Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

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Mid-Career Conflict

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When It’s Not Worth Earning Millions Yearly

Last week, it was my privilege to be in Chicago to address some of the top female producers in the financial services industry. Imagine sitting in a room full of women who earn an annual income of up to and beyond a million dollars!

During our time together, we discussed some of the things these women have had to face in order to generate this kind of income. And we touched on mid-career conflict – something they encounter far more than women in other industries.

In fact, when I mentioned knowing that some of the women in the room were currently weighing their options outside the industry because of the cost of doing business, many heads began to nod, letting me know I hit a sensitive point.

What makes it so that earning more than a million dollars yearly isn’t worth it? Why do so many women leave the industry and give up this kind of money?

At a certain point, these women are feeling the costs of their career. These costs are not related to keeping their business or career afloat; these are personal costs to these professionals. And these personal costs seem too great in relation to the uncertain benefits they might receive in future.

What did they cite as chief costs?

  1. Women are hired in large numbers in the financial services industry, but they are most often in support roles and fewer in managerial positions; less or none on the executive committee (C-Suite). Promotions and bonuses are made behind closed doors, and these are made subjectively. One woman cited that she had outperformed her male counterpart, and her counterpart received a large bonus for performance – when she did not. She had to go in to fight for hers, proving her numbers. “I never should have had to fight for something to which we are told we are entitled,” she said. And I agree.
  2. There may be a few women at the top, but they are on the board, and not on the executive committee. This means that company operating decisions and voice most often do not receive the benefit of diversified perspective and brain trust. Flex time and family leave programs exist, but those women considering them feel others might see them as “non-viable” upon their return.
  3. Women are implicitly held to a higher standard than their male colleagues, as recent studies show. First, the financial services industry expects its top people to reflect typical male traits, being aggressive, dominating, and transactional. Women wind up attempting to masculinize their own traits to meet this. The results are inauthentic and awkward, and women face the double-bind that when they do reflect masculine traits, they are criticized for this, too. Of course, this is discouraging – and women lose confidence that they will succeed. They lose their ambition and many quit.

Now, this is not a man-bashing article. We need both genders, and diversity within those genders, to provide the rich perspective and brain trust that variety can bring. But what we are doing currently is not enough. And I’ll be writing about some solutions to this that we in human development are finding effective in the coming weeks.

But I’m curious:  Where would you start to turn this around? 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.

When You’ve Lost Your Way

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Rediscovering the True North of Your Leadership

Leading in your life and work has its hazards. There is much to do – busy demands, managing much.

Sometimes, a talented professional has reached a certain modicum of success, but discovers that she has not reached her full potential – and she doesn’t really know why.

She feels stalled.

She has lost her leadership compass – her true north.

If you have ever reached this point, or you find yourself in a destructive or unethical pattern, feeling trapped and confused, be encouraged! There’s a way out.

I coach two kinds of female executives and professionals:  high achievers, and high potentials. They engage me because they have reached a certain success, and now they are ready for more.

Lately, women from both groups have been coming to me for help because they are stalled at some point in their career or in their outcomes. I call this situation a mid-life conflict, and it is the outcome of a sort of unwitting self-sabotage. This conflict happens when a talented individual works at such a fast and furious pace over time to produce exceptional results. By adopting this mode as a permanent way of “doing” to the point that she also adopts it as a permanent way of “being,” she becomes constantly reactive instead of responsive. As she isolates herself and hyper-focuses on only work, the demands keep coming. The goals continue to rise. Over time, this dynamic erodes her personal leadership and her sense of self – the unique qualities, traits, and values that helped her to rise above the crowd to succeed in the first place.

Sheila found herself in such a situation. During the early part of her leadership, she served as executive director for a large area of responsibility.

“I focused on my performance and how much I could achieve,” she shared. “It became addicting, and I sought greater and greater rewards. But getting noticed was most important to me, because I thought I had to run fast to get to the top. This frenzy took precedent over the money I was making. If I received recognition through hitting goals, it told me I was worthy as leadership material. So I kept pushing hard.”

