Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

executive coaching

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!

When Personal Crisis Hits: 5 Tips to Manage Your Professional Reputation

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Life is wonderful!  Life is amazing. But sometimes, stuff happens. And when it does, our personal “bandwidth” – our capacity for handling life and work – is asked to stretch.

This is normal. After all, encountering crisis and disruption is part of life. We may suffer the death of a loved one or experience a divorce. We may be called upon to manage a life transition for an aging parent, or to deal with a teen in trouble. No one is immune. Managing this effectively is key to keeping you on track both personally and professionally.

You see, as others at work and in the community learn about your situation and sympathize, they also expect your performance and abilities will be compromised. They assume this, because they think it would certainly affect them in that way.

So, whether you are able to continue working at capacity, in their minds, others will tend to subtly discount your ability to lead and perform well. This can have dire consequences on current and future opportunities for you.

How do you avoid this? How do you care for yourself, the situation, and manage perception so that you maintain your professional reputation?

Here are 5 tips to manage your personal and professional life when crisis hits.

  1. Take care of you, first. If you don’t take care of yourself first, by getting enough sleep, eating well, drinking water, and continuing to exercise, your capacity to manage stress, think clearly, and make decisions will be affected. It will also show through fatigue – the way you carry yourself, the energy with which you talk and approach situations. So make sure you are practicing some radical self-care.
  2. Manage the crisis itself by getting a plan and proper support. Identify the outcome you want to solve the problem, then reverse-engineer into a plan of action. Then, intentionally identify your support system. How do you need and want to be supported? Do you need resources? Advice? A listening ear? Probably all three! Identify those people who can serve as support and reach out to them. Let them know what is happening, and that you would like to call on them for help as the need arises.
  3. Don’t over-share with others. Keep your processing and the bulk of your sharing with your support system. A minimum of information on a “need-to-know” basis is key. Any sharing beyond this with colleagues, clients, and community is inappropriate and potentially harmful to your professional reputation in the eyes of others. In other words, no unnecessary details, and no ongoing updates with blow-by-blow developments as the situation progresses. A simple, “Thanks for asking, we are happy to have things settled down, now,” is helpful for curious minds.
  4. Prioritize and trim your workload and outside activities. Time to get lean and mean. Take a morning to prioritize, triage, delegate, so that you identify those initiatives and activities that are critical and necessary, those that can be delegated, and those that can be put on hold. This will provide mental and emotional space to best support your performance – and others’ perception of it.
  5. Lead a personal PR campaign. Announce to the world that you are on track and running! Deliberately connect with key stakeholders in your organization and outside in the community and subtly form an alliance with them to reinforce your viability. Identify those persons of influence and schedule time with them to catch up. What new trends or developments are occurring in your community, industry, or global marketplace that might affect them? Talk about a new project or the update on an existing one that might pique their interest, and share how it will positively impact. This takes a bit of planning, but you will have formed an unwitting circle of professional support to combat any doubts as to your current abilities.

And a final word on managing your personal situation and your work performance:  Schedule periodic reviews into your calendar until the situation is resolved. How are you doing? What needs to shift? It’s important to avoid allowing a situation to become chronic. If crisis mode is your “new normal,” ask for help.

Interpersonal Edge: Moving From Good to Great

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You’re highly skilled and experienced. Your background is solid. And you have been placed in a position of great responsibility.

Why aren’t you getting the results you seek?

The answer is probably behavioral. You see, as we advance in our careers, we usually don’t need more hard skills to reach higher and greater goals. Instead, most professionals simply haven’t adopted the executive behaviors necessary to be more effective.

