Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

executive coaching

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.

 

Building Your Influence: Trust Before Credibility

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Building Your Influence: Trust Before Credibility

“My presentations are powerful, and I think they are incredibly convincing…but I’m not getting the buy-in I need from the executive council, and I don’t feel I’m recognized as a part of it. In fact, yesterday, it was just ‘crickets’ when I shared an idea on something that would have saved us a great deal of money. What am I doing wrong?”

Jan was ready to up-level her leadership abilities and had hired me to help her develop more influence. Her talent was unquestionable – but she recognized that something was lacking. Sitting on the executive council – something she felt would help position her for greater leadership – had turned out to be a negative and frustrating experience.

“It’s like I’m invisible when it comes to contributing ideas,” she said. “I make sure I have all kinds of stats and evidence to support what I am going to say before I open my mouth. But I might as well be invisible. What gives?”

“Describe the executive council meeting to me, Jan, from the time you walked in.”

“Okay,” she answered. “Well, I got there early to set up my PowerPoint presentation. I like to make sure I come across as professional and ‘together.’ So I was ready and in my seat when the others started to file in. When it came my turn to present, I felt confident in my material and was poised and professional.  But at the end, when I expected a great response, I got absolutely nothing but a couple of nods, and the president quickly moved on to the next agenda item.”

“Jan, I am suspecting you aren’t building the trust with your council and colleagues to exert any influence with them. So, as highly credible as you are, you aren’t going to get anywhere without it.”

Building trust takes precedent over credibility. In other words, people are not going to listen to you – believe you – unless they first trust you. If you are a person of integrity like Jan, this can be a simpler fix than you think.

Judith Glaser, author, researcher and organizational anthropologist, outlines trust as the building block to successful communications and healthy relationships.  Even before the words we use, that first warm neural connection with others – reaching out, making eye contact, expressing interest in how they are – is key.

Without this step, those attending your presentations and meetings operate from the “fight or flight” part of the brain, and subconsciously ask themselves if they can trust you.

But by connecting warmly with others before you present, you help them leave that “fight or flight” part of the brain, and move to a higher state of trust so that they can receive you more easily and acknowledge your credibility.

I asked Jan to begin greeting each of the individual council members as the next meeting started to assemble, and to make sure she made eye contact, smiled, and asked them about plans for their weekend, or about their family. Her report back was encouraging.

“One of them actually asked me to lunch and wants to talk about my latest cost-saving proposal,” she said. “I’m thrilled! And I am starting to do this in my staff meetings – this could be the teambuilding piece I’m missing.”

How’s your trust quotient with others? If you are a person of integrity, and on upon whom others can rely, are you also making those important neural connections before you give feedback, present, or dive into business?

I’d love to hear about your experience, and how this might be making a difference for you.

Ref.  Glaser, Judith E.  Conversational Intelligence.” Bibliomotion, 2014.

 

When Your Values Collide

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It’s going to happen sooner or later.  Even though you are thoughtful about your values and look to live them with integrity, two or more values will most certainly collide.

Why does this happen? There are a couple of reasons.

1. Values can conflict when roles and outside demands clash

A client I will call Nanette once engaged me to help her fast-track to senior leadership in her firm.

“I want that vice-presidential role. I’ve worked hard to position myself, and I deserve the recognition. Besides, that salary increase will enable me to do all the things that the kids and I have been dreaming about.”

After working with Nanette on defining her top values, however, I asked her to share how we might approach two that conflicted.

“Nanette, your top values include family time and professional achievement – both of which are important to you. You have shared that the senior executive role will demand even more hours of work from you. How do you see this reconciling with your desire to have ample family time?”

Nanette’s career and self-growth values were clashing with her values as a parent.

“Having multiple roles in life (as we all do!) means that there are many demands on us. These demands may not always mesh. It doesn’t mean you forsake one goal for another – it simply means we have some work to do to see how we navigate this desire for promotion so that it doesn’t eclipse your desire for family time.”

“I’m relieved,” said Nanette.  “I thought for a moment that I would need to give up one or the other.”

She’s not alone.  Many abandon their goals and dreams, falsely thinking they have to choose between two paths – when in fact, it may be a question of becoming creative and carving out a situation that responds to both priorities.

2. The second reason values can collide is when other people may want you to go in a direction that conflicts with your values.

You may cherish your vacation time, and you love spending it with family in the out-of-doors. Your yearly family trip has always been that prized trek to Yosemite National Forest, and this next time cannot come soon enough for you. You have purchased a new camera for nature shots, and have already mapped out some hiking trails.

However, your teenagers have just informed you that they are tired of Yosemite, and that this year, they would like for the family to go to Disneyland and stay in one of the resort hotels. Further, they would each like to bring a friend, meaning less family and more “crowd.”

How do you choose?

Flexibility is key in both cases – Nanette’s and the Yosemite trip. Understanding that circumstances change with time, and that it is important to learn how to flex because of this, here are a couple of options to resolve the conflict.

First, you may order or re-order your values according to the relative importance of the conflicting values.

For example, how important is an out-of-doors vacation to you this year, compared to spending time with the kids?

Another way to deal with such a values collision is that you may decide to play a balancing act.

Nanette chose to apply for the promotion, and she received it. However, she also worked out an agreement with her company to work one day from home, and to take the kids out to lunch once weekly to have extra family time. She also engaged a housekeeper so her home workload was lighter. This allowed her to be more present for her kids when they were together at home.

“I know that circumstances will change over time, and I will need to make more shifts as this occurs,” says Nanette.  “However, knowing this is not a static situation also helps me to more easily play a balancing act, knowing that both of these things – family and career – are important to me.”

What values seem to be colliding for you at this time? How can you prioritize what matters most without feeling as though you are forfeiting what is important to you?