Q. What inspired you to pursue a career in leadership?
My leadership career took root early. I had teachers who recommended I go to leadership conferences when I was in junior high and high school, and I was intrigued by the concept of leadership. Early in my career, I had a couple of outstanding professional mentors who were great leaders. Though I was a VP of Human Resources at the time, I had a lot of leaders come to me for coaching and mentoring. That was the part of my role I enjoyed the most. So, when an opportunity arose to allow me to pursue and dedicate more of myself to my passion for developing leaders, I jumped on it.
Q. What is a current or emerging trend in your field?
Ten years ago, we had 70,000 executive leadership coaches in the U.S. Now we have 240,000. With this abundance of coaches, a trend I’m seeing is the popularity of the executive coaching industry as a whole, making it more imperative than ever for leaders to be able to recognize what effective coaching looks like.
Effective coaching is comprehensive, and therefore requires in-depth business expertise, systems knowledge, talent mastery, professional coaching certifications and personal experience at the executive level. Coaches who possess all of these characteristics will help leaders and teams be authentic and effective, and result in higher-performing organizations.
A mastery of deeply integrated executive coaching is truly the key to success in our industry, and is a unique differentiator for us at Leadership Excelleration. We’re focused on connecting, fostering individual transformation, optimizing executive team talent and enhancing organizational performance.
Q. Do you think women face unique challenges in the workplace? If so, what are those challenges and how can we overcome them?
At Leadership Excelleration, we’ve dedicated ourselves to the study of uniquely advancing women and have developed our women’s leadership programs based on that research. There are definite differences in the barriers and struggles women tend to have at work. We are battling cultural norms in the American workplace as we guide women to overcome career-related obstacles. Professional women are traditionally and often, subtly and overtly, nurtured to be empathetic, cooperative and nonassertive at work. But as women learn how to take the lead, be confident, assert themselves and develop a strategic network, they can thrive. This kind of active assertion of leadership goes against the cultural grain and combats gender-biased work cultures. The more women seek to understand and embrace the mindsets and skills needed to help them advance in their careers, the better it is for the future of all women.