Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

influence

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?

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!

The Difference Between Leading and Managing

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The Difference Between Leading and Managing

Why You Need to Do Both

There’s a lot of noise out there about how you should stop managing and start leading in order to be successful.

Big misconception. No matter what role you hold in your work, you are always going to need both skillsets.

Managing means facilitating process and/or entities to accomplish a goal. And leading, according to the dictionary, is to “go before, show the way; influence, inspire.”

Here are some differences between leading and managing:

Chart

If you are in charge of an area of responsibility, you need to know how to lead – and how to manage.

Here’s an easy way to think about it:  Lead people, manage work.

It’s tough to survive without the ability to wear these two hats. In an age of the flattened organizational model, with more shared responsibility and less authority, influence and inspiration rule supreme in order to bring team and other stakeholders along…and we still need to tend to our personal piece of the work pie to reach goals.

How does this play out in your work?

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.

Designing Your Leadership Identity

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The Who in the What That Makes the Difference

You are taking on a greater role, and you want to excel in your leadership.  How do you do that?

Here’s the working plan to get ahead for many out there:

  • Formulate a plan. Investigate how others stepped into more leadership, and begin to do likewise.
  • Work on strengthening your leadership competencies. Take advantage of resources that help to identify which leadership competencies you want to strengthen, and work on these.
  • Develop a support system. Build a strategic network to help fast-track visibility and viability.
  • Take on projects and initiatives that showcase your leadership abilities.
  • Ask for the promotion / larger contracts / more business.

But, wait. 

Something is missing from this list.

It’s really the first thing that should happen.  It’s the very thing that will help you contribute your best work.

It’s the “who” in the equation.

Your unique leadership identity.

Who are you, and who do you need to become, in order to rise to your best leadership?

Defining this makes the difference between good leadership and great leadership.  Living the answer will help you contribute your best work.  It will keep you motivated as you work through the challenges and tests that forge greater leadership.  It will also help distinguish you from the competition.

If you haven’t taken the time to define the who, you have bypassed the one step that will set you apart as you undertake the what.  Leading with purpose, on purpose.

Here are some questions to help you begin designing your leadership identity.  You may find it useful to journal on these.

  1. What do you stand for? If you could answer one question for humanity before you leave this earth, what would it be?  Why?  And how is your work important to this?
  2. What unique value do you bring to the table? If you weren’t part of the equation in life, in work, what would be missing?  How would it affect outcomes at work, in the world?
  3. How will you use this to make a significant imprint in the world through your work? Work without purpose is fleeting and empty.  What leadership legacy do you want to be remembered for?  And what do you need to do today in order to begin?

What does your unique leadership identity look like?  Can you describe it in one or two sentences?

Click here to join the LinkedIn discussion on this topic.