Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

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How to Look Back in Order to Move Forward

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How to Look Back in Order to Move Forward
Image Credit: Shutterstock

This is the time of year when many of us are already planning for 2018, while seeing how to best juggle the upcoming holiday season. There are messages and markers everywhere that prompt us to do both, as much as most of us would just like to concentrate on the month at hand.

Signs of December celebrations are everywhere. It seems that the marketplace has jumped over Thanksgiving to light up stores with holiday decorations. People are busy scheduling social events and already feeling the edge of overwhelm that a packed calendar can bring during this season.

At the same time, the workplace is confirming budgets for 2018, prompting a hard look at targeting new goals and strategies.

So, if you are like me, you are receiving e-mail messages and calls to prepare not only for social events, but for client work deadlines that actually have to do with a running start to 2018.

Strategic planning and setting personal or professional goals for 2018, while seeing how to best manage the last two months of the year can be tough. Defining how you want next year to look can turn out to be a quick two-question process that can leave out some important self-reflection.

Here is what I mean: most of us will tend to scramble, by asking ourselves, “What did I not accomplish this year that I need to accomplish next year? What do I need to do differently in order to achieve this desired state or goal next year?”

I call this line of questioning “war zone thinking.”

This is a quick tactical assessment which is useful in times of war for quick action to avoid disaster. However, it also places us in a state of “high stress alert,” impelling you to operate from the “fight or flight” area of the brain.

Operating in this way is highly counter-productive for visioning and planning strategically for next year’s goals and aspirations, and here are three reasons why:

  1. From a mindset point of view, such a quick line of questioning can tend to make you feel as though you are behind, and not performing or accomplishing enough.

Beginning a planning process with the question, “What did I not accomplish?” intimates that you have failed in some way, and places you in a defensive posture that does not allow for best processing.

  1. Using the “fight or flight” area of the brain will keep you in a state of stress and throw up roadblocks to using your “executive brain.”

The latter is the part of the brain that allows your creativity to spring forth, your visionary abilities to rise, and use of your best critical and analytical thinking skills.

  1. Assessing where you are, where you need to be, and how to get there should begin by providing a snapshot of wins and celebrations.

You will want to remind yourself as to what has worked well and what you used to achieve this so that you have a top-of-mind picture of the strengths you may use for moving forward.

The following framework is a positive and useful kick-off to your own personal planning, or your professional strategic planning process at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

Looking Back to Move Forward

  1. What accomplishments and milestones have I reached this year? The past 3-5 years?
  2. How would I like to celebrate these?
  3. What personal strengths and skills did I use in order to reach these achievements?
  4. What adversities and unexpected challenges have occurred during this time?
  5. How did I push through or move past these?
  6. How would I like to acknowledge myself for moving past these adverse occurrences?
  7. As I think about next year, what will be important to celebrate and the end of December?
  8. What are the top 1-3 goals I want target to achieve?
  9. To what will I say “no” in order to say “yes” to these? What critical shifts and conversations will need to take place?
  10. What personal strengths and skills will I use to make these things happen?

Once you have thoughtfully reflected on or discussed the answers to these questions, you will be in a positive and energetic frame of mind to move through your strategic planning process for 2018.

How to Quit Holding Your Own Company Back

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How to Quit Holding Your Own Company Back
Image Credit: Shutterstock

Are you holding your own company back?

It’s easy to blame a stagnant or waning business on external factors, but one thing is sure: a CEO’s ability to flex with changing conditions isn’t enough.

It is important to get out ahead of the pack and remain in front. How do you do this?

First, it’s necessary to admit that things that affect your business change daily. They always have, and they always will. Disruptive technologies, a fluctuating economy, and many other factors that affect customer demand and the ability to do business surface constantly. This is not new – it’s simply uncomfortable.

The only variable is you, the CEO. Because even though the world witnesses many failed businesses, there are many others that survive and thrive.

How can you be sure you are not holding your own company back? That is a book in itself.

Here are the top three reasons CEO’s keep their businesses from flourishing, and how you can get out of your company’s way.

1. Step outside limiting biases.

Are you operating your company in the same way with the same information and taking the same approach to your business that you did just a handful of years ago? These days, companies staying in front are asking what needs to shift and change, and they do a spot-check assessment every six to nine months.

This one thing can change the entire trajectory of a business’s lifespan. If you are operating off a strategic plan that is more than 18 months old, you’re in trouble. It is time to re-evaluate. You may be meeting your objectives, but these objectives and their strategies may already be second-best in a changing marketplace. If your strategic plan isn’t being translated into correlating action, it is…

Time to review.

2. Stop limping along with that under-performing employee.

Do you have an under-performing employee who has been there for decades, but holding back the future? Are you feeling high-jacked because of the perceived loyalty this person carries by their longevity with the company?

This is a tough one, especially for family-owned businesses. If you are on the fence about someone in your own company, ask yourself how this is affecting your other employees and company outcomes. If you think about it, by holding onto this person, you are damaging not only his or her immediate area and the work, but hurting the morale of an entire employee base, the product or service your customers enjoy, and the future of what you are able to do.

Time to reassess.

3. Step ahead of the curve instead of riding with it.

If you think reading the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and trade magazines are feeding you the information you need in order to stay ahead of the competition, think again.

Reading these are great for staying on top of what is currently happening, but taking in reported information that has already occurred will not help you to develop the foresight you need in order to get out in front.

Are you ready to flex your visionary skills? Change the conversations you are having with other business owners. You may still ask the question, “What are you seeing and what are you doing about it?”

But you need to push farther in the discussion. Questions like, “What do you think might happen because of it?” are vital to stretching your ability to survey the horizon. And taking time to play this out is important.

A follow-up question is, “If we couldn’t deliver services ‘this way,’ how might delivery look to reach the end consumer?”

Time to stretch.

How might you be holding your own company back?

Three Reasons to Stop Focusing on Your Strengths and Weaknesses

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Three Reasons to Stop Focusing on Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Are you focusing too much on your weaknesses – or just as bad, are you focusing too much on your strengths?

You can actually arrest your own leadership development by doing so.

Here’s why:

Before the rising of the popular strengths-based coaching approach, workplace mentoring and coaching focused on helping its workforce to strengthen identified weaknesses. But we discovered after some time that the results were poor. In fact, employees were showing negative outcomes.

Focusing on weaknesses in leadership development can result in the following:

  • It can give a false sense of ineptitude and negative self-image. By giving weaknesses too much attention, the executive in question may begin to feel inept. Little discussion is made about what is going well, and so a negative self-image may begin to form, diminishing confidence.
  • By neglecting to bring strengths into the process, an imbalanced approach to getting the work done may actually result in an even poorer performance.
  • The weakness in question needs to be relative to the role the executive plays. Is the weakness in question hindering performance or hampering company goals? Or is it simply a result of a list that has no relevance to the job?

Face it – it’s more fun to focus on strengths! But there’s a drawback to swinging over to focusing on strengths, as well.

Focusing on strengths in leadership development can result in the following:

  • It can give the executive a false sense of competence, paving the way to neglect what might be hampering his or her best work.
  • By neglecting to address what is not working, focusing on strengths can give just as imbalanced an approach as focusing on weaknesses. In fact, focusing too much on developing a strength can actually render that strength a weakness. For example, if an executive has great ambition, developing that to the point of exaggeration can actually send wrong messages and behaviors and derail a career.
  • The strength in question needs to be relative to the role an executive plays, or it doesn’t matter how special that strength is! Is the strength key to performance? Is it aligned with company goals?

A balanced approach to your personal and professional leadership development with methodologies that are evidence-based – proven to work – is the first step.

If you are working on this to improve your performance and your career trajectory, make sure that what you are doing is actually relevant and supportive of where you are – and where you want to go!

Why Your Values Are Not Working for You

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Why Your Values Are Not Working for You

You are a purpose-driven professional. And you have a big vision.

But life and work don’t feel congruent. In fact, things are hard.

Is being purpose-driven overrated?

That depends.

You may not know how to use your values to guide your purpose. Here are three reasons why this might be happening:

1. You don’t know your values.

You have set your vision and your “why,” but you haven’t identified your core values – the GPS by which you will guide your purpose. Without this, your efforts can become misaligned. If you haven’t done this yet, click here for the exercise I use with my private clients.

2. Your values are in conflict with each other, and you don’t know how to reconcile this.

When values conflict, this means your priorities are competing with each other. This means sitting down and writing out what is important to you, and making some tough decisions. As they say, you can have it all – just not all at once.

3. You aren’t using your values to fuel your purpose.

You’ve gotten busy, and let distractions take over. You’ve neglected to check in regularly on all areas of your life to see if your priorities align with your values. Don’t feel guilty – get going. Start today.

Where in your life do you need to realign? What is your first step?

A Powerful 5-Step Planning Tool

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A Powerful 5-Step Planning Tool for Executives to Finish Strong

A Powerful 5-Step Planning Tool for Executives to Finish Strong

It’s September.

If you are an executive in charge, acting “on purpose” to guide your team or entity to this year’s finish line is crucial.

I know it’s already on your mind.

Yet September is usually when I see executives start to slide.

 They have pushed hard during the first couple of quarters, and have allowed the summer’s workplace to slow things down.

Psychologically, it’s pretty tough to pick back up after ramping up and slowing down. It can cause stress, a feeling of overload as you try to get back on track, and a sense of being behind that can follow you through December 31st.

In fact, you may feel just a wee bit tired and demotivated just reading this, because you know what I mean.

Are you ready to get in front of this so you finish the year strong, avoiding the stress and overload that comes with year-end frenzy?

It’s time to get intentional.

I can help you do that so you finish out the next quarter in a strong and productive way that helps you and your team celebrate effectiveness and achievement.

It’s something I use with my private clients, no matter what time of year, to ramp up their success.

The 5-Step Powerful Planning Tool

1. Review your business foundation.

Gather your team and review your mission, vision, and values statements. Together, these should comprise a strong and exciting philosophy that does not change. These share the inspiration, the “why” of what you do that will fuel your motivation and drive over the next 90 days. Get clear on these before proceeding to step 2.

2. Assess your progress to date.

Review your current goals and strategies. Are these currently meeting and exceeding your business objectives? How well? Refer to any milestones and benchmarks associated with them to see if you are firmly on track, or if you need to adjust or shift any approaches you take to finish out the year. Celebrate the wins, cut the losses, and above all, quickly eliminate any work associated with that which is not working. Clear the deck for your last quarter.

3. Determine your priorities for the next quarter.

What priorities rise to the top? Identify or review the initiatives and projects associated with these. If you find it difficult to triage, do a quick analysis of priorities and projects so that you don’t hang on to the misnomer that “everything is equally important.” Take the lean and mean approach so you can finish strong, allow your team to be recognized well, and save your sanity.

4. Outline your 90-day action plan.

Working a 90-day action plan is incredibly effective at keeping you and your team motivated and energized, if you will include incremental milestones and short-term wins. So, as you identify major projects and activities, responsible parties and key stakeholders, ask yourself: What are the incremental milestones we can celebrate at the end of 90 days? Where are the best short-term wins to be captured that will support longer-range goals? And finally, do a quick assessment to ensure that the plan and its tenets support the enterprise’s mission, vision, and values. This is a great team-building exercise.

5. Up-level your ability to execute.

Use this 90-day action plan to perform a “personal 360°” on your plan and yourself. Have your team do the same, and then come together to discuss so that you can best support one another.

Here are questions to ask yourself:

  • As I look to the end of this next quarter, what commitments, activities, and calendar items do I need to shift, put aside, and/or eliminate in order to accomplish the 90-day action plan’s objectives?
  • What are those personal leadership behaviors I need to adopt in order to do well?
  • What needs eliminating?
  • What needs shifting?
  • What does meeting with my team to assess progress look like?
  • And how shall we celebrate our success at the end of these next 90 days?

I hope you enjoy this process as much as have my clients. They have used this for team-building, heightening performance, productivity, and morale.

What are your biggest barriers to meeting year-end goals? How do you move past these in order to succeed?