Always an athlete, Debbie Waitkus played on the soccer team at the University of Arizona and after graduate school she went on to establish a thriving corporate career as president of a 37 year old, $130 million private mortgage banking firm. She always attributed golf as one of her keys to success since she would take her clients on golf outings to establish and steward professional relationships and business deals. When the CEO of her firm implemented a new strategy that didn’t follow suit with her professional values, Debbie knew it was time for a change and what better way to plan her reinvention than to leverage the game of golf in a new business.
Career Coach • Author • Speaker
Go Ahead, Be Ambitious!
May 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I was conducting a mock interview for one of my clients, a focused, smart, and confident woman going through an intentional career reinvention. When I asked her if she considered herself ambitious she recoiled as if I used an inappropriate word. After further inquiry she revealed that she never wanted to be seen as the run over your colleague type of ambitious as she thought it would jeopardize her professionalism and collegiality competencies in the workforce.
While some ambitious synonyms include pushy and ruthless, others are go-getting, determined, and motivated. I encourage those of you that are ambitious to own this adjective as a positive one and drive your own marketing message. Define who you are on your terms and don’t fear what others will interpret if you are clear about how you want the career world to see you.
If your boss asks what your career goals are, have an answer and be ready to aim high. You must articulate your goals in the workplace, and as you network, so others perceive you in roles with greater responsibility, higher rank, and a larger salary.
Aiming low and acting too humbly will inhibit your career growth because others will not believe you are interested in moving up. So if you are ambitious (as I am) wear it with pride and own your self confidence by talking about what you want.
By putting your professional wish list out into the world you are more likely to create opportunities that align with your values because others will have a clear expectation of what you want. Take pride in your ambition and own it with a humble confidence that is professionally palatable and will position you to be considered for bigger and better things.
For the record, men have been encouraged and applauded for their ambition for centuries so I’m confident that women can master this technique and use it to our advantage if we own our accolades and our career desires.
Results-Only Work Environment
September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
It may sound idyllic but wouldn’t it be incredible to work in a results oriented environment where your time was your own to be productive as you saw fit? In this world, the team would be high functioning because they are playing to their strengths and passionate about their individual roles as well as their accomplishments.
It may seem too good to be true but Cali Ressler of BNET.com put together an amazing list of 10 things leaders and supervisors can do right now to kick the habit of the archaic time-based management model to get teams focused on results.
- Make meetings optional. Let people evaluate their need to participate. If they know they can make better use of their time (and the company’s), then they should.
- Stop judging how people spend their time. Cut the sludge, or office digs and inappropriate slams, according to Ressler about when people show up, leave, or how they spend their time. Judgmental language can hurt loyalty, engagement, and productivity.
- Reward employees based on results, not how much time they put in at the office. Don’t use references to time positively or negatively. Some people work faster than others and setting up a competitive environment where co-workers are trying to out-time each other is a waste of energy. Focusing on the results will level the playing field and ultimately let people play to their time strengths.
- Don’t prescribe what work/life balance looks like for your team. Balance should be up to each individual – let them determine if they need to utilize a flexible schedule or work from home options. Again, focus on results and stop comparing yourself to your colleagues.
- Don’t handpick who gets to be flexible and who doesn’t. If you really want a flexible, results-based environment then the rules must apply to everyone regardless of rank or seniority. Period.
- Stop managing by walking around. Every time you check in on someone, they have to stop what they are doing, reorient their thinking to deal with your spontaneous visit and then regroup to get back to their work task when you leave. Don’t interrupt work flow unnecessarily but checking up on people. Trust them and they will deliver.
- Quit using fake crises as a management tool. Dropping a last-minute or urgent request on your employees is like crying wolf. Plan ahead and be respectful of their already full plate of tasks.
- Don’t think that you are a great boss if you let people leave work early during a snow storm. This kind of behavior reinforces the fact that you have control over your team’s time and they don’t. Let people make sound decisions and judgment calls themselves.
- Get clear about performance goals, communicate often, and hold people accountable. If your employee is not performing, talk to them. Find out why and ask what they need to succeed. Don’t shirk your responsibility as the manager to hold performance reviews. This tool is important for communication, goal setting and motivation even if a promotion is not at stake.
- Trust people like you trust yourself. Your goal is to make the work environment vibrant and letting your employees earn your trust is a valuable commodity. They want to succeed and live up to their expectations as well as yours. Create a workplace where trust is expected and revered.
Are You a Multiplier or a Diminisher?
July 21, 2010 By 1 Comment
From academia and the non-profit arena to the corporate world-of-work, I have many clients who complain about bosses who are ineffective leaders. Are their leaders intelligent and talented people? Yes. But, are they able to lead a team, motivate others, and empower success in their colleagues? No!
I have come to believe that while some leaders are born, most are developed and our current professional marketplace does not place enough emphasis on training effective leaders. This leads to discontent amongst the troops and ultimately low morale and low productivity. There are some enlightened organizations that train from within but I wish it was part of every organization’s professional development curriculum.
Liz Wiseman, worked at Oracle for 17+ years and considers herself a genius watcher. She was the VP responsible for the company’s global talent development strategy and ran the Oracle Corporate University. Her book: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter teaches valuable lessons for current and aspiring leaders.
During Wiseman’s 17+ year leadership watching and developing experience at Oracle, she discovered that some leaders drain intelligence and the capabilities of the people around them. Their focus on their own intelligence and their narcissistic need to be the smartest person in the room had a diminishing effect on everyone else around them. For them to look smart other people had to look dumb or incompetent and in turn, the Diminishers created a vacuum suck of all the creative energy in a room. Meeting times were doubled and other people’s ideas suffocated and died in their presence. From these so called leaders, intelligence only flowed one way – from them to others.