Consider the three following executives:

  • Sandy, an experienced wealth advisor, networks diligently with high-potential referral partners, but receives no referrals. She believes she is networking with the wrong people, and is going to focus elsewhere for new business.
  • Mark, a senior vice president, is seeing very low productivity in his area. He has provided incentives, and sent his team to some great trainings. But nothing has worked so far, and he is convinced that the millennials on his team are tainting group work ethics. He is going to start working with HR to write people up.
  • Catherine, a partner from a highly-esteemed law firm, is charged with business development. The problem is, she’s great at marketing, but not at closing sales. She tells herself it’s just a question of numbers and decides to ramp up her efforts. The problem is, she doesn’t know how she will find the time to do this, when she is already stretched to deliver services to current clients.

What do these three scenarios have in common?

  1. The people in each scenario are highly skilled in their area of expertise.
  2. All of them think they know the reason for not getting better results – but none of them are correct.
  3. They each have one or more executive behaviors that are causing the problem.

Executive behaviors help to cultivate trust and credibility. They help you engage with others and motivate them more effectively. They help increase your influence and get greater results. They help you execute at higher levels, even under turbulent times.

Executive behaviors are what make the difference between being good – and being great.

Unfortunately, just because you have made partner in a firm or part of the C-suite, this doesn’t mean that greater executive behaviors will emerge on their own, or rub off on you. A mentor can’t fix this for you, and you can’t read a book or attend trainings or forums to make this happen. These are all excellent ways to learn new things and increase your awareness. But they can’t help you to make the personal shifts you need in order to be more effective.

You see, adopting executive behaviors means first knowing how to identify which behaviors you need to adopt or to replace, and then you must understand how to work on systematically integrating them into the way you work, testing them and adjusting for efficacy as you do this, so that you can make them a natural part of your personal leadership.

Here are the key executive behaviors missing from our scenarios: 

  • Sandy has great credibility, but she cannot connect with others in a way that instills trust. And if people don’t trust, credibility doesn’t matter. She simply won’t get the referral. In fact, the people with whom Sandy is networking are referring often and well – just not with her.
  • Mark’s inability to listen and his avoidance of conflict have hurt his team. His employees have come to him with problems in the past, but he has quickly minimized concerns, and said he will “look into it.” But he never does. His employees don’t trust or respect him, and they have become disengaged. Some of his key players are quietly seeking work elsewhere.
  • Catherine lacks executive presence, and specifically, her voice and language style downplays her self-assurance. Her potential clients describe her as “nice,” but not assertive enough to instill confidence. Since she is the face of her firm, they assume her firm is not effective.

These scenarios have a happy ending. I know, because I worked with them to adopt the executive behaviors they needed to turn their leadership and business around.

It may be just one key executive behavior that keeps you from moving from good to great.

What would stepping up your effectiveness do for you? What difference would it make to your business or organization?

To your success!

You Have a Great Vision and an Aggressive Plan: Why Are You Stuck?

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You are a seasoned professional who is intelligent and skilled. You have a world of opportunities ahead, and have set some high goals for greater success.

You’ve envisioned what you want success to look like, and you have drawn up a great action plan to get there (many of you have actually hired someone to help you with this!).

Yet, you find yourself stuck and unable to move forward. What’s more, you aren’t sure why. Here’s what we know:  When there is an internal conflict or fear that you have not yet confronted, you will not move forward easily.

And here are 5 possible reasons why:

1. Your vision doesn’t align with your values.

Surprising, but true. Many times, we don’t cross-reference our vision with our values. When this happens, and our values collide, the internal conflict that follows keeps us from moving forward. We may not even understand why – it just simply “doesn’t feel right.”

Coaching tip:  Find a list of personal values, and determine which top five you hold in highest regard for your life. Now review these as you look at your vision. Is there anything about the latter that does not align with one or more of your values? If so, what needs to shift or change in your vision to support you?

2. You just aren’t that into it.

When you created your vision and considered the change it would make in your life, how important was succeeding to you? Many times, we set goals because these are important to others in our intimate circle, and we want to please and keep the peace. This doesn’t work in the long run, and it doesn’t ignite passion for achievement, even in the short term.

Coaching tip:  Revisit your vision. How important is reaching this to you personally, on a scale of 1-5? If you respond with a number less than 4, odds are that you are not going to achieve your goals.

