Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

confidence

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?

What is Holding You Back from Your Big Leap?

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What's holding you back?

It May Not Be What You Think

There is a profound book by Gay Hendricks called The Big Leap. In it, he identifies a phenomenon that occurs as people reach a certain point of growth in business or in their personal lives. He calls it the “Upper Limit Problem.” It manifests itself in many forms, from worry to criticism to physical injury or illness. He lists other common manifestations.

Let’s examine the life of Teresa, for instance. Teresa has always worked hard. She started a business and, being the hard worker that she was, it took off immediately. An hour before her first major client interview, Teresa fell and injured her ankle. In immense pain, but not to be deterred, she proceeded with the meeting, and then promptly went to the hospital. It worked out well (except for the injured ankle, of course), as she landed the contract, which served as a major trajectory for her next level in business.

Several years later, she was at a second major growth point in her business. She had become much too busy to do everything herself, and the business had also outgrown her small team. About to make a major shift in her business, she fell once again. And once again, she broke her ankle.

Today, she laughs at the obvious sign of her “upper limit problem,” but does acknowledge the value in knowing it exists.

Maybe you have just been given a promotion – one that you have aspired to for a long time – but have suddenly found yourself out of sorts and being overly critical of yourself and others. Maybe you have been asked to lead a major initiative, only to find yourself battling a sudden and mysterious illness.

These are signs of an “upper limit problem,” and those are often rooted deeply in three causes.

  1. Life Experience

As an example, many of us grew up as children or grandchildren of Depression era parents or grandparents. That era had a significant impact on how people viewed work and money. Let’s say you were heavily influenced by your parents of that era, who always reminded you to work hard, save for a rainy day, and protect your money because it could be gone in an instant. Following their advice, you have worked very hard to get to a level of lucrative success, only to have a constant, nagging worry that you will lose it all somehow. This is where your upper limit problem reveals itself. When you do get a substantial raise, if you are not careful, you will sabotage yourself and lose it.

  1. Personal Confidence

If you find yourself hitting a glass ceiling over and over again, yet never being able to push beyond it, you may have a personal confidence issue that is coming across to those who are making decisions regarding placement. There are image consultants out there who can help you look good, speak well, and walk confidently into a room, but if you do not have confidence on the inside, it will reveal itself on the outside. And here’s the thing…you may not even realize it is happening.

  1. Lack of Support

There are points of change in life where we want to make the “big leap,” but we are not sure we can do it. Change is challenging. Do something now to prepare for it. Create a strong inner circle, a group of mentors and trusted confidants who will help you get past that point when you can’t do it alone. We gain strength from the confidence of others when we do not have it in ourselves.

I encourage you to think about the following question, and push yourself to answer until you get to its roots. It is a profoundly helpful exercise.

What is your upper limit problem, and where does it come from?

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I invite you to join our LinkedIn group for just this kind of support (click here). We are experienced professionals who understand what is required to make those big leaps. Join us and let us help you reach the levels you have always wanted to reach but have never been able to manifest. I look forward to having you there!