The Multipliers, on the other hand used their leadership intelligence in a much different way. They used their intelligence to amplify the capabilities of others on their team. People got smarter and better in their presence and ideas flowed freely and challenges were overcome. When these leaders walked into a room the energy level went up on the team and difficult problems were solved because every team member had a say and was involved.
So why do some leaders boost the mental IQ in a room and others suck the mental life out of their employees? The Multipliers bring out the intelligence in others by building collective and viral genius in an organization.
Wiseman identified 5 disciplines of Multipliers:
- The Talent Magnet: Attract and optimize talent
- The Liberator: Require people’s best thinking
- The Challenger: Extend challenges
- The Debate Maker: Debate decisions
- The Investor: Instill accountability
By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get twice the resources from people than do the Diminishers. Wiseman shared a success story about Bill Campbell, former CEO of Intuit who fully admits that he is a recovered Diminisher. A courageous team member called him on his micro managing, intelligence draining leadership style and pleaded for him to give the team space to create ideas and solve problems. It was a hard lesson for Campbell to learn but in the long run it gave him the insight he needed to become a more effective leader.
He now subscribes to the philosophy of creating brilliance in others on his team by empowering them to succeed. This is a difficult lesson for many of today’s unsuccessful leaders who don’t have the professional development resources to learn to become Multipliers. Others don’t have courageous team members to call them out on being ineffective leaders so they continue to diminish and dysfunctional teams plod along.
If confronting your diminishing leader is not within your comfort zone, or you fear job security, perhaps a mysterious copy of Liz Wiseman’s great book in an office mailbox will plant the seed anonymously. Are you a Multiplier or a Diminisher?
What it Takes to Succeed
June 9, 2010 By 2 Comments
I just read an article by David Cutler who wrote a book called The Savvy Musician. He outlined various competencies for success in musical careers that are applicable in all professional work arenas.
- An Entrepreneurial Mindset. The ability to problem solve, create opportunities, think outside the box, market remarkably, and manage your own projects.
- Leadership and Vision. Individuals who possess a strong sense of vision and the courage to lead with influence are rewarded on many levels.
- Collaboration. Successful professionals value working with others, creating projects that are greater than themselves. Consider joining forces with the not so obvious constituents in your circle of contacts: community members, educators, business leaders, neighbors, etc.
- A Strong Brand. A brand is much more than your name or logo. It is the sum total of how others perceive what you do. What distinguishes you from the pack and how will potential clients or colleagues know that?
- Risk Taking. Most people are terrified of failure, playing it too safe and buying into the myth that anything less than perfection reflects poorly on them. An overly safe approach often results with a failure of the largest order – professional goals. If you crave success, be willing to fail and learn from it.
- Internet Mastery. The web offers unprecedented opportunities: social networking, blogging, podcasting, news releases, viral sensations, etc. It’s simply not enough to do these things – you must do so strategically for the greatest impact.
- Financial Literacy. Prospering financially doesn’t simply mean raking in piles of cash. Success requires a deep understanding of how money works – earning, spending, and saving.
- Research Skills. The most successful professionals do not reinvent the wheel. They take advantage of pre-existing resources. They establish relationships with mentors, embrace creative modeling, and devour resource materials in their field.
- An Understanding and Interest in the World. Only those who are engaged in the challenges, values, and realities of their communities are able to create products and provide services that fill gaps and resonate with others. Successful professionals are relevant.
When you play the career game with these rules in mind you will be well prepared for success.
Madeleine Albright’s Leadership Institute for Women
May 3, 2010 By 4 Comments
Former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright is paving the way for the future women leaders of the world and unlocking the door to the proverbial good old boys club. At Wellesley College, Ms. Albright’s alma mater, a new Institute for Global Affairs named after her will be offering students around the world access to non-partisan lectures, seminars and internships with topics ranging from political science and economics to religion. The goal is to address the issues at the core of international societies and empower women leaders with an opportunity to make a difference.
Albright believes that women see the human part of issues and pursue power in order to do something with it, not just to have power for the sake of having it. With only 600+ women holding cabinet positions worldwide, Albright is on a mission to groom the next generation of women leaders.
At a recent professional development conference, I participated in a workshop with law and MBA students who described their top competencies for leaders. These women are the leaders of tomorrow in the business and legal arena and here is what they believe is important for leadership success:
- Good leaders should foster the potential of others in an organization.
- Optimistic leaders are more effective.
- Effective leaders learn to be assertive and not aggressive.
- Strong leaders are comfortable in their own skin and lead by being authentic and true to themselves.
- Successful leaders understand human motivation.
These emerging legal and business professionals have some great insight about what makes a leader successful. I’ll be discussing leadership in greater detail in a forthcoming blog post and I will share the wisdom of leadership expert, Deborah C. Stephens, my mentor and colleague. Cheers to Madeleine Albright for her efforts in blazing the leadership trail for women and may her new institute at Wellesley be a valuable resource for the future generation of female leaders.
Debbie Waitkus, Golf For Cause, LLC
April 25, 2010 By 6 Comments
Always an athlete, Debbie Waitkus played on the soccer team at the University of Arizona and after graduate school she went on to establish a thriving corporate career as president of a 37 year old, $130 million private mortgage banking firm. She always attributed golf as one of her keys to success since she would take her clients on golf outings to establish and steward professional relationships and business deals. When the CEO of her firm implemented a new strategy that didn’t follow suit with her professional values, Debbie knew it was time for a change and what better way to plan her reinvention than to leverage the game of golf in a new business. [Read more...]
