.”  – Patti Cotton

 

How to Avoid Being a Bad Role Model: 5 Keys

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Anne was the vice president of a national wealth management organization who was being considered for a more senior role. She realized that this would position her to be of greater influence to the other employees in the organization, and reached out to me for help.

“I just stumbled my way to leadership on my own. So, even though I’ve helped others along the way, I feel I could be much more effective,” she said. “I would like to be a role model that can help others get ahead.”

Over the next few months, Anne and I worked on sharpening and flexing her leadership brand.* This sparked new energy and confidence for her in her ability to lead, and it showed well in her decision-making and calculated risk-taking. The organization benefited greatly, and by the time she stepped into the new position, she was confident of influencing others with greatest impact.

A year later, I checked in with Anne, and we celebrated her success together. She shared her thoughts on what she felt makes a great role model. I agreed with her points – and have summed them up here:

  1. Live your values with confidence. Are you consistent in practicing these values? Or are there habits and behaviors that you need to shed so that you lead with integrity and confidence?
  2. Celebrate being unique. And celebrate the uniqueness of others. The entire team brings strengths and talents to the table. Seek to make sure all of these are recognized and invited to be part of the larger picture.
  3. Be humble and willing to admit mistakes. Show others it’s okay to step out of their comfort zones and take calculated risks. And when it doesn’t work, or you misstep in your leadership in some other way, be willing to admit your mistakes so that others have permission to grow, as well.
  4. Show respect and concern for others. Sometimes we can get busy leading and forget to take a look around. Don’t take others for granted – make sure you recognize and acknowledge those around you.
  5. Seek to do good in the community. Commitment to a great cause can indicate a strong commitment to business. But beyond this, and more importantly, take the time do take action in doing good – simply because you can.

We influence others through our behavior, and can inspire greatness in others, or engender mediocrity. The choice is not really whether we want to become a role model, but rather, what kind of role model we want to be. What about you?

*  For more information on how to define and strengthen your leadership brand, see my previous article “Inspire!  Taking Your Leadership to the Next Level.”

Six Simple Steps to Next-Level Leadership

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You are a successful person who is in charge. You recognize that the leadership you have developed to get you here is not enough to support your goals going forward.

When I work with clients to help them up-level their leadership, the following points are some of what we include in our work together. Here’s to your viability, vibrancy, and effectiveness!

A 6-Point Checklist for Next-Level Leadership

  1. Create a higher vision for your leadership. You’ve led and done well. Now, what? The leadership that got you here is not the greater leadership that calls you forward. What does “next level” leadership look like for you? And how does it support your purpose?
  2. Lead from the heart. Purpose must possess passion in order to be heart-centered and genuine. Does yours need reviving? Get back in touch with why you seek to serve through your leadership, and align your heart and head, so that you can infuse heightened energy and excitement into your contributions.
  3. Take a stand. What’s important to you, and what are the top values from which you operate? When these values come into conflict with one another, or you are asked by others to step outside your values system, how do you handle it? Learn to use your values as a powerful lens so that you operate with integrity and confidence.
  4. Conduct a fearless inventory of those things that no longer serve you. Have you inadvertently developed a “group think” approach over time, or adopted habits and behaviors that have impeded you from doing your best work? Shed these and identify better alternatives so that you can increase your effectiveness.
  5. Define your unique value proposition. How does your envisioned “next level” leadership benefit the company’s bottom line? Can you articulate this in a way that others see the value in what you bring to the table?
  6. A vision is nothing without action, and integrity is key to great leadership. How will you ensure that you deliver consistently so that you meet and exceed the expectations of your company or business?

And finally, learn to actively cultivate your leadership. Using your wisdom as you remain agile to support change is key to your relevance and effectiveness. Enjoy the ride!

Not Your Mama’s Rocking Chair – Calling Seasoned Women to Take a Stand

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Calling Seasoned Women to Take a Stand

What are the opportunities for seasoned women to contribute at a higher level?

Convention assumes that this part of the workforce is on the way out – and bias reflects this.

But let’s put the puzzle together:

  • By 2030, 1 in 3 Americans will be 50 years of age or older. And 1 in 5 will be 65 or above, and few people are retiring at that age.
  • The future of business is gender-equal.
  • Diversity drives innovation.
  • Women are often still an untapped source of greater potential.
  • There’s no substitute for experience.

What picture have you come up with?

My vision is one of seasoned women rising to greater positions of influence.

Women in the workforce are often a huge source of untapped potential for a variety of reasons (that’s another article!). Additionally, people are not retiring at the young age of 65 anymore. Consider, then, that since diversity drives innovation and brings perspective, this means that we aren’t paying enough attention to supporting and elevating the potential leadership capacity of our more seasoned women.

Why should we focus on this?

    1. Companies recognize they need to remain competitive and in the black. The compelling business case for elevating the female factor in the workforce has already been made. And doing more with less is now the name of the game for those entities that want to remain viable and competitive. Delayering old hierarchical models results in assigning more responsibility throughout the organization. And quite simply, supporting full engagement and potential of all employees, men and women of all ages, is the smart thing to do in order to best benefit the company.
    2. Mental development and the capacity for greater leadership doesn’t stop at a certain age. Human beings are capable of continually growing their mental complexity over the span of their lifetime. This is a somewhat “recent” discovery, as psychologists and scientists in the 1980s declared that a human being’s mental development stopped in his or her 20s. Thirty years later, we now know that continuous growth in mental complexity is possible. This means that people of a seasoned age can also learn “new tricks” – meeting the demands of the world through advancing in social and emotional intelligence skills and complexity, allowing them to step into greater roles of responsibility and leadership.
    3. Women need female role models and mentors all the way to the top. Women often don’t aspire to higher leadership because they aren’t sure they will be recognized and rewarded. They don’t see other women modeling the way, with few or none at the top. In fact, millennial women are leaving companies in large numbers, reporting that they don’t believe there is a chance for them to ascend the career ladder. What if we could support and encourage experienced older women to step up, no matter what their position, to take greater personal leadership by mentoring and modeling?

So where do we start?

As with any sustainable change initiative, companies need to work at all levels to support employee growth and potential. But the women themselves also have important work to do. They need to affirm their own worth, recognize the opportunity, formulate a vision for their leadership, and seek strategic support for this vision.

And as with any worthy endeavor, it is going to take all of us to get there.