I saw this article from Lolly Daskal, author, and executive coach, called How Can an Executive Coach Make You a Great Leader? It reminded me that there are so many benefits for a leader who has a coach. I wanted to share some of my experience of having a coach and ideas for you to consider should you decide you might want to hire a coach. The Beginning of My Coaching Experience I remember when I hired my first coach in 2012….
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Are you labeling yourself without realizing it? On a recent podcast, I talked about being an introvert and how I embraced that label. Although it seemed like a good thing at the time, I may have leaned on that label a bit too much. Assessments I first learned about being an introvert when I took the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment. My experience with this assessment was quite a few years ago, and at that time, I had no…
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Are you familiar with the term impostor syndrome and what it means? Do you know how to recognize it in yourself or in others? The term impostor syndrome was first identified in 1978 by Dr. Pauline Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes, whose research determined that this challenge impacts overachieving women who try to fit in and be perfect. The high achieving women attributed their success to mistakes, luck, or because someone hadn’t yet figured out that they didn’t belong where…
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When someone first told me that I should “slow down to speed up,” I couldn’t even process what that would mean for me. There was too much to do and no time to get it all done! If I slowed down, then I would fall behind even further. What I came to realize though, is that slowing down is what is needed to prepare for what is ahead. Taking the time to reflect, be strategic, plan, create new ideas or…
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How do you accomplish your goals? Do you plan everything out or work with your team to do it? I know for me and my team, we would put together a plan for the goals. We would start by determining the outcome that we wanted for each goal, break the goal down into smaller milestones, determine resourcing needs, focus on making progress each month, and ultimately reach the goal. I know that sounds like it is so easy to do,…
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Which leader in your life made a difference for you in your career? I can think of several throughout my career, although they may not have even known it. They didn’t see what they did or said as anything special. To them, they were just doing their job and what they thought was right for me. If I had to narrow it down, I would say there were 5 key things that they did for me: Stretched me out of my…
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What does a leader who develops their people do, that other leaders don’t? I am sure that just like me, you could look back over your career, and see leaders that you enjoyed working for and some that you did not. What were the differences between those two groups of people? In my own experience, there were 4 things that made a difference: Did they actually take the time to connect with me? Did they care about my development? Did…
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When is the last time you reviewed the work that you are doing? I have spent time with a few different people this week on the work that they are doing in their groups and exploring if they could accomplish it in a new way. The conversation usually starts with a few questions like, “where are you overloaded or what are you or your team saying yes to instead of saying no?” They can usually come up with a list…
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If I could only find some time to just think. I have heard this from some of my friends this week and to be honest, I have said it to myself. When there is so much happening, it can be easy to get caught up in the mode of being busy and not taking any time to think. You just keep doing more things without a lot of thought behind them. Sometimes you can get paralyzed by the sheer number…
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“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” My former CEO shared that message with our group during a company wide presentation. We were going through a huge acquisition with an aggressive timeline to meet and she could see the stress that the organization was under to deliver on time. She wanted to make sure we focused on only what was absolutely necessary to get done. I have shared that same message with clients when they are overwhelmed and…
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