3. You are listening to too many voices.

Everyone has an opinion. When others hear about your work, some will be quick to share how strategy A never works – strategy B is always best. The next person will tell you the opposite. Every opinion will begin to sound right – and you can’t go down two paths at once. Result? A confused mind does nothing.

Coaching tip:  If your plan reflects sound strategies, then give those a chance. Work them for at least 90 days, then assess to see if they are working as they should.

4, The payoff is too great right where you are.

Let’s face it – change is uncomfortable. And if you are receiving some sort of intrinsic reward or emotional payoff for staying stuck, you are not going to move forward.

Coaching tip:  What’s comfortable about your discomfort? Are you on top of your responsibilities, and afraid of failing if you move forward? Are you getting emotional sympathy from others about your current situation? What payoff are you receiving for remaining right where you are?

5. You are afraid to succeed.

This one is challenging. It means you are afraid of losing something you currently have – a key relationship, a lifestyle, or even your identity.

Coaching tip:  Acknowledge your fear, and then ask yourself what you will lose by not moving forward. What will yield the greater return for you? Staying where you are – or moving toward goal?

What keeps you stuck? And what do you need to change in order to move forward?

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

​Learn the two vital parts to trust and how they can help you become a more highly effective leader.

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Taking Your Problem-Solving From Good to Great: The Missing Step

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Taking Your Problem-Solving From Good to Great
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One of your managers has two employees who argue often about which one of them is responsible for certain tasks assigned to their area…not just once, but a few times over a span of months. Other employees are complaining.

The manager has reported to you that he has had to intervene more than once to solve this, and finally sent them to a conflict management seminar last month. Yet, you just received a report that the two employees are at it again.

You’ve summoned the manager, and will ask him to terminate the two immediately.

But – are they really the problem?

Sometimes the conflict or challenge we think we have identified is not the real problem at all.

Problem-solving is a critical skill that does not receive enough attention in most executive development programs. Yet this one area is the one that most often holds professionals back from being more effective.

Most often, poor problem-solving can be due to just one critical step that is overlooked – getting to the root cause.

You see, the two employees aren’t the root cause of the problem. And because they are not, the problem will arise again and again, no matter who replaces them.

A classic problem-solving model will look something like this:

  1. Identify the problem.
  2. Determine the root cause of the problem.
  3. Come up with possible solutions.
  4. Select what you feel is the best solution.
  5. Implement the solution.
  6. Evaluate the outcome.

Many people will jump over the second step, reacting to what they see as the problem, but which is actually just a symptom of the root cause. This means that any solution they attempt may stop the immediate crisis, but it won’t really fix things.

So how do we get to the bottom of things?

A simple “5 Whys” technique will solve quite a bit.

The 5 Whys technique was developed by Sakichi Toyoda and used within the Toyota Motor Corporation at a critical stage in its manufacturing development. It’s a technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem.

Let’s see how it works with the example of the two employees:

Two employees continue to create a disturbance in the workplace (the problem).

  1. Why?
    They continue to argue with one another.
  2. Why?
    They do not agree on who will perform which tasks in their area.
  3. Why?
    Each thinks he knows who should perform which task, and their opinions differ.
  4.  Why?
    Their roles and duties are not well-defined so as to clarify who owns what responsibilities within the area.
  5. Why?
    The manager has not taken the time to review roles and responsibilities and to clarify these with his reports.

Now, we could carry this further and add a couple of “Whys,” and this would show that the manager’s boss has not taken the time to investigate why the manager cannot stop the problem.

You see, even though the employees are adults and they are responsible for how they conduct themselves, the root cause of the conflict, unless remedied, will tend to fuel more conflict, no matter who replaces these employees.

So before you react to a perceived problem next time, try the “Five Whys” exercise. I’m interested to see what insights this might provide for you!

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

​Learn the two vital parts to trust and how they can help you become a more highly effective leader.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC