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.

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!

The Gentle Art of Persuasion

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Up-leveling Your Influence Quotient:  The Gentle Art of Persuasion

“I don’t understand why it didn’t work,” my client Barbara shared. “I had a tight argument, and I’m a skilled negotiator. But I couldn’t move the needle on Don’s decision.”

“Barbara, the problem isn’t your argument – it’s your approach. You are negotiating rather than using persuasion. You aren’t going to change someone’s fundamental beliefs in an hour,” I countered.

“I can’t just give up on this – it’s too important to the business!” she said.

“Yes – I agree. What’s needed here is not negotiation – it’s persuasion.”

Barbara is not alone. Many people mistakenly try their negotiating skills when persuasion is needed. And mastering the art of persuasion is just as important as negotiation, when it comes to moving the needle and getting business results.

Negotiation and persuasion require two separate psychological processes, and depending on the situation, you may wind up using both.

Here are some key differences – and some steps to start up-leveling your skills in persuasion.

Bob Bontempo, professor of Columbia University Business School, gives a nice comparison between negotiation and persuasion. He says, “Negotiation is the mutual exchange of resources for mutual benefit, whereas persuasion is changing what someone believes about the resource or outcomes. Negotiating is usually quick, and can be expensive; persuasion is free, and takes longer to work.” 1

In other words, if you are negotiating, you can walk into a meeting and say, “Hey, can we talk? This is what I want, and I’d like to talk to you about how we make that happen.” And you can usually come to some sort of mutual decision within an hour or so.

But you can’t do that very effectively when there are high stakes involving someone’s core beliefs and convictions. For example, Decision-maker John harbors an unreasonable bias against Red Monkeys. You happen to know that by including a Red Monkey initiative in your 5-year plan, the business will generate much more revenue.

You aren’t going to change John’s mind about Red Monkeys by just walking in and saying, “I’m here to talk about how I believe that a Red Monkey initiative needs to be included in our 5-year plan, and I want to talk about how we can make that happen beginning next week.” It is not going to happen. At least, not that way.

Persuasion is a more gradual process along a continuum, made up of small movements, much like dating someone. First, you open up curiosity in the mind of the other person, you then begin to gently create consideration for other perspectives (and creating doubt in their conviction by doing so). You then generate a desire for more information, and move them along the continuum to your agenda.

Is this manipulative? Absolutely! We manipulate opinion every day. And persuasion, like any other tool, can be used for good, or for bad. Your motives are pivotal to this process, and having everyone’s best interest in mind is key.

Here are 4 keys to begin flexing your skills of persuasion to move others along.

  1. Pinpoint the common interest.

You have to be interested to be persuaded. So as you think about next steps in your encounter, identify what would pique their interest about this topic, or about shifting their belief. John is interested in meeting the goal of generating more revenue, and hasn’t yet come up with initiatives that will produce a desirable ROI.

  1. Identify what will pique curiosity or create doubt in their current conviction.

What is the other person ready to hear? What is the other person not ready to hear? John is ready to talk about generating revenue, and he is interested in exploring additional initiatives to help reach a goal. He is a risk-taker, and open to identifying those initiatives that will bring a greater ROI. He is not ready to hear about Red Monkeys yet, as one of those ideas.

  1. Make it their idea.

Ego is not a factor here; results are. “So, John, if I hear you correctly, you feel that generating more revenue in the first 18 months will fast-track our 5-year plan and allow us to expand, right? And you are willing to take a look at some initiatives to do this may be risky, but if we can prove their efficacy with other industry examples, you are willing to consider them? What naturally follows from your idea to consider new ideas that are calculated risks, is to look at those things that we may not have considered in the past – am I right in hearing this?”

  1. Ask the $3 Million Question.

I asked for $3M one time and got a ‘yes’ in 30 seconds. But was it all me, and was it all because I was standing there with the person, David, who held the power to considering the request? Absolutely not. My team and I had moved this relationship along the continuum over time. We were up against much – the entity in question had never gifted more than $1M to any one entity per year, and there were several key stakeholders to convince, as well as steps to take, to prime them to consider the request. So don’t try this question until you have a foothold into the relationship and process – but when you do, this is a great way to finally surface objections and meet them with suitable answers.

Here the question I asked: “Under what conditions would you consider a gift of $3M’?”

David, clearly surprised, stammered, “Well, we have never gifted more than $1M to any entity, and I’m not sure our board would agree to do this, and there are all kinds of legal complications to making a proposal work…  Besides, this whole process might take well up to 18 months!”

I answered, “So, David, what I hear you saying is that you and I would need to sit down and agree on terms, take it to our attorneys for review, and present it to the board, with the full understanding that the process of approval and funding may take somewhere between 12-18 months?”

“Yes – I guess so,” David responded.

“We can do that,” I said. “Let’s set a date to sit down!”

Let’s transpose this question to John’s situation. Once you have taken the preliminary steps to affirm common interest and create curiosity and doubt in John’s current plan to reach the goal; and once he has admitted he is open to considering initiatives he refused in the past, try the question…

“John, under what conditions would you consider including a Red Monkey initiative in our plan?”

John will obviously counter with objections – Red Monkeys are dangerous, they are costly, they make messes and scare children!

“So, what I hear you saying, John, is that you can see the value Red Monkey initiatives bring to other companies, but in order for this to work here, we would need to ensure that they are properly vetted, stay within budget, and are cared for and contained so we don’t risk any messes or frights. Am I right? We can do that!”

I challenge you to begin flexing your persuasive muscle, today!

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.