“That must have been a tough and stressful road,” I said. “That kind of approach can help fast-track your success to a certain point, but then you usually hit a wall.”

“How did you know?” she asked, “I feel like I’ve boxed myself into a corner, and now I’m not performing as I have in the past. Additionally, I’m not sure I’ve made many friends of my colleagues. It’s pretty lonely up here. I was so busy rising to the top, and now, I’m not sure if I can redirect this mess. Sure, I can work on the way I approach things – but my professional credibility as an emerging leader may be lost.”

Sheila’s situation was not new. She is what Bill George and Andrew McLean would call a “shooting star.”  In their article, “Why Leaders Lose Their Way,” they discuss five perils of the leadership journey, and these ultimately result in failure.

A shooting star is one that lacks “the grounding of an integrated life” (George and McLean). Their career is everything to them, and they are always on the go to get ahead. Balance is not part of their lexicon, and family, friends, and community connections suffer. As they push forward, stress mounts, and with the ever-changing marketplace, they must continue running faster. This means their pace is so rapid that they don’t allow the bandwidth or time to learn from their mistakes, resulting in stalled leadership.

Can a shooting star turn this around? Yes.

The answer lies in re-grounding.

But re-grounding not a simple case of re-balancing. It’s not just changing your tactics, scheduling some vacation time, and doing some intensive power networking. If you find yourself in a place where your present success has cost you a great deal of your life, and perhaps your professional future, then you must first tap back into the who and why of your leadership.

Because leadership means taking the lead.

Leadership is not a role or function; it’s a mindset and an intentional approach to all you undertake, accompanied by the thoughts, behaviors, and actions that support taking charge.

And being in charge means knowing who you are and what you are about. At its best, it’s coming from a platform of integrity, coming from center, so that your impact is significant.

To see this, you first need to understand what makes your leadership unique – your Leadership DNA. This is a combination of your purpose supported by your values and your natural strengths as you take action.

Then, you need to relate this Leadership DNA to the vision of the enterprise and its bottom line. And you work it. You strengthen and exercise this Leadership DNA so that you are aligned and powerful in all you do, from your focus and your direction to the actions you take, the decisions you make, and the people you affect.

Coming back from a stall-out – or better yet, avoiding one and taking your leadership to the next level, requires that you can answer the following tough questions – and know how to flex and integrate these into your being.

  1. Who are you as leader?
  2. What is your purpose?
  3. What values will you use as your compass?
  4. What fuels your best work?
  5. How does your Leadership DNA impact the organization and its bottom line?

Who are you as leader? What is your purpose?

Click over to our LinkedIn Community to share your response and join in the discussion.

 

Bill George and Andrew McLean. “Why Leaders Lose Their Way.”  Strategy and Leadership. Vol. 35, no. 3, 2007, pp. 4-11. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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.

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!

How Effective Is Your Decision-Making?

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Can you afford to make poor decisions?

I doubt many of you feel that you can. In addition to the immediate results you seek, the decisions you make today have bearing on the opportunities you enjoy tomorrow. Moreover, if you are leading others or even an entity, the decisions you make affect a great number of lives and futures.

So how do you check in to see whether your decision-making needs a tune-up?

The simple answer is to ask yourself the following questions:

  • Are you reaching your goals?
  • Are you outperforming the competition?
  • Are you influencing others at a high level?
  • Are you ready to meet the future?

Rate yourself below to see if you need a tune-up in your decision-making process.

  1. I use a well-defined process to make my decisions.
  2. I seek to identify the real problem before I begin to make a decision.
  3. I weigh the pros, cons, and risks carefully before making decisions.
  4. I include key stakeholders in the decision-making process, even if this will slow down the process or require a great deal of consensus-building.
  5. In my thought process, I tend to use language such as “how might this happen,” rather than, “this can’t happen because…”
  6. If I doubt the final decision, I stop to re-evaluate my assumptions and decision-making process.
  7. Others see me as an excellent problem-solver and seek to include me in significant decisions.

Where do you need to tune up your own decision-making process? I’d love to hear about your own experience!

Click here to join the LinkedIn discussion on this topic.